Bernat, aged 93, thanked those attending a ceremony in Inca, Mallorca, held in memory of his father, Bernat Mateu Ferrer, and his uncle, Andreu París Martorell. Both men were killed by Francoist forces in March 1937, and their remains have never been found.
The ceremony included the installation of two “stones of memory”, restoring the names of the men to a public space. Dozens of relatives and local residents attended the event, which commemorated not only their deaths but also the uncertainty and silence endured by their families.
París was a shoemaker and a prominent figure in Inca’s labour movement. He chaired the La Justícia trade union and helped establish the town’s Socialist Association, advocating workers’ rights and social justice. Mateu was a left-wing republican, the brother of Inca’s republican mayor Antoni Mateu and París’s brother-in-law.
Both men were arrested on 19 July 1936, after the military uprising against the Second Republic, and were held first in Inca before being transferred to Can Mir prison in Palma. Their bodies remain missing.
According to the account recalled during the ceremony, París was briefly released after his arrest but later surrendered to the Civil Guard, fearing reprisals against his family. He was imprisoned after the birth of his youngest daughter. After seven months in Can Mir, his relatives were told that he had been freed. They searched for him at official buildings and the railway station, but never found him.
His granddaughter said that prisoners from Can Mir were sometimes supposedly released and then taken away by Falangist groups, who killed them. In Inca, París’s youngest daughter reportedly waited each afternoon for the train from Palma, hoping to see her father wearing the navy-blue coat he had received in prison. He never appeared.
Mateu, known as Rinya, was 40 when he was detained while having coffee at the Socialist Centre. He was later held in Can Mir. Documentation cited by the Fideus portal states that a priest ordered the prison director not to hand him over, but a police officer named Ramonell nevertheless gave him to men waiting in a car outside. No further information about his fate was obtained.
The ceremony’s chronicler, Miquel Llorenç Villalonga, placed their stories within Inca’s history of social inequality and organised labour. He recalled the role of republicans, anarchists and socialists, as well as the La Justícia union, in local political and workers’ activity during the early 20th century.
Villalonga said that the problems of the Second Republic could not justify the coup or the repression that followed. He described the memorial stones as an act of recognition and dignity, asking that they remain in place, secured by what he called “the cement of respect, the cement of freedom and the cement of justice”.
The repression also claimed the life of Antoni Mateu, Bernat Mateu’s brother and Inca’s republican mayor. For the family, the period left a legacy of imprisonment, disappearances and deaths. At 93, Bernat’s tears and words of thanks gave personal meaning to a memorial intended to keep the two men’s names, lives and absence visible.
Sources: elDiario.es.