Questions of interest

The Escrivá family in Barbastro

• What economic statusdid the Escrivá family have?

  It depends on the times. In 1902, when St. Josemaría was born, his father, José Escrivá, was co-owner in Barbastro, a small town in Aragon, in northeastern Spain, of a weaving business called "Juncosa y Escrivá.
  
  status The family was in a relatively well-off economic situation, typical of the class average of that time. That status changed in 1912, with the threat of the bankruptcy of the business, and became particularly critical after the liquidation of the establishment in 1915.
  
  From then on and for several decades - until well after the civil war - the Escrivá family experienced serious financial difficulties, aggravated by the death of Don José Escrivá in Logroño in 1924.
  
  That death made the young Josemaría, who had not yet been ordained a priest, the head of the family. His mother, Dolores Albás, his older sister Carmen, and his younger brother Santiago, who was five years old at the time, were left at position .
  
  The hardships and burdens Materials , which the Escrivas tried to bear with dignity, are well reflected in the writings of the young Founder.
  
  To know the socioeconomic and cultural context:
  
  -IBARRA BENLLOCH, M., El primer año de vida de Josemaría Escrivá, in "Cuadernos del Centro de Documentación y programs of study Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer", vol. VI (2002), University of Navarra, pp. 37-74.
  
  -GARRIDO, M.,Barbastro y el Beato Josemaría Escrivá, Ayuntamiento de Barbastro, Barbastro 1995. Especially: Chap. I: Barbastro at the beginning of the century and Chap. II: A biographical sketch of Blessed Josemaría Escrivá and Opus Dei.
  
  -VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. I: Lord, May I See, Rialp, Madrid 1997, Chap.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• In what environment did Josemaría Escrivá's childhood take place from a socio-cultural point of view?

  The Escrivá family lived in Barbastro, a town of about 8,000 inhabitants, most of whom were engaged in commerce and agriculture.
  
  During St. Josemaría's childhood, the small city - like other urban enclaves in Navarre, Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya, Lérida, Gerona, etc. - did not suffer great tensions, thanks to its social structure, which was largely made up of small landowners and merchants; and it enjoyed a certain prosperity, which contrasted with the status of other cities in the country, overwhelmed by the recent loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.
  
  Barbastro had a bishop's see, several cultural societies and two schools-the Piarist and the Daughters of Charity-where Josemaría Escrivá studied.
  
  For St. Josemaría, the memories of that time - those of a united family in which Christianity was lived in a climate of freedom and naturalness - were particularly pleasant:
  
  "And I remember those white days of my childhood: the cathedral, so ugly on the outside and so beautiful on the inside... like the heart of that land, good, Christian and loyal, hidden behind the brusqueness of the Baturro character.
  
  Then, in the middle of a side chapel, rose the tumulus where the recumbent image of Our Lady rested ... The people passed by, with respect, kissing the feet of the Virgin de la Cama...
  
  My mother, father, my brothers and I always went together to hear Mass. My father would give us the alms, which we would joyfully take to the lame man, who was close to the bishop's palace. Then I would go ahead and take holy water to give to my family. Holy Mass. Then, every Sunday, in the chapel of the Holy Christ of Miracles, we prayed the Creed. And, on the day of the Assumption -as I said-, it was obligatory to adore (as we used to say) the Virgin of the Cathedral".
  
  (Apuntes íntimos, n. 228 and 229, 15.VIII.1931, quoted in VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., El Fundador del Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. I: Lord, let him see, Rialp, Madrid 1997, pp. 36-37).

  source: www.opusdei.es

The foundation of Opus Dei

• Why does Saint Josemaría claim that he founded Opus Dei in 1928, if at that date the Work did not yet have any members?

  The term foundation can be understood in different ways.
  
  It can be understood from a juridical-canonical perspective. In the associative field, or in the field of religious institutes, the verb "to found" is usually understood as the establishment of a seat in which various members of a community reside. In this juridical-canonical sense, St. Teresa speaks of her "foundations". From this same juridical perspective, we also speak of foundation to designate the signature by the founders of the certificate constitution of an entity.
  
  But it can also be understood from a spiritual perspective, which is the one used by some saints, such as St. Josemaría. When he said that "Opus Dei was founded on October 2, 1928," he was underlining the divine origin of Opus Dei, because it was on that day that God made him "see" the Work (Opus Dei) in his soul.
  
  Although successive canonical recognitions came with the passing of the years, St. Josemaría always considered October 2, 1928, as the date of the beginning of the founding era; an era that he considered open while he was alive.
  
