Persistence Pays Part Three

A man of almost the same name was listed as a passenger aboard a British ship involved in rescuing Republican soldiers and high-ranking fugitives from the Fascists at the time of the surrender of the Republican government in 1939.

To prove this was my client's father, I needed to find this man listed in Spain with the birth date I had found on the English death certificate.

This was where my contact in Spain was essential. A letter to a military archive eventually brought the information, after a six month wait.

The Republican soldier's birth date was one day different from my client's father, and his name was the same, except in England he had dropped the customary Spanish double-barrelled surname.

My client's father was undoubtedly this man, who had fought for three years on the losing side, to end cornered in a Spanish port facing the possible choice between execution or flight to England.

And there was a twist. My illegitimate client had an illegitimate father. The Spanish soldier had lied when he married in England, inventing a father to fill the space in the marriage register. Not only was he not born in Madrid, but according to his enlistment papers, he had no father.