The House of Happiness ceased to be so on 3 August 1936. On that day, those rebelling against the republic’s democratic government kidnapped its tenant, avant-garde painter Francisco Miguel, in A Coruña. Two months later, after a brief release, he was murdered. “The echo repeats my words here in the cell,” writes Syra Alonso, his partner, two years later while seeking refuge in a village in inland Galicia, “what have you done with Francisco Miguel?” Alonso’s diaries, unpublished until 2000 and now recovered by the Alvarellos Publisher, provide a harrowing account of the early days following the coup, the violent and indiscriminate repression, and the crimes committed by fascists. “At night, through the murmur of the sea, distant sounds of gunfire, barking dogs, and the soldiers’ shouts of ‘Halt!’ could be heard,” she notes.
Alonso drafted her accusatory statement during two periods; first in 1938 while seeking refuge in Tordoia (A Coruña) and then in 1945 while in exile in Actopan, Mexico, a country where she had previously resided with Miguel and where they had socialised with painters such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, writers like the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, and filmmakers like the Soviet Sergei Eisenstein. The document remained hidden for 55 years, despite her intention to record the barbarity and publish it. She explains this in several parts of a text that also possesses a literary style. However, it was not until journalist Carme Vidal, then with the historical nationalist weekly A Nosa Terra, stumbled upon one of its fragments that the work came to light. This occurred in the catalogue of an exhibition dedicated to Francisco Miguel by the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.
“Through the Círculo, we managed to contact his son Juan Ramón [the middle child of the three Alonso had with Miguel], who readily agreed,” Vidal recalls in conversation with elDiario.es. Two handwritten notebooks, transcribed by the author’s granddaughter, also named Syra, comprise the diary. Vidal facilitated its translation into Galician –with enthusiastic support from the son; the task was accomplished by writer Anxos Sumai– and it was published by the now-defunct A Nosa Terra publishing house a quarter of a century ago. Its impact, at a time when there was still no legislation on historical memory and only individual agents –such as A Nosa Terra and projects like that of Isaac Díaz Pardo– were involved, was significant in Galicia. Poets and intellectuals such as Chus Pato, Arturo Casas, and Miguel Anxo Fernán-Vello paid heed to a work that quickly exhausted two editions.
Exhumed in 2023
“It is Miguel’s words that help me to peel back the veil of lies in which they seek to entangle me,” writes Alonso in a narrative on the abuse of power and the labyrinth of deception through which fascist rebels concealed their actions, “you will come one day as countless women do here to inquire about their loved ones, and you will be deceived just as they are. They will not tell you where they are taking me. If a guard gives you this comb along with my belongings, I mark this as a sign that I face the same fate as those who have disappeared these days.” The body of Francisco Miguel was discovered in Bértoa, Carballo, on 29 September of that year, 1936. Alonso records this, as she registers the process through which she uncovers what has transpired. “Why has he deceived me with his release only to inflict upon me the cruelest of pains?” she muses about a Civil Guard who deliberately misleads her with false information, “today I can say that I harbour great contempt for you. And you call yourselves defenders of Spain and propagandists of peace when you spill the blood of so many innocents with the word of God on your lips!”
Syra Alonso’s diaries mention Bértoa up to seven times. “It is as if she marked where he was buried,” Vidal reflects. Two years ago, thanks to the initiative of the Association for Historical Memory Recovery, his remains and those of three other victims found in the same grave –Juan Boedo, Andrés Pinilla, and Pedro Pinilla– were exhumed. On 29 September, 89 years after his martyrdom, the San Amaro cemetery in his birthplace A Coruña will receive the remains of Francisco Miguel. “The gentle hues of light that Miguel cherished in Galicia shone in all their beauty,” Alonso recalls when reflecting on her journey to Carballo following the trail of her husband.
A “Truly Brilliant” Couple
Carme Vidal still marvels at “the capacity for erasure” exhibited by the dictatorship. Francisco Miguel and Syra Alonso had been “a truly brilliant, singular couple, leading an exhilarating life”. For decades, nobody spoke of them, no one seemed aware of their story, and no one knew of those two Galicians who traversed the Rebel Mexico of the 1920s and built relationships with the artistic avant-garde of the North American country. Vidal narrates this in the introduction accompanying the new edition of the diaries –which includes previously unreleased material: an epilogue by Professor Conrado J. Arranz, a scholar of Alonso’s figure, and a literary account by her.
Alonso and Miguel resided in Mexico between 1926 and 1933. They had also spent extended periods in Paris and Cuba previously. “The names of Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, Blanca Luz Brum, Alejo Carpentier, María Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo, Eisenstein, Fernández Maza, or Georges Braque coincide with theirs in certain episodes of their biographies, a tale of artists that led them in search of environments marked by cultural agitation,” Vidal explains. The closest relationship was built with Siqueiros and his companion, Uruguayan poet Luz Brum, with whom they lived in an abandoned convent in Taxco (Guerrero). “In that space, property disappears,” says Vidal, and there they came to know the director of Acorazado Potemkin, who “becomes enamoured with Syra.” The great muralist Siqueiros himself drew inspiration from the Galicians for two oil paintings, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife and Portrait of a Man, as noted by the journalist.
Their American journey concluded in 1934. They returned to Europe, spent a year in Madrid, where Miguel painted public buildings, and in 1935 they returned to Galicia. They settled in the House of Happiness in Santa Cruz de Oleiros, just a few kilometres from A Coruña, now with three children born across the ocean. On 3 August, the coup plotters detained Miguel in a boarding house in A Coruña. They accused him of actions against the nascent military regime. He was released on 19 September but was subsequently lost again and was murdered on 29 September. He was 39 years old. Syra Alonso and their children survived, and in 1942, they went into exile in Mexico. Alonso passed away in Mexico City at the age of 71. Even she did not keep her diaries, which came into the hands of her son thanks to the renowned Mexican collector Dolores Olmedo, to whom the author herself had entrusted them. “In her old age, Syra continued to walk lightly and wear colourful clothes,” Vidal recalls at the end of her introduction to the diaries, “she read extensively. Ever cheerful, she enchanted anyone who listened with her stories. She made empanadas and often remembered the last portrait Francisco Miguel painted of her in Oleiros,” which, she would often add, showed her with sad eyes.