  "Three years ago today," St. Josemaría wrote on October 2, 1931, "in the Convent of the Vincentians, I compiled with some unity the loose notes, which until then I had been taking; from that day the mangy donkey [by this expression he was referring to himself] became aware of the beautiful and heavy burden that the Lord, in his inexplicable goodness, had placed on his back. That day the Lord founded his Work: from then on I began to treat souls of lay people, students or not, but young people. And to form groups. And to pray and to make others pray. And to suffer...".
  
  And he added: "I received enlightenment about the whole Work while I was reading those papers. I was alone in my room, between talks, and I gave thanks to the Lord, and I remember with emotion the ringing of the bells of the parish of Our Lady of the Angels" (CEJAS, J.M., Life of Blessed Josemaria, Rialp, Madrid 1993, p. 60).
  
  
  
  On the foundation of Opus Dei, see, among others:
  
  -DIEGO-LORA, C. de, October 2, 1928: commemoration of a jubilee date, in "Ius Canonicum", Pamplona 1978, pp. 21-51.
  
  -REDONDO, G., El 2 de octubre de 1928 en el contexto de la historia cultural contemporánea, in "Cuadernos del Centro de Documentación y programs of study Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer" vol. VI (2002), University of Navarra, pp. 149-191.
  
  -ILLANES, J. L., Dos de octubre de 1928: alcance y significado de una fecha, in VV. AA., Bishop Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y el Opus Dei. En el 50 aniversario de su fundación, Eunsa, Pamplona 1985; and data para la comprensión histórico espiritual de una fecha, in "Cuadernos del Centro de Documentación y programs of study Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer" vol. VI (2002), University of Navarra, pp. 105-149.
  
  -VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. I: Lord, let him see, Rialp, Madrid 1997, Chap.

   

  source: www.opusdei.es

Attitude towards the Second Republic and the military insurrection

• What was the Founder's attitude towards the Second Republic?

  issue The Founder of Opus Dei's attitude towards the Second Republic was similar to that of a large number of Spaniards of that time, of diverse sign. At first he remained in expectation of the course that events would take.
  
  Logically, he experienced displeasure when he saw the anticlerical nature of many of the decrees-laws that were being promulgated, together with the passivity of the authorities in the face of some abuses.
  
  The Founder wrote in 1931, after the burning of churches on May 11: "The persecution began. On Monday, May 11, accompanied by Father Manuel Romeo, after dressing as a layman in a collotype suit, I received communion in the Form of the virile and, with a ciborium full of consecrated hosts wrapped in a cassock and papers, we left board of trustees [St. Elizabeth's (where St. Josemaría had been chaplain since 1931 and which included two communities of nuns)], through a door that had been exempted, like thieves.... That night and the nights of the 12th and 16th (the latter due to a false alarm by the nuns) I had the Lord in Pepito's house"(Apuntes íntimos, no. 202, 20.V.1931, quoted in VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., El Fundador del Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. I: Lord, let him see, Rialp, Madrid 1997, pp. 358-359).
  
  On May 13, 1931, faced with the danger of the masses setting fire to the building at board of trustees, he moved with his mother and siblings to a nearby apartment at 22 Viriato Street. "On the 13th, we learned that they were trying to burn down board of trustees: at four in the afternoon we went out with our belongings to 22 Viriato Street, to a bad room -interior- that I providentially found"(Apuntes íntimos, n. 202, 20.V.1931, quoted in VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. I: Lord, let him see, Rialp, Madrid 1997, p. 359).
  
  An example of his attitude is a letter that St. Josemaría wrote to Isidoro Zorzano on May 5, 1931, in which "besides insisting that he not give up meditation or Communion and that he have a regular confessor, he refers to the new status of the country. Opus Dei has no political preferences and each member, always in a manner consistent with the Christian vocation, freely forms his personal opinions. "Don't be too hot or too cold about political change: you only care that they don't offend God" (PERO-SANZ, J. M., Isidoro Zorzano Ledesma, 2nd ed., Palabra, Madrid 1996, p. 126).
  
  In the midst of that social context dominated by extremism, he always behaved in a serene and priestly manner; and when he saw how social coexistence was deteriorating in a climate of hatred, resentment and desire for revenge, he gave this committee to those who followed him, a committee that he repeated many times throughout his life: "pray, forgive, understand, apologize".
  
