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Manuel Hibernón, anarchist and free-thinker, he played politically through Union: Sindicato Luz y Fuerza del Ebro, located in Barcelona.
He was exiled first in France, in May 1939, being internee to the refugee camp of Argelés. In 1940, through the intermediary of the Red Cross reunites with his wife, Encarnación Ruiz, and his three children and moved to a small village in the Massif Central of France. During his exile in France worked first as a farmer and then as an electrician, his true profession, raising pylons on the French-Spanish border. His son, Manuel Ruiz Hibernón says that through this work his father could help escape several people fleeing from Franco's Spain.
After the Second World War, in 1951, a lack of work due to the harsh economic conditions in France was exiled with his family to Argentina. Aboard ship El Florida, he recorded in his diary that trip, a document that reflects the day to day that meant the long trip, full of hope and uncertainty.They left on December 27th from Cugnaux, France, and arrived on January 19th in Buenos Aires. During that trip were several episodes as, for example, being unable to get off the boat when they came to Rio de Janeiro and Monteviedo, the first being a police order and the second alleging a flu epidemic.This caused unrest among the passengers. Episodes like this unfortunately happened during the Second World War and during the Cold War where some American states did not let off the boat to political refugees for fear of leftist infiltration, commonly known as the "fear of the red" .
Author: Lidia Bocanegra | October 2012
Travelogue