My granddad died last night.
He was born in 1917, in a small spanish town near Almeria. His father worked the fields exactly as the father of his father, but my granddad studied to become a qualified industrial worker. When he was 19, the spanish civil war forced him to take up arms to defend the Republic, he soon became sargent in the Bonaventura Durruti column.
When the leader died, and the Soviet Union offered to train the spanish pilots, my granddad was one of the men selected to go to the russian flight academy for a 10 month course.
The war was over and so was the Republic when he had only 5 weeks left to finish his course. His father was killed in the war and his mother, executed by the dictator.
He stayed in the USSR. He found a job in the car industry and worked for his new country til WW2 reached the country in 1941.
He was deported to the Ural colonies for being "suspicious" of conspiring against the regime for he was spanish and he wasnt mobilized til the germans laid siege to Leningrad.
He fought as a sapper, with no documents, either german nor russian that would prove his identity, so he would be killed by both of them as he could not prove to belong to any faction. When a new plane, the "mosquito" was released and men were needed to test it, he was one of the chosen. He became captain for the red army, and wasn wounded even once during the war til he had a stomach operation due to the lack of food and the contitions in which that food was given to the army.
He finished the war, "hero of the Sovien Union", got married, and went back to his civil job.
but 9 years later, there was an uprising in Cuba. A young man called Castro was planning a military coup. And my granddad was sent to cuba, to fight for Castro. My dad was 12 when they returned to the USSR.
In 1992, the family moved to Spain. In 2002 he had beaten a cancer. In 2004 a 12 year old lung cancer ended his life.
He couldnt speak when he died.
Hats off gentlemen, for he was a great man.