  Among his friends were Republican militants, such as Cándido Baselga, a man from Barbastrán who after the war was severely punished: he spent several years in prison in two successive phases in the 1940s, accused of having been a leader of the Republican Union party and of having been a member of Freemasonry. St. Josemaría visited and consoled him in prison and took an interest in his fate. The relationship between the two (epistolary, after St. Josemaría's departure for Rome) was only interrupted with Baselga's death in 1972.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• Did he trust in a solution by force? Did he favour violence?

  He was not in favor of violence: "violence does not seem to me to be apt either to win or to convince", he recalled (cf. RODRÍGUEZ PEDRAZUELA, A., Un mar sin orillas, Rialp, Madrid 1999, p. 65). And he always tried to ensure that the people he accompanied spiritually would sow peace and harmony around them. However, not all of them followed his advice.
  
  In August 1932, three university students known to St. Josemaría who had taken part in a monarchist military coup against the Republic were imprisoned in the prison model . They were Adolfo Gómez Gómez, Adolfo Gómez, Adolfo Gómez, Adolfo Gómez, Adolfo Gómez and Adolfo Gómez. They were Adolfo Gómez Ruiz, José Antonio Palacios López and José Manuel Doménech de Ibarra, who had accompanied the Founder on visits to the sick who had been evicted from the General Hospital.
  
  Although in that environment the figure of a priest was not always well received, St. Josemaría went to the prison to attend to them spiritually, and even at status he continued to ask them to make an effort to live together, to understand and to excuse everyone. As usual, he never made any temporal, partisan or political judgments. He knew that his mission statement as a priest consisted in keeping his arms open to all to bring them closer to God.
  
  Several anarchists were in prison with these three students, and St. Josemaría asked them to treat these men with respect and understanding. They told him that they sometimes played soccer with them in the prison yard, of course on opposing teams. On hearing this, St. Josemaría spoke to them of another logic: that of charity; and he advised them to play together, which they did, to foster respect, forgiveness and mutual understanding, something they surprisingly achieved.
  
  José Antonio Palacios related:
  
  "We organized soccer games mixed with each other. I remember that I played goalkeeper and my defenders were two anarcho-syndicalists. I never played soccer with more elegance and less violence" (VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. I: Lord, let him see, Rialp, Madrid 1997, p. 484).
  
  Josemaría Escrivá was faithfully following Pius XI, who in his encyclical Dilectissima nobis (June 3, 1933) had said of Spanish Catholics: "with the Episcopate was of agreement not only the clergy both secular and regular, but also the secular Catholics, that is, the great majority of the Spanish people; who, notwithstanding personal opinions, notwithstanding the provocations and vexations of the enemies of the Church, have been far from acts of violence and retaliation, remaining in calm subjection to the constituted power, without giving rise to disorder, much less to civil wars."
  
  There is not a single document in the magisterium of the Popes that justifies insurrection against a legally constituted government.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• What attitude did Saint Josemaría show towards the military rebellion of 18 July?

  The insurrection of July 18, 1936 caught him by surprise. During those days he was preparing the beginnings of the apostolic work in Valencia and Paris; and he was in the middle of the installation of a new headquarters for the students' residency program , which was moving during those days from issue 50 to issue 16 of Ferraz Street.
  
  In that residency program he was surprised by the rebellion and the subsequent assault on the Cuartel de la Montaña, the focus of the uprising in Madrid, which was very close. That forced him to stay two days in that place. On July 20 he was finally able to take refuge in his mother's house.
  
  He then began, in the face of the declared religious persecution, a period of clandestinity that lasted until the end of 1937, when he was able to cross the Pyrenees on foot to the area of Spain where he could freely exercise his priestly ministry.

  source: www.opusdei.es

The vicissitudes of civil war

• Is it true that another priest was killed and mistaken for him?

  It is a fact of imprecise historical profiles. In August 1936 some ladies told his mother and brothers that a person who looked very much like him had been hanged on a street in Madrid. St. Josemaría learned of this story a year later, at the end of the summer of 1937, during the last weeks he spent as a refugee in the Honduran Legation in Madrid.
  
  "A piece of belated news: I have been told - to me and to my face - repeatedly that my brother Josemaría [St. Josemaría's way of referring to himself] was found hanging from a tree, in Moncloa, according to some; others, on Ferraz Street. Some people identified his body. Another version of his death: that he was shot" (Letter of St. Josemaría to the faithful of Opus Dei in Valencia, Madrid, September 18, 1937, quoted in commentary on point 743 of The Way, a work of St. Josemaría, in The Way. Critical-historical edition prepared by Pedro Rodríguez, 3rd ed. corrected and enlarged, Rialp, Madrid 2004, p. 852).

  source: www.opusdei.es

• Why did he go into hiding during the war? Which subject people took him in?

