We Learn Who He Was By The Tales He Told

Ottelo Mola Benedetti - Mari 1968
 
grandfather/granddaughter  

When I sit down with Mari, I begin with the bronze “Indian” head that lived in her family home. It was always described as Native American, and for years she and her cousins believed the story that came with it: their grandfather had once been an Indian, a fighter, a man whose adventures were too vivid to question. That single object becomes our doorway into a much wider family history, stretching from Catalonia and Barcelona back to Italy, and into the places where the record falls silent. As we talk, I find myself drawn to the tension of loving someone who could make you laugh and still leave you with questions you will never fully answer.

We trace her grandfather’s path through the Second World War, when he was a young Italian army driver, and then on to a tiny Sardinian town where a chance encounter turned into a romance that reshaped the entire family. There is post‑war survival in a bombed‑out house, improvised heating made from rolled newspaper, and the long, determined grind of migration as work pulled them from Turin to Murcia and eventually to Barcelona. Alongside all of this, we sit with the contradictions: the charm, the dreaming, the smuggled tobacco, and the way a man who could be a difficult husband still fought for his four daughters to study and build careers in a world that did not expect women to.

Threaded through the stories is an aching gap, an estranged family line that no one ever reconnects with, and a sense that identity is stitched together from many places at once. We finish with a plan to search for roots in Rome’s Trastevere, and a promise to keep the Native American “Indian” alive as a shared memory. 

If you enjoy family storytelling, oral history, migration tales and wonderfully messy real‑life character portraits, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave us a review with the one family myth you still carry with you.

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Transcript

Where We Are And Who He Is

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Where are we in the world today?

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Well we are in Torre de Barra, it's a small city, Catalonia, the south of Barcelona, and actually, funny enough, I was born in Barcelona. You were born in Barcelona. A long story from my family roots, even though they are Italian, ended up in Barcelona.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Alright, okay, we're gonna come on to the Italian bit um for sure. So who

The Bronze Indian And Tall Tales

SPEAKER_01 0:28

are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

We're gonna talk about my grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

What's the very first image that comes into your mind when you think about your grandfather?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Very good-looking, handsome man, even though he died, he was like 74. And the first image we all have, I mean all the grandchildren, is that we were sitting on his lap. He used to tell us he was Indian. He was a Native American Indian. Because he had this like head of an Indian with the feathers made of bronze, golden bronze. And he we used to say, Why no, no no no no no no, which is grandfather in Italian. What is that? Oh, that was me when I was an Indian. And that kept us like amused for years and years. When we were teenagers, we started to think, well, maybe he wasn't an Indian after all, but for many years we all believed that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And he just told stories about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yeah, he was just telling that when he was there and he was fighting and he went on and on. He was a very charismatic person, so he had the ability to tell tales and got us to believe them. So it was like really amusing and entertaining. He was a great person to be around, all positive, all nice, and even though he had a very hard life, but he always brought the best of people in him, and we all love to be around him.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

He

The Family He Never Spoke About

SPEAKER_01 1:43

was estranged from the family. So how did that mystery shape your understanding of him growing up?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

We never, we never knew his family, never talked about it. My mother, the eldest, my mom is the eldest of four daughters, never knew, never met any of my grandfather's family or relatives or anything. So really, we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

No.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

It was still remains a mystery. And funny enough, none of my neither my mom or my aunties didn't show any interest in connecting with my with my grandfather's family. They never looked for any of their relatives or aunts or cousins, not on my grandfather's side.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

So did he have a relationship with his mother?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

No, no.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Did you know her?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

No, no, no. No.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Never knew her.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Never, never. Never met any of the all the family we know, the Italian side of the family, they are from my grandmother. Not from my grandfather, none.

