SPANISH EYES My roots and exile 
You think
who knows everything about himself. Holds masks, titles and names for years without really understanding "who" or "what" is (although self-deception telling the opposite.)
As I faced challenges wonderful actor; characters that is diametrically away from my experience and my worldview. Therein lies the wonderful game of "interpreting" trying to be another one is not ... or simply spoil the parody of an archetype absorbed by the neurons and admitted without the usual shell of a thousand masks that "plays" to be another ... up and down the stage ...
On May 20, 2006 debut "Litoral" of Wajdi Mouawad, "in my home country" (as would the character "Tommy" in the play), directed by Hugo Arrevillaga.
A story about the Exile. A father who died in foreign lands to their homeland for because of the war. A child who is given the task of returning the decomposing corpse of a father who did not know, for burial in the homeland full of happy memories and bitter war. A one-way trip toward finding their own identity.
Then I had to represent the parent. And how hard it is to talk to exiled truth about a war in a country across the sea ... I thought a reality quite far from mine!
represent an unknown father tells his son that his misfortunes and untimely joys, tears and nostalgia to a child who only knew the version of the maternal aunts who spoke ill of him all his life ... (A reality closer to me, but where the role that corresponded in reality I was not the father, but to child)
And what seemed even more distant than everything else: a dead mother, a letter, a half-told story. But among all these "unreal" I always found some keys and universal diaphanous: "(...) almost always was the sea, but always had much love love ... ... " "(...) Just after the laughter and tears, losses, the shouting is just after the littoral and open ocean takes it all ... "
I never thought that in reality all these concepts found in the fiction had to do with me more than I thought.
the past week, an almost magical (or string of them) make me realize that maybe my performance in "Coast" was built with an intuition of my own past ignored.
always had a vague idea of \u200b\u200bthe origin of my paternal grandmother. Daughter of exiles, English, Madrid and little else. There I saw many times in my life, and most times I was a baby, so all memory becomes more elusive. I remember it well, yes, a visit to his house when I was a teenager. A table that seemed huge and my mother talked for hours with her mother.
My grandmother was very beautiful and smiling. "You are very nice" he told me and my brother as we gently stroked his head and cheeks and gave us kisses.
years went by and never saw her again. He died prematurely at age 64.
But if I saw the mother of my grandmother, she was very old-in the city of Queretaro. I remember her sweet flirtation to receive us, wanted to be very arregladita to see their grandchildren very peinadita, despite the fine and thinning hair covering his head. His eyebrows painted very well ... and look ... look of whom have lived much, much, much ...
My great grandfather CARMEN PARDO above in 1930 (File Arribas family Pardo)
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During that visit I started to have other notions of my roots. I learned a little more what it meant exile. " I heard my grandmother sing La Marseillaise and emotional anecdotes of an eventful stay in France before sailing boat bound for Mexico. I vaguely remember hearing something about your father, my grandfather. A bearded man wearing military dress, who posed proudly in a picture frame placed in a privileged place in that room. Sometimes, in the years that followed, I came to hum that of: "oh how beautiful sword of my grandfather, Colonel! / Let me put it and then tell me if so was the" ... but the meaning was already different, the song I was talking about the same way as when, for very small-the first heard. Now I wake up the excitement and curiosity locked in its first verse: "Give me the key ring and show me your wardrobe grandmother ..." waited for years without knowing what. Seasonal forgot the story and decided to file it as a bedtime story from my memory.
life brought me and took me from Spain and Mexico several times. Occasionally returned the wonderful song of Cri-Cri to mind: "Give me the Grandma keychain and show me your wardrobe / with such beautiful and wonderful things that keep you ... "
The July 22, 2009, the key to the closet of my grandmother came to me by the hand of an aunt who still do not know in person, but already come to love as if it had always been there. ... Maybe it was always also its sisters.
That closet is finally opened, and has proved to be a Pandora's box ...
The July 27, 1939, do-today-exactly 70 years, docked at the port of Veracruz steam " Mexique " of the" Compagnie Générale Transatlantique.
It was not a pleasure trip. It was the second that ship to Mexico with victims of English Civil War Aboard. The first trip, in June 1937, was brought safely to the children of Republican fighters known as " Morelia Children " . This time, both adults and children arrived in the hope of reahacer their lives ... and maybe come back soon to Spain alone.
Among families descended from the ship had a girl of 14 years and look beautiful in spite of living: Mary. Daughter of Pepe, a Republican political cartoon from Salamanca who was in the newspaper "El Socialista" and Carmen, a homemaker, daughter of a decorated commander, born in Ferrol and war hero in the Philippines ... "oh how beautiful my sword (great great) grandfather Colonel ! / Let me put it and then tell me if so was the" ...
my great ANGEL PARDO AND PUZO
(File Arribas family Pardo) ___________________________
In just three days and thanks to my aunts and my cousin got enough information to begin rebuilding an unknown part of myself. Internet and the library in my neighborhood brought the same.
Today I moved a tribute to that girl of fourteen who should have opened the eyes amazed to discover the Mexican tropics, its exotic fruits, music and people. That girl who started a new life on the other seaside and perhaps never imagined that sixty years later would a Mexican grandson amazed watching the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and finding a new meaning to their lives "... children in these times they hear stories like "
But this story belongs to the large channel of the other story, that of all of Mexico, Spain's and the world. So today I dedicate this part of my personal discovery to all those who suffered exile, jail or death for the sake of senseless wars, which suffered the horror on both sides, those who left and those who remained.
In particular, a warm hug to the family as the target away from me, and another strong and fraternal embrace all descendants of the passengers of "Mexique". In those seventy years ago, after fighting the fascist concentration camps and German submarines entered except in the Gulf of Mexico.
Maybe my grandmother shared games and hopes with family and friends, at sea, the uncertainty in the path of exile ...
IDENTIFICATION SHEET OF MY GREAT GRANDFATHER AND MY GRANDMOTHER ISSUED BY THE MEXICAN CONSULATE IN FRANCE
(Archivo General de la Nación / National Institute of Migration)
