El meu avi va anar a Cuba. Viatge d'anada i tornada.

Director: Sergi Martí and Joan Salicrú

Producer: Georgina Altarriba

Producer Company: Clack Audiovisual SCCL

Agency:

Client: La Xarxa CAT

Country: Spain

Synopsis

Following a night when luck was not on his side and he lost his home and possessions, one day in 1903, Pere Freixas left his homeland of Tarragona behind, sailing to Cuba in search of a better life. Having spent his first few months in Santiago de Cuba, in the east of the country, he finally settled in Bayamo, where he married, had nine children, and started several businesses. Freixas died in 1975, at the age of 99, leaving an indelible mark on his numerous offspring, who still remember him fondly today. A century later, the migration phenomenon is more prevalent than ever: people from all over the world continue to leave their countries of origin in search of new opportunities. But, paradoxically, if a century ago it was Spaniards who went to Cuba, now it is Cubans who are arriving in Spain. In this case, the circle closes, and a descendant of Pere Freixas, Yasef Barbán Freixas, returns "home." He left the country in 2015 and first lived in Ecuador before moving to Spain in 2018. Once settled in Valladolid, and to spare his mother, Jorgelina Freixas, the suffering caused by the dire economic situation in Cuba, he decided to bring her to Spain. The best way to do this, for a Cuban, is to apply for the Law of Grandchildren, which allows the children and grandchildren of Spaniards to apply for nationality legally and securely. However, to qualify for this law, documentary proof of this origin is required, and the family believes that Pere Freixas's baptismal certificate disappeared following the burning of the Botarell church, where Pere Freixas lived, during the Civil War. Consequently, Yasef will have to find a document proving his great-great-grandfather's original nationality. Through the parallels between the two Freixas' histories, we will explore the vicissitudes of the Spaniards who went to Cuba and never returned, a story less well-known than that of the Indianos. We will also explore the Catalans who went "to make the Americas," settled there, started families, and died there. At the same time, we will discuss the phenomenon of migration, which continues today in a world more connected than ever, and how, in this sense, things haven't changed much in a hundred years.

Objectives

With this documentary, we aim to talk about Catalan emigrants, about the Catalan men who came to Cuba to earn a living, albeit through a specific case. Thus, through the adventures of Pere Freixas, we will relive the journey taken by so many other Catalans during the 19th and early 20th centuries. To this end, throughout the documentary, we will interview historians to gain a general perspective on what we are explaining. But in this audiovisual piece, we also want to talk about the phenomenon of migration, about people who have to leave their country to live elsewhere, about immigrants. And this is where we introduce Pere Freixas's great-grandson, Yasef Barbán Freixas, who made the opposite journey and arrived in Spain in 2019. We will use his journey and his experience as an immigrant to exemplify the lives of all the people who have been forced to leave their country, driven by the need to find a better place to live. And the legal, economic, and personal difficulties that this process entails. We also want to talk about roots and the knowledge people have of their origins. By following Pere Freixas's life and searching for his nationality, we are engaging in an exercise in memory and identity. Memory, because we are recovering his life as an immigrant (and projecting it onto all Spaniards who lived through similar situations), and identity, because by searching for his roots, his origins, we are also searching for the legacy he left behind.