In spite of coming out of my researches to build my ancestors’ tree, this is not a genealogical site. You will find neither long lists of names, nor dates, but only the stories of a few people, who happened to belong to my family, and for whom I have special admiration or tenderness. 

Because they departed, without weapons, and with small luggage, because they went on the roads of exile with courage, in difficult conditions, and succeeded in setting up again, sometimes twice, or even three times, a house, a corner of this earth that belonged to them.

I, also left my native country. In ideal conditions, a luxury emigration, compared to what they lived, a professional move, without worries. And even then, it was  not easy every day. So, how was it for them…

I, also, experienced these small details that make the exile, and homesickness, these small meaningless things one never notices when at home, the taste of tomatoes, the colour of sky at sunset, the intonation of a sentence… The form of trees, the rhythm of leaves falling, days even shorter than usual in winter, the differences in light…

The impossibility to reach a certain stage of intimacy, because we did not share the same childhood, and, more over, this subtle barrier of language, these trifling subtleties that we miss.

These men and women had nothing special, they were no heroes, and left no tracks in history. I had a lot of difficulties in finding them, and I’m still missing entire chapters of their story. Familial archives are clumsy to carry in a migrant suitcase, papers are lost, details are disappearing, melted in nostalgia…

This site is in their memory, their courage not to be completely forgotten.

It is also in memory of all those who hit the roads of exile without leaving even a trace, a tribute to the hundreds men and women who drowned trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar, to those who died of hunger on the roads of Africa, to all those who do not even have a grave, and are only a statistic.

Finally, it is my modest support to those who are today fighting for a better and more fraternal world . And very specially to Sebastiao Salgado, whose book “Exodus” is the most terrible statement to be, and a great shout of Humanity.