War Service And A Sardinian Romance

SPEAKER_00 2:35

I know for a fact that he left when he was very young. And in fact, he was in the in the Second World War and he was like 18 years old, so he was very, very young. And at that point he had already left home.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

So he was in the army then?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Well, in the Italian army.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was in the Italian army, and but he always said he never killed, he never even uh raised a weapon, to say it later. Never killed anybody, never shoot, because he was very skillful and a very good driver. So at the time he was driving a lorry and went to and went to pick up the supplies. And he was he was sent to this small village in my grandmother, is from Cerdeña which is an island in Italy. A very, very, very small town, very small rural called Gillarza, which is in the province of Oristano. So he was there with another comrade that used to go to buy the supplies, and apparently that's how, well, apparently no, I know that that's how he met my grandmother, who was uh engaged to somebody from the town. But when he saw my grandfather, well, she fell in love. Yeah, she was like, I mean, I can't see why, because uh he remained like the typical gentleman. He wasn't very like a gentleman, I know that, but he was very handsome, very good looking, nice, so they fell in love.

Disappearing Acts And A Womaniser

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Your grandfather sounds like he was quite a complicated man, a womanizer, would that be?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

He was a little bit of a women. I was talking to my auntie, which is my mom's second sis, and I know he was a womanizer because my mother always told me when they were in Murcia and Barcelona from Turin, they moved to Murcia, which is a town south of Spain. He had to, he would disappear from home, leave my grandmother with the four children alone for I don't know for how long. My mother used to go after him, find things out. But my auntie, the second sister, who is uh very positive as well, she's got my grandfather's personality. She says, let us just leave it like he was maybe not the best husband, but a great uh father and a great grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

He insisted

Pushing Daughters To Study

SPEAKER_01 4:51

that the daughters study in because that's something my auntie always says.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I mean, uh, no matter what he did, at those times, yeah, we're in such a chauvinist society, because we have to remember, we have to take into account that he was we're talking about Italy, yeah, rural area, where uh with Mussolini, I mean, women didn't study. And they they didn't, so when he brought all the family to Spain, he insisted in all of them having a career. The ones who didn't, like my mother, even though my mother has worked all her life in an office, you know, is because they didn't want to. But my second auntie is a nurse, my fourth auntie is a nurse, and the third one as well, she's got superior study for the times. He made very clear that the daughters had to stay.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

And this is just after the Second World War.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. After the Second World War, my auntie, who is now, I mean, they are all now, you know, like retired, was born in Turin, right after the Second World War.

Post-War Poverty And Moving To Spain

SPEAKER_00 5:51

And they moved, but I don't remember, like they tell us, yeah. We have the that she was born in a house where it was still half of the house was without walls because it had been bobbed after the Second World War. And they used to, my mother remembers, she tells me that with newspaper they had to make like little balls. My mother said with my tiny hands, I was six years old, to make, he didn't have any wood to lit the fire. So with newspaper, really pressed to be able to warm the room. It was very, very cold. After my second auntie was born, then they moved. My grandfather was a very skillful mechanic. He built his own motorbike, he was very, very skillful and with the law, very creative. So there was a man who saw what he could do. I invited him to come to Spain to work in a mechanic garage, and then he brought my auntie and my mum. My other two aunties were born in Murcia. This is one hour south of Alicante. And he was doing very well. In Murcia, they were people say they were wealthy. They did very well. My father is like, you know, when you dangle the carrots in front of the donkey? Yeah, yeah, and this man was promising him that if he went to Barcelona with him, they were gonna do this business. And in Barcelona, they moved to Barcelona, and there they had economic problems because my grandfather sort of lost what he had, so he had to start from zero. I even remember my father, yeah, when he met my mother. My father used to work with my grandfather. My father remembers that. He was like loads of, he was a dreamer. My grandfather was a dreamer. We're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that, are we gonna become this? And at the end, yes, they survived, as everybody else, they survived. But um, it's it's funny how life brings people in different ways because like I loved my grandmother. I mean, I didn't have that much relationship with her, but I remember my grandmother always being a little bit on the downside, depressed or down. She didn't have a good life, let's say. My grandfather, who was the one that maybe wasn't doing things as he should have, but he managed to bring happiness and illusion into the family. He was like that. It was amazing to be with him.

