Alaior remembers one of the last victims of Franco's repression before the People's Party (PP) and Vox destroyed the Historical Memory.

CitadelAlaior has repaired this Thursday the memory of Josep Seguí Sintes, Pepe de Son Mannà, a peasant born in 1905 and imprisoned during the Civil War for being a republican, who, thanks to his kindness, was saved from being murdered by Franco's regime.

His great-grandson, Moritz Werner, a historian, and his family have worked hard in recent years to gain access to the court case in order to reopen the case. In March 2023, they succeeded in getting the Balearic Government to issue him the corresponding certificate of reprisal, and in October of the same year, the Ministry of Justice annulled the 84-year-old sentence for which Pepe had been imprisoned.

This Thursday morning, his memory was finally recovered. In the presence of councilors Maria Antònia Pons and Llorenç Triay, as well as the Director of Institutional Relations of the Catalan Government, Xesca Ramis, the stone, including a photograph, was placed in front of his house, bearing a carnation and the inscription recognizing him as a victim of Franco's reprisals. The subsequent floral offering to the paving stone, says Moritz, rounded off an act of "justice, truth, and reparation." One of the last before, due to the pact between the PP and Vox in our region, the Historical Memory Law is repealed and none of the hundreds of Menorcans who were imprisoned, shot, and persecuted for the simple reason of being republican or anti-clerical can no longer be recognized.

Pepe's descendants have thus finally been able to heal the wounds that had been passed down from generation to generation. Amalia, the only of her two daughters present at the event, made it clear: "It's the most polished gift they could have given me."

Communist and anticlerical

Married to Catalina Seguí and the father of three children, Josep Seguí, the farmer from Hort de Son Mannà, was anti-clerical and a member of the Democratic Republican Circle of Alaior. In 1937, with the war already underway, he also joined the Communist Party. But when the fascists arrived in Menorca, they accused him of being a propagandist, Marxist, and spy, and on March 20, 1939, he was arrested. After a military trial "without guarantees or rights," Moritz notes, he was imprisoned in the castle of Sant Felip and later taken to the Sangre y la Mola hospital.

The prosecution requested the death penalty, but he avoided it thanks to the testimony of some fascist families, grateful for the food from his garden that he had provided them in a time of such poverty. Even the mayor at the time changed his testimony so that he was only sentenced to prison. So on June 2, 1941, more than two years later, he was able to be released on parole. The small fortune he had made by winning the lottery years earlier and working in the fields allowed him to kindly share the fruits of his garden with people on both sides.

"We shouldn't be ashamed; on the contrary, we should feel truly proud," said their great-grandson Moritz during the ceremony. "Their crime," he emphasized, "was believing in a just and egalitarian society, where the tyranny of fascism had no place." In fact, neither he nor his wife, Catalina Seguí, ever hid everything that had happened within their family, nor did they hide their convictions.

Their 77-year-old daughter, Amàlia, described the parents as two "simple people with very noble human values" and revealed the content of some of the letters they sent to each other in Spanish: "I'm really looking forward to seeing you," she told him. "I know we are strong, and we are strong."

Eternal gratitude to the witnesses who saved him

Amalia also spoke to express her "great pride" in being the daughter of a "simple, good-natured, friendly, and cheerful man who always opened the doors of our house to everyone." Her pride has grown even greater since, thanks to the help of her grandson Moritz, she was able to read the court case. "My father was a good man. He always shared the fruits of the garden with those families who were suffering during the war, even though they were on the Nationalist side and he was a Republican." In fact, Amalia wanted to express her eternal gratitude to "these people who had the courage to bear witness on his behalf during such terrible years."

"There are many, many cases like Pepe's. In Menorca itself, hundreds of people were imprisoned in La Mola for the simple fact of being Republicans, Communists, or anti-clericals," her great-grandson reflected. "Pepe's case," he emphasized, "is just another in a very long list of victims of repression, but nevertheless, he deserves to be remembered and honored, like all the other people who went through the same ordeal."

For Moritz, "the streets of Alaior should be filled with these stones, one for each person persecuted by the fascists. And so, when we saw the streets shining with that silver color, we would realize the magnitude of the repression of Franco's regime." He therefore lamented the recent political agreement that will leave many other affected people forgotten. "Unfortunately, it is possible that this event will be the last one," he noted. And he asked those in attendance that, "when the newspaper or on television once again expresses how dangerous and bad democratic memory is, remember today."