  The coup d'état carried out by a sector of the military against the Republic provoked a revolution in the territory that remained under the government of the Popular Front. One of the features of this revolution was anticlericalism, which materialized in the destruction of buildings and objects linked to Catholicism, and in the persecution of Catholics and members of the clergy.
  
  Andreu Nin, leader of a Trotskyist party, declared in La Vanguardia of August 2, 1936 that "the workers' class has solved the problem of the Church by simply not leaving even one of them standing".
  
  Numerous Catholics were murdered for the mere fact of being Catholics. Thousands of priests were also executed for no other reason than their priestly condition. It is calculated that in Madrid approximately 35% of the clergy were murdered.
  
  The so-called "hunt for the priest" was unleashed, forcing priests to hide their clerical status by means of false identities. Those who were not imprisoned or killed tried to survive by taking refuge in various hiding places subject.
  
  On August 8, 1936, Josemaría Escrivá had to leave his family home because it was unsafe and began a long journey through various places in Madrid: he spent the night of August 8 in a boarding house on 13 Menéndez Pelayo Street, and the following day he went to the home of the Sainz de los Terreros family on Sagasta Street, where he stayed until August 30.
  
  On September 1, he went to the home of the Herrero Fontana family; and on September 4, he went to the home of Álvaro González, at 15 Caracas Street. He remained there the night of September 4 to 5, and then moved to 39 Serrano Street, together with Álvaro del Portillo, also a refugee in that place. On October 2, fearing new searches, he had to leave the shelter of Serrano Street and returned again to the home of the Herrero Fontana family. As it was not a safe place, from October 3 to 6, he stayed at the house of Eugenio Sellés, on Maestro Chapí Street. He returned to the home of the Herrero Fontana family, and finally, on October 7, he managed to take refuge in the Clinic of Doctor Suils, in Arturo Soria Street.
  
  He stayed at the Clinic of Doctor Suils for about five and a half months, from October 7, 1936 until March 14, 1937, when he was able to move to a new refuge: the Consulate or Legation of Honduras, at Paseo de la Castellana No. 53, next to place de Castelar.
  
  He stayed in this Consulate for more than five months, from March 14, 1937 until the end of August 1937, when he obtained documentation that allowed him some freedom. Then, after residing for some time in a boarding house on Ayala Street with a member of Opus Dei, Juan Jiménez Vargas, on October 7 he left Madrid, on his way to Barcelona, via Valencia.
  
  See:
  -MONTERO, A., Historia de la persecución religiosa en España. 1936-1939, B.A.C., Madrid 1961.
  -CÁRCEL ORTÍ, A., La persecución religiosa en España durante la Segunda República (1931-1939), Rialp, Madrid 1990.
  -Mártires Españoles del Siglo XX, B.A.C., Madrid 1995.
  -REDONDO, G., Historia de la Iglesia en España (1931-1939), Rialp, Madrid 1993.
  -AA. VV., Diccionario de Historia Eclesiástica de España, vol. CSIC, Madrid 1972.
  -ALFAYA, J. L., Como un río de fuego. Prologue by Cardinal A. M. ROUCO, Ediciones Internacionales Universitarias, Madrid 1998.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• What were Escrivá's relations with Dr. Suils, and why did he take refuge in a psychiatric sanatorium?

  Ángel Suils Pérez was born in 1906 in Logroño, in a family originally from Altoaragón. He met St. Josemaría at high school , when the Escrivá family moved to the capital of La Rioja. His father was a doctor and attended St. Josemaría's mother in 1919 on the occasion of the birth of his brother Santiago in Logroño.
  
  In the first months of the civil war, St. Josemaría found a temporary refuge in the home of the Herrero Fontana family. But since that was not a safe place, Joaquín Herrero Fontana, a doctor born in Logroño and a friend of Ángel Suils and St. Josemaría, arranged for Escrivá to be admitted to the psychiatric clinic that Ángel ran in Madrid's Ciudad Lineal.
  
  At the beginning of the war, the socialist trade union UGT created a company that became the owner of the sanatorium and appointed its former owner, Ángel Suils, as director . Under this legal cover, the place offered relative security against arbitrary searches by the militias. Nevertheless, there were some arrests and shootings of people residing there.
  
