Yesterday's posts made me think of this song that I love. It's also a song inspired by the maquis (guerrilla fighters against Franco's dictatorship), or so I have always interpreted.
I si demà no tornara ("If I don't come back tomorrow") by the Valencian band Obrint Pas.
Here's the lyrics in Valencian-Catalan and the translation to English:
La por em desvetla a les nits sense dormir i sent el vell revòlver que descansa sobre el pit en aquest bosc humit els silenci és l’enemic a trenc d’alba partim seguint les llums del matí
Fear keeps me up on sleepless nights and I feel the old revolver that rests on my chest. In this humid forest silence is the enemy. At the break of dawn we leave following the morning lights.
Travessem l’aurora entre els cingles del massís en aquestes muntanyes sobreviure és resistir hem canviat mil cops de nom però tots sabem qui som guerrillers supervivents combatents de l’últim front
We cross the sunrise among the mountain range's cliffs. In these mountains, to survive is to resist. We have changed our names a thousand times but we all know who we are: surviving guerrilla fighters, combatants of the last front.
Unes flames roges cremem el nostre horitzó la casa on dormirem és un esquelet de foc han matat el masover ens solia refugiar anit em va somriure quan ens vam acomiadar
Red flames burn in our horizon: the house where we slept is a skeleton of fire. They have killed the sharecropper, he used to take us in, last night he smiled at me when we said goodbye.
La lluna ens recorda que som com estels errants ombres d’una guerra perduda en sendes de fang i quan la foscor em venç acaricie en soledat un record en blanc i negre el motiu del meu combat
The moon reminds me that we're like shooting stars, shadows of a war lost in muddy paths and when darkness beats me I caress in solitude a memory in black and white, the reason for my fight.
I si demà no tornara al lloc on et vaig deixar vull que recordes que un dia joves com nosaltres vam marxar a lluitar armats d’amor i coratge i un clavell roig amagat combatrem fins l’últim dia sota bandera de la llibertat
And if tomorrow I don't come back to the place where I left you I want you to remember that one day young people like us left to go fight armed with love and courage and a hidden red carnation we'll fight until the last day under the flag of freedom.
(Repeat lyrics)
The voices towards the end of the song, before the last chorus, are reading the names and ages of some of the antifascist fighters who were executed by Franco's dictatorship. Some of the voices overlap so I'm not 100% sure of all, but this is what I hear:
Àgueda Campos Barrachina, 29 years old. Isabel Sáenz González, 24 years old Agustí Jofre Capelinos, 50 years old Emilio (?), 16 years old (?), 29 years old (?) (?), 34 years old Emilio Caballero, 29 years old (?) Cabrera, 57 years old Vicenta Pont(?) Ferrer, 30 years old.
