HomeDocumentationHistorical NotesHow and why did Father Josemaria decide to escape across the Pyrenees Mountains?
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Historical Notes

How and why did Father Josemaria decide to escape across the Pyrenees Mountains?

Tags: Spanish Civil War, History, Opus Dei, Crossing the Pyrenees, Josemaria Escriva
Madrid, 1937
Madrid, 1937
Spain was divided into two conflicting zones by the Spanish Civil War. After living in hiding in Madrid for over a year, Father Josemaria found himself faced with a choice of staying on there without knowing how long the situation would drag on, in constant danger of being arrested and killed, and only able to exercise his ministry with many restrictions and difficulties; or on the other hand, undertaking a hazardous escape from the Republican zone of the country to the “other side”, where he would be able to carry out his apostolate freely even though the Spanish Civil War was still going on. This, however, meant leaving his mother, sister and younger brother in Madrid, as well as several members of Opus Dei.

To get to the other zone, Father Josemaria, and the seven people who planned to go with him, would need to travel north-east to the Pyrenees mountains, get over them into France via Andorra, and then re-enter Spain at San Sebastian. For the trek across the Pyrenees he and his companions would need to pay a guide – usually these were smugglers in peacetime, who were well acquainted with the possible routes. During the war years they charged about 1,200 Spanish pesetas per person to take refugees across. As well as this sum, Father Josemaria and his companions had to find the money to travel to Barcelona and then stay there while they made contact with a guide and the expedition was organized. This took the total costs to about 2,000 pesetas per person.

Father Josemaria’s companions were Jose Maria Albareda, who was the same age as himself – 35 – and who had joined Opus Dei after the Spanish Civil War started; a friend of Albareda’s called Tomas Alvira, a lecturer of 31; Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, 29; Juan Jimenez Vargas and Miguel Fisac, both 24, and Pedro Casciaro and Francisco Botella, both 22. The only one who was not a member of Opus Dei was Tomas Alvira, and he asked to join it a few years later, becoming one of its first Supernumeraries. He died in 1992, and the Catholic Church has opened the cause of his canonization, together with that of his wife Paquita.

Four of them had their earnings and savings to contribute – Albareda and Alvira were university lecturers, Jimenez Vargas was a doctor, and Sainz de los Terreros was an engineer. The Sainz and Vargas families also gave them some money. The other three, Casciaro, Fisac and Botella, were students; Fisac and Botella were given money by their families for the journey. Other members of Opus Dei in Madrid – Isidoro Zorzano, an engineer, and Jose Maria Gonzalez Barredo, a teacher – contributed what they could. Father Josemaria himself still had a little of the money he had been going to use to set up the new hall of residence for students, which had been halted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In spite of all of this, the eight refugees could not raise all the money needed, and when they reached Andorra they still owed the last of their guides 5,400 pesetas.

Father Josemaria and Jose Maria Albareda had a friend, Father Pascual Galindo, who had managed to escape to the other zone of Spain. He had used one of the clandestine networks that guided people across the Pyrenees. He told Father Josemaria about this possibility, and what he would need to do to contact the right people in Barcelona. Juan Jimenez Vargas made the arrangements.
However, their escape was much more complicated than they had expected, because of various factors such as severe winter weather, increased vigilance on the part of the border guards, and the guides’ insistence that they should wait until enough people had gathered to make the attempt worthwhile. In the end there were over forty people in the group in which Father Josemaria escaped. Their main guide was a shepherd called Josep Cirera, who was familiar with the details of the route and the safest places to make for.