I was born in santander but I have been living in Asturias for some years. I4m a historian and I work as a teacher.I have always been interested in History and since I was young I started to look into my family4s. ____________________ My grandfather, Marciano, came sick from Marroco in 1927 and died a few months later. When he was in Africa he had leave every two years more or less, and whenever he came home he met one more child. When my grandmother became a widow she had five children and my mother, the youngest, was eight months old. ____________________ My grandmother was an independent and modern woman.During the Spanish civil war she put some nuns up at the sewing workshop trying to pass them off as workers. Some time later one of them betrayed her because in the sewing atelier they embroid badges for the republican army. She was imprisioned and sentenced to death. However some time later the Mother Superior interceded on her behalf and was absolved.In july 1937, her oldest son, captain of the republican army was in prision and she was already in the black list. That was when she decided to send her three youngest children abroad and when my mother, her brother and sister became one of those children called the children of the war. They with 120 MORE children from the Basque Country, Asrturias and Cantabria were exiled to Denmark. They stayed there for over a year. The bombing of guernica in April of 1937 was the begining of the national entry and the fallen of Bilbao in june of the same year 37. Many families decided then to send their children abroad to safer places, other people run away from the war to santander and later to asturias. __________________ After taking Bilbao the national troups went to santander and the bombings got worse. On the 25th of augost 1937 the republican army surrended.The next day the national army occupied Santander. ___________________ The begining of the war in asturias was not a surprise to anyone because it had a long proces of gestation which started with the 1934 revolution. On the 21st of october of 1937, one month after the surrender of Santander the national army took Gijon.The whole north front had been taken. ____________________ Mr Jesus Revaque Garea was a remarkable man in his time.He was convinced from the beginnig with the pedagogical ideals of the Institution of Free Education, that education was the only weapon against a delayed Spain. He worked as a teacher in Menendez Pelayo school, as a columnist,for several newspapers and as a director for the daily newspaper El Diario Montaqes. He travelled abroad many times looking for other pedagogical systems and he introduced in Spain the one he liked the most, used by a Belgian called Decroly, still used in Spain. He was Involved in the formation of the union of workers of education. After the civil war he was exiled in Mexico where he was named director of the Madrid Schol which opened its doors, at the beginig, to the Spanish refugee children and later to Mexicans and foreign students. Mexican authorities introduced Revaque4s system in its education reform. After 53 years OF teaching, he retired at the age of 75. _____________________ Three years ago I got in touch with the Danish Eembassy looking for information about my mother4s exile.They put me through the worker4s museum, one of the most important in the country, where a lot of documents about this issue are kept. There, I made contact with Ms Dorte Hansen and that4s how we started our friendship.At the beginning Dorte was surprised that someone was interested in those documents forgotten for so long. After two years she told me that if I wanted to go deeply into my research I needed to go there. A year ago my mother and I took some days off and went to Copenhaguen. Dorte welcomed us in the museum and she even invited us to her house. Hospitality is very important to the Danish people and Dorte and her husband, Morgue let us know. It was very special for me to visit the country I had heard my mother talk about so much. I love my mother dearly she is the person I admire the most but I must say that taking photographs is not her forte. ____________________ Hitler4s government didn4t want the Danish to accept the Spanish children. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Danish sent the children to France, saying: "You have already been through a war, you don4t have to live through another one. Soon after the start of the war, Germany occupied Denmark. ____________________ Through the papers Dorte supplied, I found the letter the Danish organization wrote to the Spanish children when they had to leave Denmark because of the scond World War: Dear children, On the day of your departure from Denmark, where you have been for a year, the committee that arranged your stay here, wants to add a few words to our farewell. A year ago you left from France to Denmark thanks to a request of the responsible of Spanish business in Denmark. It was difficult for France to host so many Spanish children and they asked us to arrange a colony here in Denmark,even though they preferred that the colonies were established in countries as close to Spain as possible, countries with similar weather and customs. We believe that, although you have been away from your loved ones, you have had a good time in Denmark and we hope that you will benefit from your stay with us in the future. We also hope that the ties, that we now have, between Spain and Denmark will continue and we want to let you know that you will always be welcomed. You will be able to write to us since some of the people who have taken care of you here have promised to set up a mail club. We will be happy to hear from you. Everything related to your stay, as well as the mail you may send, and the film taken when leaving France and during your stay here will be preserved and will be at your disposal if you ever come back. Your accomodation in France, just like your accomodation here, will be supported by money collected in Denmark. We will keep in touch with you through a Danish person living in Paris. We want you to know that all the money comes from voluntary contributions from the Danish people. There are many wealthy people who have contributed important donations, but there are also many workers who in spite of being short of money, make contributions of a small amount on a weekly basis. We are very thankfull to all the people for the donations and to the Spanish teachers, specially Mr.Revaque, the principal. We wish you a happy stay in France and we also wish that you could go back to a peaceful and cheerful Spain in a near future. ______________________ After saying goodbye to Dorte I think about my mother and how much we would like to go back to Denmark. We will do it as soon as we can and this time we4ll rent a car and visit all the places we didn4t have time for. The more I get into this part of our history and the more I get to know the main figures in it, the more grateful I am to the Danish people. I think that the only way to return their generosit would be to help them or any other people in a situation similar to the one we had then. I admire my mother and all her companions of evacuation: sailors, workers, miners...Who pieced their lives together again when everything was lost, many orphans, hunger, people who despite everything, are capable of holding the most beautiful feelings in their hearts. People who say how they see themselves in those children who suffer at the wars which raze the wold nowdays, nobody can understand that better than they do. We live in a world where the inequakity between wealthy and poor countries is as big as the wall we build to get away from them. I think that is very important to know our History but, I also believe, that learning from it is even much more important.