MURCIA. It’s been more than a year since Miguel Sanchez He said goodbye to politics and began a new stage. Actually, returned would be a more precise verb than began. Because the former parliamentary spokesperson for Ciudadanos in the Region of Murcia and former senator has returned to his profession as a lawyer, which he held until 2015 when he became involved in the political odyssey, which led him to be one of the most relevant politicians today. regional and gave him, as a culmination, the privilege of taking part in the Senate’s speakers’ gallery, even questioning the President of the Government of Spain. Life, however, gave him another facet that he had not imagined, because a late vocation made its way in the hardest months of the pandemic: writing. She launched in 2021 with her first novel, Charny (The Ugly Bourgeoisie), which tells the adventures of Ginésa young man from the Ricote Valley who emigrated to Barcelona in the 1920s; and now he ventures with his second work, The last volunteeredited by Diego Marin and based on the more than 40,000 Spaniards who enrolled in the Blue Division and ended up shedding their blood in the freezing Russian winter, as the author himself explains to Murcia Plaza.
Miguel Sánchez López (Caravaca de la Cruz, 1972) confesses that he has greatly enjoyed writing this passage in the history of Spain after a lifetime of listening to the testimonies of the infantry division that Franco sent to Russia in the forties of the 20th century to fight under the orders of Hitler against the Soviet Union. “I have read everything about the Blue Division, but I wanted to know and understand the reasons why so many young people volunteered to fight in such an inhospitable land and in a war that was not theirs,” he details. Sánchez about some Spaniards who fought – and in many cases perished – in the harshest winter of the last century, with temperatures of up to 50 degrees below zero.
Those soldiers, the author points out, were above all a very heterogeneous group, with personal situations that transcended ideologies and political causes. “There were convinced Falangists who wanted to fight against communism, yes; but there were also people like the filmmaker Luis García Berlangamy favorite director, who had fought in the Civil War as a Republican but volunteered for the Blue Division to commute his father’s death sentence.” That is, “many just wanted to be ‘forgiven’ by the Franco dictatorship after fighting in the losing side of the war.” That is why the man from Caravaca emphasizes that one of the driving forces that pushed him to write about these soldiers were their reasons for enlisting as “volunteers.”
The book transports the reader to Madrid in those self-sufficient years, at the beginning of the Franco regime, and delves into the adventures of the Blue Division and its war campaign in Russia. The author narrates historical episodes such as the ‘forgotten’ and tragic battle of Beautiful Borin which 4,500 Spanish soldiers faced 45,000 Soviet soldiers supported by the best-equipped artillery of the time and the most modern tanks. Nevertheless, Sánchezas in Charnyputs the focus of intrahistory on the Region of Murcia, with characters from Bullas, Calasparra, Moratalla and Caravaca de la Cruza. “I have researched the Murcians of that time to find out how they lived, their context and their circumstances.” And she has also investigated the undervalued role of women: “Many are unaware that there were volunteers in the Blue Division.”
Jerónimo Tristant presents the book
The Hall of Degrees of the Faculty of Law of the University of Murcia hosts this Friday afternoon (6 p.m.) the presentation of The last volunteer, in an event framed in ‘Exlibris’, the VII International Week of Murcian Literature. The master of ceremonies will be the well-known Murcian writer Jerome Tristantwho precisely already participated in the launch of Charny. “It is an honor that he is the one who presents my second novel,” he comments, also grateful to Victorio Melgarejothe organizer of the event. Sánchezwho asserts that today he is “totally removed” from politics, which he looks at out of the corner of his eye and from a distance, defines himself as “a great reader” who one day locked up due to confinement dared to write and discovered that he also liked it. like it, a lot. “Writing is very rewarding. Charny It was well received and now I’m trying the second one, which is fresh out of the oven.” But this time it is published with a subtle difference: he doesn’t sign it with his name, but with his pseudonym. Miguel de Capelhis grandfather’s nickname.
