Plora xiquet, plora in Quart de les Valls: book on exile and Franco-era repression
Quart de les Valls, in the Camp de Morvedre district, presents a book on exile and Francoist repression on 6 November. Hermini Pérez Edo's «Plora xiquet, plora» is handed out free to interested residents.
On Friday 6 November, at 19.30, the Auditori Municipal (municipal auditorium) of Quart de les Valls hosts the presentation of «Plora xiquet, plora», a book by the writer Hermini Pérez Edo. The town belongs to the Camp de Morvedre district, the comarca of Sagunto. Anyone attending can also take home a copy at no cost, because the edition is given free to residents who ask for it.
The book collects stories of people marked by the Civil War and the dictatorship. Its common thread is exile, both the outer kind, that of those who crossed the border, and the inner kind, that of those who stayed and endured silence, repression and the label of being hostile to the regime. The book pays particular attention to Valencian women, many of whom faced double discrimination in that situation.
The presentation is organised by the Department of Democratic Memory of the Quart de les Valls town council, with the collaboration of the Associació Memòria Històrica El Molí (a local historical memory association). It is part of the events for 31 October, the Day of Remembrance and Tribute to the Victims of the Military Coup, the Civil War and the Dictatorship. The Democratic Memory Law sets that date as a day dedicated to all victims of the military coup, the war and the dictatorship.
Quart de les Valls lived through that period first-hand. During the Civil War, 235 men from 27 conscription cohorts of the town were mobilised, all of them in the Republican army. Franco's troops entered the municipality on 29 March 1939 without meeting resistance, and from then on the town council and the Republican parties and unions were outlawed. The town's name itself is Roman in origin: it comes from the Latin Quartum Milliarum, the fourth milestone counted from Sagunto.
Pérez Edo was born in Quart de les Valls and now lives in El Puig de Santa Maria. He is the author of the historical essay Aproximació de la història del Puig de Santa Maria and the poetry collections Anells concèntrics d'aigua and Descarnar-se a mossos, and several of his stories have been recognised in literary competitions.
After the copies are handed out to residents, the book will join the holdings of the municipal library so that it stays available to the public. The councillor for Democratic Memory, José Sevillà, says the aim is to recover and bring closer to the town a part of its history that was long left in silence.
According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional data from Wikipedia and La Moncloa.