Despite not knowing her personally, at home everyone talked about the stories told by my grandmother Juana and my grandfather Román.
Those stories have always made me think about my grandmother.
For her times, she was a real rebel. She always did what she thought and felt was best and although that was frowned upon then, she took no notice and lived her life to the full. She always stuck to her values, regardless of what society dictated or what the neighbours said, and she carried on in her bold, non-conformist way, full of desire to discover all things new and venture further afield. Despite the fact she knew she would be the target of everyone’s reproaches and idle gossip, she, or rather her revolutionary mind, was above all that.
She loved to dance, travel, sing and play with her children ... to feel free, but above all to accompany my grandfather on his travels. I love the fact that that my grandfather was always dressed to the nines. Every day, he checked his shoes were spotless and his handkerchief, with his initial embroidered by her, was stuck firmly into his jacket pocket. This is how I envisage her in the quiet moments of her life, sitting around the fire with the family, embroidering the initial ¨R¨ on the my grandfather’s soft cotton handkerchiefs.
He was a gentleman, elegant and classy, but at the same time humble. He was also head over heels in love with my grandmother's way of experiencing life - her freedom, her way of thinking, her rebellion.
Soon my grandfather's trips to the United States began. My grandmother, with that desire to live life to the full, see the world and experience new sensations, accompanied him whenever possible on his adventures. My grandfather always said that, with her, even the simplest moments turned into adventures ...
As for business, he was a far-sighted visionary.
His first stop, which was the one that marked our family history, was the American state of Indiana. There, he started out buying chickens and exporting them to the towns around Madrid. It was a great adventure and one which my grandmother felt very much part of: she loved being part of my grandfather's madcap schemes, and they formed a great team.
This was all very novel and innovative for its time and it really helped the community to flourish. People started calling the neighbourhood where my grandfather lived ‘the Indiana district’.
They spent so much time there that they took up new hobbies, such as archery, which fascinated both him and my grandmother. They went in for archery competitions together, always as a team. So, if he signed up, she had to be admitted too, which at the time was ‘not the done thing’; but they didn't care as long as they were together - that was the most important thing.
One starlit night in the summer of 1960, my grandmother Juana was thrilled at having just won the final of an archery competition. To mark the occasion, she made my grandfather a very special gift, something she had been working on in secret, with loving care, over the past few nights: a spotless white cotton handkerchief marked with his usual initial ‘R’, but this time with an embroidered bow and arrow alongside.
We took as our reference point this woman, who was so full of personality, so determined, so free and so rebellious for her time, and so attached to her family, and we set out to imbue our garments with all of her wonderful madcap adventures.
I still remember how, after she had passed, my grandfather always wore that handkerchief and how he told us, his grandchildren, what made it so different from the others and what the arrow meant to him. Now it forms our company logo, and we hope she continues, from her new world of adventures, to shoot arrows of madness and rebellion in our direction.
