Archival Work in Galicia (3). Reconstructing the History of the Society and Center of Instruction and Recreation of Bergondo and its Environment

I arrived in Bergondo’s local archive infected with the enthusiasm towards A Senra and the Sociedad Bergondo y sus Contornos that I had felt in my first visit to the town. And my first-hand contact with the documents kept in the archive did nothing but to increase my interest in and passion for the Bergondo-New …

Archival Work in Galicia (2): First Day in Bergondo. Visiting A Senra.

Encouraged by a promising start, I went to another archive on the following day, located at the Bergondo City Council. Like Oleiros, the place was not far from where I was staying. It made sense to start my research in the nearby areas before venturing in more ‘far-away’ lands in the south of Galicia. I …

Archival Work in Galicia (1): Oleiros and the Mysterious Manuel Zapata

In early August I visited the first archive, located in Oleiros (A Coruña), not far from my base of operations. It was my first experience undertaking this type of research, and I didn’t know what to expect. I arrived in the small archive, hidden on the side of a building in Plaza de Galicia [Galicia …

Archival Work in Galicia (0): A Good Omen

I arrived in Galicia at the end of July 2016. My plan was to visit municipal archives, hoping to find any traces of Galician emigration to New York City. I was not particularly interested in studying statistical data, but rather in gathering documents that could tell the story of some of the thousands of Galicians …

From French Concentration Camps to New York: the Odyssey of Galician Refugees after the Spanish Civil War

‘A crowd of starving, desperate people dressed in rags began to walk towards the border. Women, children, old people… […] It was horrible, it was a beaten people, without a horizon. In that moment, I had a breakdown. Everything that I thought my life could have become was vanishing forever’ (Público 12/09/2015). This is the …