Jesús de Cos Borbolla

Jesús de Cos Borbolla (1924 - 2012) was a Cantabrian guerrilla fighter and activist for the recovery of historical memory in Spain since his return from exile in France.

Jesus spent his childhood in the Nansas Valley, fishing and tending the cattle. After the military occupation of Cantabria in 1937 by Franco's Nationalists, his family was brutally repressed by the fascists, including imprisonment, torture and execution by garrote. His father, Donato de Cos, who was Deputy Mayor in Rionansa and member of the Popular Front, was killed in a Nazi extermination camp in 1941.

In November 1946, Jesús decided to move to France with the help of his brother Manuel. After passing through a concentration camp, and feeling abandoned by the Communist Party, whose decision to cease armed struggle left hundreds of guerrillas on their own, he settled in Bordeaux. Once recovered from his wounds he worked as a bricklayer.

He joined the Socialist-Communist trade union Confederation Generale de Travailleurs and continued to work with the PCE, taking responsibility for the Peace Committee, raising funds to help. In 1963, disagreeing with the policy of "national reconciliation" of Carrillo, he got involved with the Movement for the Third Republic. May 68 took him to Paris, where his son Joseph was arrested and tortured.

In 1979 he returned to Spain with a legal passport, with his partner Katya, with whom he had two children, Anais and Florian.

In 1986 he finally returned to Cantabria, beginning with his partner and wife Mari Sol Gonzalez the work of historical memory and the rights of Republican fighters through association, War and Exile (AGE).