Greyhound Tracks, Smuggling, And Mortality

SPEAKER_00 8:15

When I went to Barcelona, I was young. I remember he would take me to, you know, the races where you have a greyhound, yeah, a rabbit, mechanic rabbit, riding around, and then the dog.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

My hand was chasing the rabbit, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

That was the first time in my life I had seen something like that. For me, it was like unbelievable. Yes. And I was born in Barcelona.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Was he gambling there? Rabbit.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

He was snuggling tobacco. Oh, is it?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

My mother told me when we talk about my grandfather that she found the tobacco in the neighbor's house hidden. And I told my mother, I said, Oh, I'm gonna use that. And she said, No, no, no, because you know, it's uh it's a criminal action. I said, Man, whatever, what's gonna happen? Are you gonna put him in prison? He's dead. It doesn't matter if that is, you know, come out to life. And uh, he died of cancer. And I also remember he smoked, he drank, drank wine every day, used to go to the bar dumpsters. And we will tell him, no, no, you have to take care of your health. No, it doesn't matter, you have to enjoy life. And I remember when he died, he didn't he cried, he didn't want to die. He wanted to live life. I mean, he was a he was uh how old was he again? 74, I think it was. Yeah, because uh he died 34 years ago. Yeah, that's been 30.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

So how old were you when he died?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

I was 25. I remember because I had just met John. I had met John and uh that was first Christmas, 25-26. I don't remember. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

You showed me

Carmen Sevilla

SPEAKER_01 9:44

a photo of him with an actress. Who was that?

SPEAKER_00 9:45

That's Carmen Sevilla. She's dead now, but she was one of the most iconic actresses in Spain at the time, in the 60s, 70s. When she was young, she was very, very pretty, an actress. And then when she got older, she would became well, she had her own program, and we used to watch it. I used to watch it with John because uh she would do like the there is um lottery called the for the blind people in Spain, called the Once. And she used to run that program every night and present it. And I always thought, oh, I'm gonna picture this woman with my grandfather. I don't know if you know, it could be like what you like the groupie, my grandfather being the groupie of the time. I make it you say, Oh, yeah, well, I did I see this woman, I'm gonna take a quick picture. But we we prefer to think that they were friends, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Friends or lovers.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

It's not glamour for the family. Oh, non-new come to be.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Oh dear.

Desertion, A Cemetery, And A Medal

SPEAKER_01 10:45

There's a story about your grandfather deserting the army and and hiding in the cemetery. So tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

I mean, he was a bit of a rebel, even though he didn't fight in the front like you know, it should be.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Because of course, Italy were on the same side as the Germans.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, they were it was Mussolini, Franco, yeah and Hitler at the same time, the biggest dictatorships of the world then. Even though he didn't have to fight, but he had to be there, and they wouldn't let him, they wouldn't give him permission to go and see my grandmother. So I think he was fed up and he escaped because he knew they were looking for him, he hid in a cemetery. And he was there for a while, for days, trying to reach and get to Gillarza to see my grandmother. When the all I mean, in the meantime, the war was finished and it was getting to the end, and there were rumors the Allies were going to take over, liberate from the from the Nazis. And they found my grandfather, but he didn't know anything. He was discovered by the Americans. I mean, he was we're talking about an 18, 19-year-old person at the time, 20, the oldest. He thought they were gonna kill him. You know, they were gonna how do you say in English when they put you against the wall and fire squad, yes. And all of a sudden, he became like a hero. I mean, he has an award, war award of like a hero because he had deserted. And he didn't deserve. He just got a flight. He wanted to escape to live. He was he was lucky that the uh Germans or the Italians didn't find him, it was the Americans because then the story probably we wouldn't be here then if that had happened.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Um you wouldn't be here. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

And and the other day I talked to my auntie and she said, bro, we lost the we found no longer ago the wedding certificate from my grandfather and my grandmother. We have it all in the telephone from the family group. But nobody could find the that work award because they have moved. My whole family has been negrating with the work so much that it got lost somehow.

