La frontera lleva su nombre es el relato de cuatro generaciones de mujeres valientes acostumbradas a sentir en silencio, a traves del tiempo, los confines, el amor y la guerra. La gran novela de las golondrinas . Un relato emocionante tejido con los hilos de una historia real silenciada.

Desde finales del siglo XIX y hasta los anos cincuenta del siglo pasado, las jovenes mas humildes de los valles del Pirineo navarro y aragones cruzaban a pie las montanas para trabajar en las fabricas de alpargatas del lado frances. Como las golondrinas, marchaban en octubre y regresaban en primavera, llenas de ilusion y cargadas de telas y enseres para el ajuar que constituiria su aportacion a un futuro matrimonio.

Esperanza Ayerra es biznieta de Esperanza, una golondrina que cruzo los Pirineos en 1913 y a la que la mayor contienda mundial robo su porvenir. Es nieta de Esperanza, conocida como Perla, que no tuvo padre, ni marido, por el cruel destino de una Espana dividida. Es hija de Espe, una mujer que se trago sus penas y a la que la historia dejo sin aire. Es el fruto de la frontera entre dos paises que se alejan y se acercan cuando sus pobladores se enamoran.

Mi bisabuela, como la mayoria de las roncalesas de su generacion, era una golondrina. Con las mujeres de otros valles cercanos, se iban a Francia a trabajar, donde fabricaban alpargatas por siete o diez centimos de franco la hora… Las llamaban ‘las golondrinas’, hirondelles en frances, porque su emigracion coincidia con la de estas aves. Se iban en octubre y volvian en mayo o junio, y nunca supieron si las raices de sus vidas estaban a un lado o al otro de los Pirineos .

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The Border Is Named After Her is the story of four generations of bold women used to suffer in silence, known as the swallows. An exciting text woven with the threads of a true story.

From the late 19th century until the 1950s, the poorest women in the valleys of the Navarrese and Aragonese Pyrenees crossed the mountains, on foot, to work in the espadrille factories on the French side. Like swallows, they left in October and returned in the spring, hopeful and laden with the fabrics and utensils that would constitute their dowry.

Esperanza Ayerra is Esperanza’s great-granddaughter, a swallow that crossed the Pyrenees in 1913 and whose future was stolen by the Great War. She is also the granddaughter of Esperanza, better known as Perla, who had neither a father nor a husband, as a divided Spain never allowed her to. She is the daughter of Espe, a woman who kept her sorrows to herself, crushed under the weight of history. She is the border between two countries that grow apart and come closer when their inhabitants fall in love.

My great-grandmother, like most of the roncalesas of her generation, was a swallow. She and other women from the nearby valleys went to France to work, where they made espadrilles for seven or ten cents an hour. They were called the swallows , hirondelles in French, because their arrival and departure coincided with that of these birds. They left in October and returned in May or June, and never really knew if their lives were on one side or the other of the Pyrenees.