  -VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. II: God and Audacity, Rialp, Madrid 2002, p. 41 ff.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• How did you experience being a priest during the war?

  In various ways, depending on the external circumstances, which were diverse throughout the conflict.
  
  During his stay in Madrid, from July 18, 1936, until he found refuge in the Legation of Honduras, he had no choice but to renounce the external signs of his priesthood because of religious persecution and, like many priests in those circumstances, he was forced to celebrate the Eucharist clandestinely.
  
  In any case, whenever the occasion required it, he did not hesitate to manifest his priestly condition to attend spiritually to those who asked for it, knowing that by doing so he was putting his life at risk, since they could betray him, and betray him for that reason.
  
  On August 30, 1936, St. Josemaría was taking refuge with Juan Jiménez Vargas in the home of some acquaintances on Sagasta Street in Madrid. One of them, José Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, did not know who Don Josemaría was, and years later, he recalled what happened to them when the militiamen suddenly entered the house to search it:
  "They checked from the basement to the attic, began to inspect the basements and then went on to each of the floors. Before they reached ours, by an interior staircase, we went up to a garret full of coal dust and junk, like all garrets, where we could not stand up because we could reach the ceiling with our heads. It was unbearably hot. At one point we heard how they entered the attic next door to do the search.
  
  While I was in this status, Father Josemaría came up to me and said, "I am a priest:
  -I am a priest; we are in difficult times; if you want, make an act of contrition and I will give you absolution.
  Inexplicably, after having searched the whole house, they didn't go into that attic. It took a lot of courage to tell me that he was a priest since I could have betrayed him and, in case they had entered, I could have tried to save my life by betraying him."
  
  -VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. II: God and Audacity, Rialp, Madrid 2002, pp. 31-32.
  
  When he arrived at the Legation in Honduras, he was able to develop his priestly activity with less uncertainty, preaching and celebrating Mass for those who were refugees there.
  From the Legation he continued writing letters to his friends and acquaintances, using different codes because of postal censorship. For example, to refer to Jesus Christ he wrote "Don Manuel", and to speak of himself, "El abuelo".
  
  In September 1937 he obtained a document that gave him a certain freedom of movement in Madrid - although his life was still in danger - and he preached spiritual exercises, always clandestinely and taking many precautions. He attended to some religious communities that were sheltered in private homes and administered sacraments such as reconciliation or the anointing of the sick, posing as a doctor. In this way he administered the holy oils, for example, to the father of Alvaro del Portillo.
  
  Circumstances changed during his stay in Pamplona and then in Burgos, after crossing the Pyrenees on foot. He lived in the Castilian capital for a year and three months, from January 1938 to March 1939, and from there he carried out an intense pastoral activity, traveling to attend to the people he knew, many of whom were spread out on the various war fronts.
  
  -VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. II: God and Audacity, Rialp, Madrid 2002. Chap. X.
  
  Pedro Casciaro says of St. Josemaría's stay in Burgos in 1938: "He devoted a lot of time to taking contact with the members of Opus Dei who were scattered on the war fronts, and to attending to them spiritually. This led him to make frequent trips throughout the Peninsula, in terrible conditions of poor health, discomfort and extreme poverty" (CASCIARO, P., Soñad y os quedaréis cortos. Testimony about the founder by one of the oldest members of Opus Dei. Prologue by Javier ECHEVARRÍA, Rialp, Madrid 1994, p. 164).

  source: www.opusdei.es

• Why did you decide to escape across the Pyrenees?

  It was not an easy decision for him, since in 1937 he found himself in a delicate dilemma. He was still a refugee in Madrid, where his mother, his siblings, and some faithful of Opus Dei were, for the most part also refugees, except for Isidoro Zorzano, who could move freely thanks to his Argentinean origin. And in the other part of Spain (the country had been split in two by the conflict) there were also other members of Opus Dei and people with whom he wished to be able to exercise his priestly activity as soon as possible, in a framework of freedom.
  
  He did not know how long the conflict would last and during the previous months the various steps he had taken to leave Madrid through diplomatic channels had failed one after the other.
  
  In the end there was only one alternative left: either to stay in Madrid in a status that could perhaps last several more years; or to try a clandestine exit, which could be done through the war fronts or through the Pyrenees, passing through France and then returning to Spain through San Sebastian. This second option seemed the simplest, because "going to the other side" through the front - as so many people on both sides did - required him to be mobilized, and St. Josemaría was not because of his age (35 years old).
  
