From Xixón to the Asturian Diaspora

[Dani Álvarez]

Hi everybody!

Mi name is Dani Alvarez Prendes and I am from Xixón. I have just discovered your website looking for some information about Asturian emigration to USA before watching Luis Geo´s documentary, which has been showed tonight at the Xixón Film Festival (by the way, there were so many people that I couldn´t get a ticket to watch the documentary. A real success for Luis and I real pity for me! There will be another chance, for sure).
Well, first of all, sorry for my poor English, I don´t write in English very often, you will see. I really got surprised when I see so many Asturians in the States! and so active and interested in our roots.

My familiy didn´t emigrate to the USA but to Argentina. But I am going to tell you something pretty interesting. My father family branch is from a tiny village in the heart of the mountains of Somiedo, it is called Villaux, which means "village of the bear" in Latin. You know Somiedo is a marvelous Natural Park in the south west of Asturies. Well, in this small village (a population of 200 people in its best moments) there was a man called "Pin de la Fonte" who went to California I think in the 40´s. Can you image an Asturian villager who had never go further than Uviéu, who only spoke Asturianu and hardly Castilian, getting to CA? He died some years ago, but when my grandma told me his story, I always imagined Pin in his last days, retired in LA or San Francisco, wearing a tropical shirt and maybe remembering with nostalgia his birthplace. He never came back to Asturies I think. Next time I will send a photo of Villaux, in Somiedo, and Pin´s house.
Maybe there is any Pin´s descendent who is reading this words. I hope so, I could tell him or her some stories about their roots.

This summer I worked on the Xixón Local Tourist Information Service, and it was wonderful when an old person, speaking Castilian or Asturianu with some little foreign accent told us that he was an Asturian emigrant who had left the country decades ago, but still had The Tierrina in his heart. It was really emotive, and me and my colleagues were delighted to say him or her that he was really welcome in his/our land.

Art, Bob, Terechu and all the other people who run this page, you are doing a really great job. Congratulations!

[Bob]

Dani wrote:

This summer I worked on the Xixón Local Tourist Information Service, and it was wonderful when an old person, speaking Castilian or Asturianu with some little foreign accent told us that he was an Asturian emigrant who had left the country decades ago, but still had The Tierrina in his heart. It was really emotive, and me and my colleagues were delighted to say him or her that he was really welcome in his/our land.

When I visited Asturias with my father (in his 80's) and my brother, the question most asked of my father was why he spoke like a native Asturian, without a trace of accent. The answer, of course, is that he was born in West Virignia in a small town (Spelter) made up mostly of asturianos, that he was the son of asturianos, and that he simply spoke like his parents.

Everyone made us feel that we were long lost relatives, and many knew some of the same people we knew. It was like coming home.

In Samartín de Laspra, we met a woman who knew two people (Chon and Tano) who had emigrated to West Virginia. At last February's conference in Florida, we met Chon and Tano's daughter.