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Next Wednesday, Day 3, receive the homage of the Festival and La Union in recognition of all the mining families that work and sacrifice, along the municipality's history, have given the best of themselves to the Union and Festival have now reached an international dimension so proudly enjoy.

Pedro Sánchez Conesa miner and miner's widow Joan Ballester Albaladejo, two lives marked by the mines of La Union and the vicissitudes of an economy dependent on the exploitation of the mountains.

Pedro Sánchez Conesa: "I do not regret having worked in the mines, I wish mine was old and had to work"

From September 1939 until June 1968.

Almost 30 years are marked in the memory and the battered body.

Pedro Sánchez Conesa, 83, suffering from silicosis at its maximum and only one lung, suffered a heart attack, and very serious ailments even crawling with hard treatments.

However, it continues to struggle, as it did when it was only a boy of 11 years and started as a waterboy and "drag" in the mine.

There were three brothers and his mother, his father died in the war, and he was the only one who could "earn hard."

Won 7 reales carrying water.

And so began, water carrier, the "click skidder," as he says.

Then he went to work in the laundry room and then to give the cargo and cargo passed pawn down in the mine, in the forties and something.

He was putting pipes, running cars, lifted up the grim, on the hoof, was later an assistant driller and, finally, master driller and first officer.

Still, he finished the day, Peter was struggling, working as a waiter here and there.

Then, "at that time was to drink, play dominoes, play" subastao "play juleps. The money was spent, the money ran all the bars on weekends."

But it's not like they said, that "that the miner was a drinker, right, mining what was happening is that on his way to the mine, took his láguena of road because I knew that coming to work but did not know if I was going out. "

Still, the miner worked hard and ate little, as has Peter, "we were on the road, we had the ability and carbide and hung in there were two Pedace carrot fried potatoes, and when we were on the way up the hill of "Lajas" to work on the precipice of Tetuan, we ate it, and when they gave at noon for lunch, we went belly up and we wore the sun with his mouth open and so we ate. "

To sneak through the narrow passageways of the mine as a child, Peter also lived the open pit mine, in fact as a driller assistant opened the quarry Emilia, "I called the Andalusian patio to the quarry Emilia, when it started, that many do not know why, because there was sung a lot. So when he opened a little quarry, at the center was a stick with two foci above, so that workers could work at night. "

"From mine knew when but not when it came out," the only irrefutable truth of mine remembers with bitterness and resignation Pedro, "the sad thing is when one falls over a ridge, and you still have to give holes That's sad, because you end up liquidated, and there is no choice, because if you drop a song of thirty or forty tons, have to make holes to get it out below and after the song has crushed it, there to put a stick of dynamite, and you do it "casts" it is impossible to find. "

Peter Nor can hide their passion for singing and remember in the 50 who "sang all the bars, Eleuterio, Pencho Cros, sang" Alfonso Niño, "in short, all the singers were singers who had bars because festival did not begin until the sixties. At that time also sang Angelillo, one here in La Union, who sang a lot, also sang Paco Toribio and Mari Carmen's daughter, Celedonio (Gallardo). "

Peter recalls with pride his past and remembers many others are not and a few others who remain and those who can not be forgotten because, as the miners have done a lot for the Union, and continues, "I do not regret Having worked in the mines, was old and would hopefully mine to work! ".

Albaladejo Joan Ballester: "The mine is sadness, never knew if they were to leave"

27 years ago that Joan was widowed Albaladejo went from "being so well with her husband to feel alone."

Mind that whenever you can upload from home in the suburb of Santa Barbara, to the cemetery of La Union to leave some flowers to her late husband, Antonio Rodríguez Escribano, and never want to look at the mountains that rise up against it because " Mine is the sadness, you never knew when he went out. "

Born in 1935, three years his family arrived from Barrio Peral La Union a few years later his father died and she had to start working so could not attend school.

When she married "put" a small house that had only one room and a kitchen.

He has humbly and almost with resignation: "We lived as they could ... we also managed."

Jane remembers her husband as "a man home, he liked the family company of his wife and children, was a decent and honest worker."

In addition, she still appreciates when her husband came home never had problems at the mine, "would not embitter your sorrows."

But mine is not abandoning them.

She feared that any day arrived and inform it was the worst point, "there was an accident in the mine with a compression machine where James died and he was saved because he was lower and was not crushed, spent a few days too bad after that. "

In the end, it was the mine that took her husband, but a cancer that ended his life when he was 53, but John recognized that silicosis had finished with him sooner or later, as did many others, past and present .

In fact, long before her husband, she experienced the death of his brother only 36 years.

"If he were alive and could receive this honor for himself sure I would spend it, because it was a very generous man."

Source: Agencias