Carme Casas Godessart, “Maria”, “Elisa” (1921-2013)

Carme Casas Godessart was born on 25 April 1921 in Alcalà de Gurrea (Huesca). A few months later, her family moved to Ayera, a nearby village. At the age of 13, she moved back to Almacelles as her father, who was a teacher, had been transferred there. Both her father’s profession and the republican ideology of her family led her to grow up in direct contact with the principles of modern school, her father being her first teacher. In 1935 she started her baccalaureate studies at a secondary school in Lleida. And it was also there where, at 15 years of age, she became an active member of the Joventuts Socialistes Unificades (Unified Socialist Youth, JSU). She continued studying until the third year, but could not start the fourth year due to the outbreak of the civil war, two months before the start of the school year. At that time Carme was in Almacelles with her family, where they were staying during the summer.

Shortly after the outbreak of the civil war, she began her war nurse studies, which were organised by the Generalitat de Catalunya. However, under pressure from her mother, she had to interrupt them. Unable to practise as a nurse, she signed up for a program of the Joventuts Socialistes Unificades in which they would visit and accompany the young sick and injured patients in Lleida hospital. She also took part in the program Padrines de Guerra (War Godmothers) which, through epistolary correspondence with young soldiers destined for the front, sought to give soldiers some comfort and keep their morale high.

In September 1937, academic activity was reactivated and she was able to return to Lleida. In March 1938, due to the advance of the insurgent troops, the family moved to Vilanova i la Geltrú. Carme’s father, Jesús, was appointed by the Generalitat to the head of a children’s colony in Girona. Not long after that, his wife Nieves and two of his daughters, Consuelo and Montse, also moved in with him. Carme stayed alone in Vilanova with the idea of finishing her studies. As Franco’s troops gained control, the family, which was separated, set out on the road to exile.

Carme had to leave with her classmates and other students, fleeing from Manresa to Figueres, completely alone and with almost nothing to wear. “The train was already full from far back the line, and we had to make room for all the people who were going to Figueres, we travelled like this… like sardines in a tin, with no luggage, with no friends, not knowing where we were going and thinking: ‘Where are my parents? Where will I go?’ And also thinking, ‘If you leave, you can come back, but if you stay, will you be able to get out…?’”

In her daughter’s words: “There, she lost contact with her travel companions and lost her suitcase, her luggage, everything. And she found herself on a train to France alone. When she arrived in France, she was taken care of by the French. She lived in different places and got involved in the kind of political activities that were taking place at that time”. She got as far as Arras, in the French department of Aube. There, and thanks to the French Communist Party, she was found by her father. Carme managed to reunite with her parents and sisters, who were interned in the camp of Saint Chely d’Apcher. But they stayed there for quite a short while, since the French government, as a result of the World War, had decided to get rid of some of the existing refugee camps and wanted to regroup the Spanish refugees in fewer locations. In accordance with these regulations, all the members of the Casas family were transferred to the Langogne camp, where they stayed until February 1940. When Jesus was recruited by the French government and was sent to work at the Maginot Line, the women of the family also left the camp and looked for a flat in town. While Carme, her mother and her sisters strived to survive, Jesus managed to dodge the fate of a German arrest at the front and was reunited with his family.

From that moment on –it was already 1941– all the members of the Casas family began to cooperate in the political reorganisation of the Spanish refugees in France. According to Carme’s daughter: “When she was there, she met my father, who was a member of the PCE. My father went back to Spain to reorganise the communist party and the whole maquis struggle and all of that. And my mother came back in 1944, if I remember correctly, because she was being persecuted by the Gestapo”’.

Leandro Saún, who was in charge of organising guerrilla groups in the south of France, went to Langogne one day with the intention of meeting with Jesús Casas and analysing the existing organisational possibilities in the area of La Lozère, Gard and Ardèche. Shortly after that visit, Carme was given the task of reorganising the youth in the area, an activity she made compatible with that of liaison to the resistance. Both activities involved several meetings with Leandro, who would end up being her life partner. During the German occupation, Carme became one of the youngest leaders of the reorganisation against the Nazis in the Languedoc region. Known by the nickname of Maria, she was targeted by the Gestapo.

In September 1943 Leandro crossed the border into Spain while fleeing from the Gestapo and Carme did not receive any more news from him after that. She continued her work as liaison to the resistance in France. One day in April 1944, her mother alerted her that they were going after her. She left Langogne as quickly as possible, arrived in Nîmes and from there she set out on a journey to the mining area of Gardana, with the Gestapo on her heels. Then the party sent her back to Nîmes to go from there to Perpignan and then back to Spain.

On midsummer eve 1944, Carme crossed the Pyrenees and entered Spain under the false name of Elisa with a group of nine people. Upon arriving in Figueres, the group was spotted by the Guardia Civil, arrested and taken to the Girona prison for a month. Once released Carme tried to contact Leandro or find out where he was.

She was then told that Leandro was “working in Torrero”, which meant that he had been arrested and was serving a sentence in the Provincial Prison of Zaragoza. Carmen didn’t think twice about it and decided to move to Zaragoza to look for a job and take care of Leandro. As at that time they still did not have a legal relationship, in order to go see him in prison she pretended to be Consuelo Saún, Leandro’s sister. Carme then took it upon herself to prevent the execution of his death sentence. She travelled to Madrid, lodged appeals and tried to find people with influence who could help him.

Due to her clandestine activity in the country, fostered by contacts she made in prison when she went to visit Leandro, Elisa had become a woman much wanted by the Political-Social Brigade and was finally arrested, tortured and imprisoned for high treason, freemasonry, espionage and communism. During her stay in Madrid, she and more than 100 comrades were betrayed. She spent almost two years in the Prisión Habilitada de Predicadores.

In June 1945, Leandro was transferred to Tarragona prison to be tried in that city. So, when Carme was released in 1948, she travelled to Tarragona. There she would begin again her activity with endless visits to the prison, sending letters relentlessly to ecclesiastical and military authorities with the aim of softening her companion’s sentence. In the meantime, she continued to work and began to study nursing. This allowed her to start working in Dr. Monegal’s clinic.

On May 3, 1953, Leandro requested permission from the warden of the Tarragona Provincial Prison to marry Carme in this establishment, permission which was granted on May 29. Thus, when Leandro was released, their relationship was already legalised. After he was released, they had two children, Rosa Nieves and Leandro. Carme was one of the few female militants who helped to reorganise the PSUC during the hardest years of the clandestinity with Leandro. In 1967, while working as a nurse at the Joan XXIII hospital in Tarragona, she took part in the founding of the trade union Comisiones Obreras.

In the 1960s and 1970s, while working at the Joan XXIII hospital in Tarragona, she acted as a trade union liaison. After Franco’s death, Carme Casas maintained close ties with the PSUC and CCOO and ended up as a member of Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV). She devoted the final years of their life to disseminating democratic memory among the youth, and she was one of the founders of the association Les dones del 36 (Women from 1936). In 2002 the Generalitat de Catalunya awarded her the Medalla al Treball President Macià (President Macià Medal for Work). Carme died on November 26, 2013, aged 92.