No one aboard expected the welcome they received. They had been warned so much about the smear campaign of the right, the closed opposition of the Catholic Church, and the proverbial sobriety of the Chileans, that at first, they did not understand what was happening in the port. The crowd huddled behind containment lines, with banners and flags of Spain, the Republic, Euskadi, and Catalonia, cheered them with a single hoarse cry of welcome. A musical band played the anthems of Chile and Spain and La International, chanted by hundreds of voices. The republican song of Chile summarized in a few lines, somewhat sentimental, the hospitable spirit and the vocation of freedom of the country that received them.

From “A Long Petal of the Sea,” by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende’s brilliant writing sparkled all over this well-crafted story. She belongs to the select group of great Hispanic American writers and storytellers born in the first half of the Twentieth Century: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, among others. This novel describes the arrival of the ship Winnipeg in Valparaiso, Chile. Aboard were numerous Spanish refugees from the Spanish Civil War. They had escaped certain death from Franco’s troops and dreadful conditions in French concentration camps. Isabel Allende wrote, “The crowd huddled behind containment lines, with banners and flags of Spain, the Republic, Euskadi, and Catalonia, cheered them with a single hoarse cry of welcome. A musical band played the anthems of Chile and Republican Spain, as well as La International, chanted by hundreds of voices.”

What a lesson those Chileans gave us all! Let us not forget their generosity when we receive people from Latin America in Spain.