Let me tell you about my own experience
and the people I’ve known.
I can also tell you some anecdotes I’ve heard.
For now I will tell you one about the Vall d’Aran.
Where I met three deaf people.
They’re dead now.
The oldest was called Josep Casado.
Another one Josep Riu or Josep Maria Riu.
Of the third one I’m afraid I only remember the surname: Bové.
Casado was a deaf man who mastered SL.
I got to know him personally.
During the last years of the Franco regime he lived in Barcelona
but he had grown up in the Vall d’Aran.
During the civil war
Franco’s troops got to my friends’ village.
Casado must have been 20 or 22 back then.
His friends advised him to escape
because Francoism did not spare anybody.
So Casado went to France with many other youngsters.
But his parents, who weren’t deaf, didn’t know that he had run away.
As a matter of fact it wasn’t necessary.
He wouldn’t have been executed
since he hadn’t been charged, and even less so being deaf.
But he had already gone across when the borders closed.
The military branch of the German SS, created before the Second World War,
invaded part of France until the whole country fell.
Then the Vichy government was established.
The invading soldiers would move around freely
during their leave and would sometimes
cross the Spanish border.
They went to the Seu d’Urgell.
The commanders would go to eat in restaurants
during those leaves.
Casado’s parents got to know one of those German generals.
After they had made friends with that man,
they told him that their deaf son had run away to France.
And they begged him to try to repatriate him,
avoiding him to be executed or taken prisoner.
The young man was found thanks to the necessary inquiries.
And from that moment on the story seems to turn into a film:
there comes a Mercedes-Benz escorted by two military motorcyclists
wearing a combat helmet with a visor and flared mudflaps,
their machine gun ready.
They stopped in front of my deaf friend’s house.
All the neighbours got scared when they saw that official convoy.
They imagined that they were coming to arrest a spy.
When the general asked about Casado
the neighbours begged he should be left alone
because he was a good deaf man who hadn’t committed any offence.
The general, using his authority, had Casado called.
When the neighbours told him to come down,
he couldn’t believe what was happening.
He claimed his innocence
and went down the steps in great distress.
The general made him get into the car with him
He looked at the deaf man who was shaking
The general, with a smirk, made him sit down and shut up.
The general was wearing a thick coat with a wide collar
and a cap, probably adorned with the swastika.
They traveled all the way escorted by the motorbikes.
Casado was looking silently out of the window.
When they started their descent towards the Vall d’Aran,
he understood that he was being taken back to his hometown.
Finally his parents were able to hug him.
When the Second World War ended,
following the Germans’ d efeat and Hitler’s demise,
that general escaped to Barcelona.
The deaf man and the Nazi
went partying together for many years.