  -VÁZQUEZ DE PRADA, A., The Founder of Opus Dei. Life of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Vol. II: God and Audacity, Rialp, Madrid 2002. Chap. X.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• Who paid Escrivá's expenses during the war and paid for his passage through the Pyrenees?

  A preliminary consideration should be made: in wartime the value of money and its usefulness are substantially modified. In those war years, the estimated figure average to cross the Pyrenees was around 1,200 pesetas per person, plus extraordinary expenses. To this had to be added the expenses derived from the trip and, above all, from the expeditionaries' stay in Barcelona. Together with St. Josemaría, seven people escaped, who spent six weeks in the Catalan capital. This meant that the expenses amounted to some two thousand pesetas per person.
  
  This money came mainly from the professional salaries and savings of four of them: José María Albareda and Tomás Alvira, professors at high school; Juan Jiménez Vargas, a doctor; and Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, an engineer.
  
  Three of the expedition members were students: Pedro Casciaro, Miguel Fisac and Francisco Botella, and the families of the latter two defrayed the corresponding expenses. The families of Sainz de los Terreros and Jiménez Vargas also collaborated.
  
  Other members of the Work in Madrid contributed something, such as the engineer Isidoro Zorzano and José María González Barredo, professor at high school. To this was added the little that remained of the money that was destined for the installation in July 1936 of the new residency program in Ferraz, which could not be carried out because of the conflict.
  
  In spite of everything, the sum of unforeseen events meant that the eight expedition members could not cover the expenses, and for this reason, when they arrived in Andorra, they left 5,400 pesetas owed to the last of their guides.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• How did you get in touch with the organisers of the crossing at agreement ?

  An acquaintance of José María Albareda and St. Josemaría, the Aragonese priest and historian Pascual Galindo (Santa Fe de Huerva, 1892-Zaragoza, 1990), had managed to reach the other conflict zone, leaving from Barcelona and using one of the clandestine groups that were dedicated to the escape of people through the Catalan Pyrenees.
  
  Thanks to this priest, St. Josemaría learned of this possibility and took the necessary steps to contact the appropriate people in Barcelona. It was Juan Jiménez Vargas who took direct charge of these steps.
  
  But the escape turned out to be much more complicated than expected, due to various factors: unfavorable weather conditions, tougher border surveillance, and the need for the guides to form a sufficiently large group to make the crossing. All this delayed the departure.
  
  In the end, the expedition in which St. Josemaría participated was made up of more than 40 people from different origins.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• Who helped you cross the Pyrenees and how much did they receive for this service?

  The organization that helped the evasion was composed of a group of people from Peramola (Lleida) who lived in the farmhouses of that area. The main guide was Josep Cirera, a shepherd who knew very well the passes and the safest places of the crossing. This guide counted with several links and with the partnership of families that sheltered and fed the escapees, such as the Molleví, the conference room, the Mora, the Coll, etc.
  
  Cirera, who was in charge of directing the most dangerous part of the crossing, charged 1000 pesetas per person. The liaisons in the Peramola area charged 200-300 pesetas per person, for offering them safe refuge and providing them with food.

  source: www.opusdei.es

• Who accompanied him across the Pyrenees, who were Opus Dei and who were not?

  He was accompanied by seven young men. Some were his own age -35 years old- like José María Albareda, who had joined Opus Dei in the middle of the civil war. Also with them was a friend of Albareda's, Tomás Alvira, a professor at high school, who was 31 years old; and Manuel Sainz de los Terreros, who was almost 30. The rest were in their twenties: Juan Jiménez Vargas was 24, as was Miguel Fisac. The youngest were Pedro Casciaro and Francisco Botella, 22 years old.
  
  In that period, only Tomás Alvira was not a member of Opus Dei. A few years later Alvira (Villanueva del Gállego, Zaragoza, January 17, 1906) would ask for the Admissions Office in the Work and thus become one of the first supernumeraries of Opus Dei. He died in 1992, and his Cause of Canonization has been opened, together with that of his wife, Paquita Domínguez.
  
  CASCIARO, P., Dream and you will fall short. Testimony about the founder by one of the oldest members of Opus Dei. Prologue by Javier ECHEVARRÍA, Rialp, Madrid 1994.
  
  -VÁZQUEZ, A., Tomás Alvira y Paquita Domínguez: la aventura de un matrimonio feliz, Palabra, Madrid 2007.

  source: www.opusdei.es