Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

Prison was to be another stage in our learning and comradeship.
Our incarceration had a deep impact on us and on young people
throughout the country.
Luckily, and in quite a bizarre fashion, I managed to escape to
Toulouse where I lived for about two years. My memory of life in
Toulouse has two quite different facets. On the one hand there was
the asphyxiating world of old exiles and on the other, the total generosity
of my young companions with whom it was easier to overcome
pressure and misunderstanding. Working first as a builder
and later as a teacher, I held roles in the leadership of the PSOE
Youth Organisation and succeeded in very clearly defining the mission
of the Socialist Youth from its structure outside Spain. This
task involved three complementary elements: the first was mobilising
the solidarity of the organisations affiliated to the International
Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY); the second was managing the
growing support for the (illegal) organisation within Spain and the
third was beginning to operate amongst the group we called third
exiles. In a year time, almost one million workers had left Spain, the
majority young people who had settled in France, Germany, Belgium,
the Netherlands and Switzerland – these people were our
so-called third exiles. Among them we began the systematic work
of winning support and proselytising, made possible by the massive
support we received from socialist youth in our host countries. Their
support enabled us to establish a network of young Spanish socialist
comrades in their respective countries – often housed in the
headquarters of their organisations and paid for by their movements.
I had been elected Deputy Secretary General and then Vice-Chairman
of the International Union of Socialist Youth and moved to Vienna,
home of the IUSY Secretariat, where I continued to
coordinate solidarity with the Socialist Youth of Spain and to help
numerous Latin American youth organisations join our International
Union. These were exciting years, coming into close contact with
people such as Bruno Kreisky, and working alongside Heinz Fischer,
now the President of Austria and former Socialist Students’
leader, as well as Heinz Nittel and Peter Schieder, successive
Chairmen of the Austrian Socialist Youth organisation. After nine
years in Vienna, I spent the next three years of my exile in Brussels
working at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions,
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