Now I’m going to tell you about Carme, your grandmother, my mother, whom you might be able to meet, God willing. You already know she was still in the crib when her father left for Asturias. She was starting to walk around the time the sad news arrived, but as you might imagine, she doesn’t remember anything about that.

Uncle Xenxo was like her father. That taciturn man, so they say, was entirely different when he was with the little girl. He made funny faces, told her stories, made up riddles, played hide-and-seek with her, would arrive loaded with gifts from town, and basically cleared the stones from her path so nothing and nobody could hurt her.

The story goes that when after a few years Carolina decided to send her to a boarding school which she had a right to attend because she was an orphan, Uncle Xenxo went a whole month without saying a single word to his sister, and was extremely upset and hurt because the decision had been made without consulting him.

I told you it was “a boarding school which she had a right to attend because she was an orphan,” but the right was very limited. At that time, in this country the man who was in power had taken control by force, he was a dictator. In those days they called justice charity, and the latter, charity, had very little to do with love as far as a religious virtue. You’ll understand that when I tell you what your grandmother’s life was like in that nuns’ school in Zaragoza.

The girl, accompanied by her mother and village schoolmistress, had arrived at the city on the Ebro River after a long trip by train. They left her there, not without tears on both sides, under the care of some women who were oddly dressed and had no laps or kisses and rarely smiled. Orders, cautions, always general and impersonal, only became specific, directed at one girl in particular, when they became admonitions. The girl had arrived speaking a different language that condemned her to silence for months.

There were two halls: one for those who could pay for their keep, and the other for the children infected with the bad sin of poverty. There were two classes of students: the pretty girls who would one day be ladies, and the unfortunate ones who would have to serve them one day, faithfully and skillfully. The first group, in addition to the organized system of studies, learned to play the piano, had parts in plays, and belonged to a choir in which their young voices sounded like angels singing. The other group, the ones who were there for free, spent those hours helping with the cleaning and cooking chores.

Their classrooms weren’t the same either. The ones who paid studied for the secondary-school certificate or were going in that direction. For the ones who paid nothing, there was an effort to provide them with some general culture that would serve them in making a living.

There was no contact between one groups and the other. Even though they coincided in the patio during recess, they were forbidden to speak to one another.

Even their first communion did not make them equal. The pews in the chapel of the rich girls were lavishly decorated on that important day, while those of the other girls remained starkly naked. The thing is that in chapel, before God, there are classes too. That’s how that society, so Christian and faithful to the Gospel of universal brotherhood, saw things. Ultimately, although isolated from the world, the nuns were part of it and had to follow its rules.

I’m telling you all these things without resentment, you must believe me, but you have to know about them in order to understand how your grandmother’s character was forged. That girl from the village, over the years, became an active union member and fought to end the inequality that had done her so much harm.

In the first years of the boarding school Carme suffered, most of all because she was so far from her family and because of her freedom, which was considerable in the village. Because she was so young, she didn’t understand the differences. She missed her uncle Xenxo’s kindness and her mother’s kisses. At night she was cold in that long row of beds and, hunched up, she hugged herself and sometimes cried without making a sound. Once she tried to console herself and to console another girl who was sad like she was, but the nun on duty immediately appeared and talked about “special friendships” and other things the little girl couldn’t understand. What she did know, because of the punishment she received, was there must have been something really bad about looking for warmth in the bed of another girl in her group.

With the passing of time your grandmother began to understand the world she lived in, and sadness gave way to rebellion and anger. She talked back to the nuns, started fights with the privileged students, was a very bad influence over the group of non-paying girls, according to the teachers, and over all, they said, she was a real troublemaker. That’s why they had to get her out of the school. The point is they expelled her.

Carolina, her mother, was very upset, most of all because of the letter that informed her of the reasons for the expulsion. That’s how she learned that her daughter was the type of person whose attributes could best be described as those of a “troublemaker,” “gruff,” “arrogant,” “ill-tempered” and much more, common enough in those days but which the mother didn’t understand.

Uncle Xenxo didn’t say anything, but he smiled with a triumphant air when he saw her walk through the door, knowing she’d never return to the boarding school.

I won’t tell you about how my mother managed to finish high school and study typing and accounting. The point is that when they built the factory and needed some of our land, my grandmother knew how to take advantage of the opportunity to get her a job in the office.

I’m also not going to tell you about the factory that transformed the way of life of the whole surrounding community. The people who got jobs there only worked the land as a secondary activity, but my grandmother and Uncle Xenxo remained faithful to the land, adding to what had previously been a small inheritance.

At work Mama met the man she would marry, your Uncle Pedro, an industrial technician with a position as a clerk. It was a quick marriage, I think it was urgent, when I think about how soon afterward I was born.

They always seemed to be in love and I don’t recall they ever argued, except for the days Mama was involved with the union. Then they did fight, a lot, especially when a contract was being negotiated. Mama threw it in his face that he, part of the management, even though he occupied the lowest rank, never considered himself working class. Papá would fire back that different classes and levels would always exist because education and work were not the same. He always ended up saying that strikes never achieved anything, they only caused losses and lack of respect. My mother would have the last word. With her dander up and no longer using good arguments, she would call him a sell-out and other things, but it never did any good.

I also heard them argue when I said I only wanted to study music. At that moment, like I already told you, my grandmother Carolina had the last word.

Now your grandfather Pedro is retired and soon Mama will be too, but she’s still the same, strong-willed and outspoken, always fighting for what she feels is right.

Don’t forget, Xoana, Xoana, every day more real to me and closer, that you carry the rebelliousness of your grandmother Carme, the girl who was a non-paying student in a cold Zaragoza convent, in your blood. I’m sure it was there that, stripped of her family and her language, little by little she began to develop the idea of changing the world. Because that’s who Carme is, the woman who’s always determined to change the world.