A Shop Ledger Of Symbols

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Just drifting away from your grandfather for a moment. Tell me the story about your your great-grandmother. She invented her own accounting school.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

My mother always talked about her, she remembers her perfectly. She was a very, she was illiterate, couldn't write, couldn't read. And at the time in the island, they were quite wealthy because she ran a shop. In fact, that's why they met. Because my grandfather would go there to buy the bread and everything. And my grandm, my mother remembers, she would get up very early, bake her own bread, do everything. But as she couldn't write or read, she would take account of everything with little symbols. She had a little note because there were such difficult times, hunger, and people would just go there, and maybe they couldn't pay in the day. My grandmother would give them the whatever milk, bread, whatever they needed, flour. I mean, we're talking about the basics, and she will have her own way of knowing who owe money, how much, with her little things. When she died, yeah, when she died, the children, they found, which is my mother's aunties, they had a notebook, but they couldn't figure out what he meant. So they didn't know how much money people owe, if they owe money at all. But she had her way of having the financial thing of the shop perfectly. And I and I repeat, because my grandmother, my mother remembers, they were quite wealthy. That's why I think my grandmother always has a little bit of, she lived with the resentment that she came from a quite cute family and she had this, she was engaged to this man in the island. And if she hadn't left the island, if she had to marry this other person, maybe her life would have been different. But she fell in love with my grandmother.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

How many children did they have?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Four, four doctors. My mother being the eldest, they all live here. They all live in Catalunya, we we see each other.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Do they do you speak Italian?

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah. My mother died. Yeah. The fourth one, Aurora, I'm not very sure. I think she managed. My mom perfect. I mean, my mom came to Spain, she was 12, and she speaks perfect Italian. My auntie Bruna, too, and the other one as well. Yeah, they all speak Italian. You know what I think it is? And I even speak a little bit, and quite I managed, I get through, because my grandmother never really spoke perfect Spanish. She will mix words, they will speak Italian at home, and I think that remained, which also, to tell you the truth, she lived in Spain for more than 40 years, 50 or so from my side, uh shows that the lack of adapt. She just didn't adapt to she just couldn't be happy, she just didn't enjoy, which is insane.

Rome, Roots, And The Memory Kept

SPEAKER_01 15:34

So you're going to Rome very shortly, aren't you? Yes. So you're looking forward to that?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And we are going to be in the hotel when my grandfather was born in the Transtevere. And I'm gonna find out from my aunties the place where he was born or the street.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

You've done a bit of research. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

So if I imagine I find somebody after so long, but it will be amazing. You never know. It will be amazing to finally.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

You can ask around. Take take a photo of him.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I will, I will. Imagine. And imagine it, you know, you come up with a casting or something. Yeah. Yeah. You never know.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

You never know.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Okay, so when you think of your grandfather now, right? The Indian, the soldier, the father, the father of four daughters, what one memory do you hope never fades?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

I don't know. I have a good, such a nice, positive, caring, loving memory of him. And it is sometimes you say, Well, you did you hardly I didn't live with my grandfather. I mean, we lived in Tudela, and even though I used to come to Barcelona a lot to visit them and everything, but is the he always transmitted that love and and care for the for the grandchildren that he was always happy to see us, and that's a memory that that has stayed. And always, even though when I was like 25, 20, my 20s before he died, I would go to his place and he had the Indian there. Yeah, and it was that it's amazing. And the other day I talked to my cousin, who is the eldest of my auntie Bruna, my second after my mother, and I said, Tito, have you got the Indian? And he said, Yeah, I think so. I don't know where I put it. But I kept it, and I said, Please look for it. You know, because I think we all deserve a picture. We have to keep the picture of the Indian. But it was a it was a character. It was a character. That's why another thing when people tell me, Where are you from? You know, in this world nowadays that we're living with so much, I don't know, I don't need to use the word racism or intolerance to diversity, everything. When people ask me where are you from, I always say, Well, where do you want me to be from? My mom is Italian, my dad is from Aragon, my husband is English, I was born in Barcelona. Um, we live now in Catalunya, my family is from Navarra. I mean, we are from all over the place, so you know, and the Italian roots, yeah, but you they're always there. Always been there.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Always there. Great Marie. Well, thank you very much for your time.