Last Monday, Josep Almudéver, an international brigade member, visited our center. French of Valencian parents, he joined the International Brigades at the age of seventeen - falsifying his documentation - and fought in the civil war and later in the maquis. At the age of 97, he still retains a lucidity and a memory worthy of admiration, while he remains faithful to the ideology that prompted him to fight fascism in the land of his parents. He is also one of the very few brigade members who are still alive and who can provide testimony about him.
The hour that his talk lasted gave way to numerous anecdotes:his incorporation into the Italian brigade, his participation in the battle of Teruel, his stay in the Albatera concentration camp once the war was over, his return to Spain to join the maquis in the Guerrilla Group of Levante and Aragón, etc.
Some of the problems suffered by the militias of the republican side can also be deduced from his story, especially his indiscipline, since on more than one occasion he took initiatives on his own - especially when joining the combat front–, other times he discussed the orders of his officers.
In short, a whole sample of living memory that revalues the formative role of our subject and that teaches young people that what the history books now tell was, once, lived and suffered by people, some anonymous and others known, who They look a lot like them.