Alvaro arrived in Britain as a child refugee from the Spanish Civil War in May 1937. He left Spain onboard the Habana with nearly four thousand other children from the Basque Country. His identity was changed forever when a Welsh family took him into their home. Alvaro feels his experiences have given him a unique identity, a mixture of Welsh, Spanish and Basque.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1937, Alvaro was twelve years old and living happily with his family in San Sebastián. But life became ‘very rough’ and his parents eventually decided to send him to Britain for his safety. He left Spain in May 1937 with nearly four thousand other Basque refugee children.
‘I just looked back and see them waving and crying, then something came over me, I thought good God, you know that sort of thing, I felt myself empty and alone.’
Alvaro was first sent to Stoneham camp in Eastleigh, Hampshire. He then lived in several children’s ‘colonies’, or camps, in Britain where living conditions were basic and uncomfortable. At the Brechfa colony in Wales the refugee children got into trouble with the local people when some of the boys were chased out of the village for touching a car parked in the street. The boys took revenge and ‘in the night, not all of us, but most of us, went to the village and we smashed all the windows.’
Some local people visited the children who were living in the colony and realised they had no family to look after them. Alvaro became close to a family from the local area.
In 1939 he had to go back to Spain.
‘It was tremendous, it was absolutely marvellous, you know just, well, especially your mum, to see your mother is something that is special when you have missed her, we embraced, we cried.’
‘ I say I am Welsh…for example…if England and Wales were playing football I want Wales to win…’
But he was unhappy, his family were poor and he dreamt of going back to Wales. A member of the family who had befriended him in Wales visited him in Spain and asked if he wanted to return. In 1947, now aged eighteen, Alvaro moved back to Wales. He has lived there ever since and is happy with his life.
‘I haven’t got no regrets anyway you know, I live an honest life, I am happy, I always had a job, so that’s all there is to it.’
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