Xavier Molas Capdevila

My name is Xavier Molas Capdevila. I am the grandson of  Esteban Molas Torredemer, and what follows is an hommage to him. 

I was born in 1953 in Barcelona, but I grew up in a small fishing and farming village called Salou in the Province of Tarragona (Spain). There, my family had a farm and worked the land. I can say that my childhood and my youth were wonderful, as I lived in an exciting world full of charm and wild animals (birds, foxes, rabbits, javalis, etc.) along with domestic ones (horses, dogs, cats, etc.). 

But one of the most important aspects of that time to me was living with my grandfather, Esteban Molas Torredemer. 

I remember that on cold winter evenings my grandfather and I lit the fireplace. It was the only way to warm ourselves at that time. I would sit on the floor by my grandfather’s armchair and that's where the magic began. 

He used to tell beautiful, almost magical stories as I saw them - about his childhood, his youth in the town of Vilaseca, near Salou, and then as an adult in Barcelona, where he achieved great professional success. And then his financial ruin, after which he had to flee to France, where he was taken prisoner by the Nazis and condemned to the Nazi labor camp of Lorient, located on the west coast of France. There came his ruin as a human being. He told me how they arrived: "I remember trains loaded with human beings who were treated worse than garbage, families separated, those useful for forced labor and the rest sent to the extermination camps." He never got over it - I remember that when he told such stories there were always tears on his cheeks. 

I didn't understand anything then, and even today I remember many of his words and I still don't understand the cruelty of men. 

He died at the age of eighty-five, although he seemed to be much older. 

I will always remember that man, and the years that I shared with him. 

Un abrazo, Abuelo.