BarcelonaIn his essential work Catalans in the Nazi camps, Montserrat Roig recovered the memory of the Catalans who were assassinated by Nazism. Double victims, because they first fled the Franco regime and ended up encountering Nazism. In the final list of deaths in the extermination camps of the book, there are still some names of Republicans who have been recovered later, such as Estanislau Pedrola i Rovira, known as Sandalio. The great-grandfather of the young Barça footballer who made his debut in Mallorca this weekend.
Born in Montbrió del Camp in 1907, Pedrola was assassinated in the Flossenbürg camp in September 1944. The son of pastry chefs, he was the youngest of 10 brothers. Like so many young Catalans of the time, Pedrola would leave the village to try his luck in Barcelona, as his great-grandson has done in pursuit of the dream of football. My great-grandfather, on the other hand, wanted to be a photographer, a business that did not stop growing then. And he would find work as an apprentice in a business at the Baltà i Ribas photography house, one of the first businesses where cameras could be bought. In addition, there was a laboratory in the back room of the business, located on the ground floor of the Casa Segura, a building demolished in the 1930s on the corner of Portal de l’Àngel and Plaça Catalunya. Here, Sandalio acquired some knowledge that would allow him to find work at Fotografia Puig, in Reus, where he would be a disciple of Francesc Solà. His job was both to make portraits of citizens who wanted a memory, and to get started in the field of photojournalism. His are the photographs of President Macià’s visit to Reus, whom he immortalized on the balcony of the Hotel de Londres. In fact, he was a great admirer of Macià, a member of both the Joventuts Republicanes de Catalunya and the Foment Nacionalista Republicà, a Reus party merged with ERC in 1931.
Catalanist and leftist, in Sandalio he became involved in the events of October 1934, and spent a good season imprisoned in prisons that the government improvised on ships in the port of Tarragona. Once released, he became a member of the Catalan State. And, in fact, during the Civil War he would be a member of the Catalan State Mountain Battalion, and commissioner of the same party, and would leave for posterity photographs of this unit that obeyed exclusively the orders of the Generalitat de Catalunya in a shelter of Tírvia, in the Pallars Sobirà. When the Generalitat lost its powers in Defense, the regiment became part of the People’s Army of the Republic.
Once he crossed the border into France, Pedrola, like so many Spanish Republicans, became part of the resistance against the Nazis. They already had experience in combat and had tasted fascism before the French spent them. So they would gamble their lives helping to pass through the Spanish part, through the Pyrenees, allied aviators that had fallen on French territory, among other operations. The Gestapo, however, would arrest them and send them to the Flossenbürg camp in Bavaria. Details of his death in the camp have not been clarified.
This camp had been set up on 3 May 1938 to house associative prisoners and criminals. But with the onset of World War II, the number of prisoners, including Jews, Soviets, and prisoners of war of different nationalities, including Spaniards, increased. In the central camp, work was done on the granite quarries, owned by the SS, but the prisoners were also made to work in armament factories. More than 30,000 people were killed in Flossenbürg before it was liberated by US troops in April 1945.
In Pedrola, photography has remained a family tradition. One of Sandalio’s sons, Estanislau Pedrola Marimón, continued to lead a photography workshop in the center of Reus. Born in 1933 and exiled to France in 1940, he was able to return to Catalonia in 1941 when part of the Pedrolas fled the Nazis, agreeing to pass through Franco’s police stations. Initially, he found work in the same studio where his father, Fotografia Puig, had worked, and became a disciple of the photographer Francesc Solà, like his father. For decades, he collaborated with many of the artists of Reus, as well as archaeologists in the area, whom he accompanied to portray the sites. Her daughter, Cori Pedrola, has also excelled as an artist using photography, in addition to working as a university professor.
Football, the other branch of the family
If photography has been key in one branch of the family of the young Barça footballer, football has been key in the other, especially in Cambrils, where the young Estanis was born. His uncle Eleuterio was a player for Cambrils, and his grandfather Joan Maria was a referee. In addition, the younger brothers of Estanis, Arnau and Oriol, play in the lower categories of Cambrils and Reus. In fact, football has taken the footballer through some of the scenarios of his great-grandfather’s life, such as Barcelona now or before Reus. Estanis Pedrola started at FC Costa Daurada Salou, until after four years he was signed by Reus. Here he stood out as much as a striker who received an offer to go to Espanyol when he was a youngster, a club where he would stay for five years before being sacked. Estanis would return to Reus with low morale, to join the Fundació Futbol Base Reus, an entity that inherited grassroots football when the first red and black team went bankrupt. According to its president, Xavi Castro, Estanis “had become the best striker in Spain when he was a youngster, but it cost him a lot when Espanyol did not want him”, he explained to Tarragona newspaper. In fact, Madrid were also interested in his services, as he would take flight again in Reus, until receiving a call from Barça less than 12 months ago. A new page is beginning to be written in the Pedrola lineage.
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