The bread Paulino saved

Don Benito’s school

Paulino Lorente Sánchez was born in Alustante on 26 February 1927. He was one of Leonardo and Jorja’s five children, and the nickname “el Coleto” had already belonged to his grandfather. His father was a shepherd who took flocks to Andalusia, a journey of around twenty days on foot, working for many years for the trader Casimiro Lorente.

He attended school during the Republic. He still remembers the presidents’ portraits hanging in the classroom, which was in the town hall. Alustante then had four schools, two for boys and two for girls. Until he was ten, his teacher was don Benito González, who had a bad temper and around sixty pupils. He punished them with a paddle, lifted boys by their sideburns and once struck Paulino with a whip for an ink blot in his notebook. They wrote with dip pens and inkwells. At break they played in La Lonja and, as there were no toilets, urinated against the wall.

Even so, he learned to read, the four arithmetic operations, proportions, fractions, rivers and grammar. At ten boys moved to the older class, taught by don José Burgos, reputed to teach differently. Paulino never entered it. Don José was purged in August 1937.

A piece of bread for his mother

At ten, during the war, Paulino went to work in the household of tío Atilano and tía Ángela, who owned a butcher’s shop. He tended a group of thirty or forty sheep with a leading ram. There were no refrigerators, so the owners slaughtered sheep to sell the meat and replaced them. When he slept outdoors, Paulino tied one end of a rope to his leg and the other to the ram’s leg: at dawn the animal moved and woke him.

He worked for food and the occasional small coin. He says they treated him well. At snack time he sought out the mistress of the house because she gave him a generous piece of bread, and he saved some to take to his mother. He stayed in that large house, now the Yuste brothers’ home, until he was sixteen.

Stone, dancing and marriage

At sixteen or seventeen he worked with his brother Gregorio repairing the road. They took stone from La Chaparrera quarry, broke it by hand and transported it with ten donkeys carrying panniers. He also carried stone for the Civil Guard barracks, inaugurated in 1958.

Around eighteen he began courting Silveria Pérez, a neighbour he danced with on Sundays at tío Pedro Esteban’s dances. Before going in, they bought a litre of wine and peanuts at tío Trifón’s tavern. At twenty-one he did military service in Zaragoza, in the supply corps. Ration books were still in use, and they were sometimes sent to villages to repair or build bread ovens.

They married in 1954. Their honeymoon was a trip to Hombrados, near Molina, to stay with relatives, riding a donkey and accompanied by his aunt Mónica. They returned with gifts of flour and a chicken or two. Like many couples, they first lived with their parents, then rented, until taking over Paulino’s parents’ house in 1955. That same year his brother Victorio celebrated his first Mass. He had entered Sigüenza seminary aged ten, with one of the scholarships founded for Alustante’s children by doctor Vicente Fernández, inventor of Digestónico.

Silveria sewed at home and Paulino continued shepherding. They had two dairy cows and a pig each year, which fed the whole household. Two girls and a boy were born.

Madrid, 1963

One year the harvest was very poor and one of their cows died. They became caretakers on a large estate in Maella, Zaragoza, while the children stayed with relatives. His brother-in-law Simón, who had found them the job, left for France. The arrangement did not last: they wanted to live together. In 1963 they moved to Madrid, where Gregorio had a bar.

The first months were difficult. A customer promised him a job at Iberia that never materialised. Another found him work as a bus conductor, but fares were collected at the back then, and Paulino felt sick. Unable to find a flat to rent, they bought a ground-floor property on Calle Ayala and rented rooms to three policemen. Eventually, through the family whose home Silveria cleaned, Paulino joined the Barreiros foundry. It was hard work but well paid, and he stayed twenty years. When he was not working extra hours, he fitted kitchens. Besides cleaning houses, Silveria ran a boarding house with seven double rooms for young women.

At ninety-nine, Paulino remains a member of the Santo Cristo de las Lluvias brotherhood and, when he cannot return to Alustante, “thinks of it often”. The war that closed the school door to him is told in The war that entered people’s homes; the departure of so many others, in the villages that emptied.