Anna Gonzalez (maiden name Fonollosa)

Story

I was born on the third of December 1949 in Barcelona Spain. The Dictator Francisco Franco was in his 12th year of absolute power on what was going to be thirty-eight years of oppression.

My parents, as many Spaniards, were victims of the 1936 Civil War. My father had spent eight years in the dungeons of the Castle of Mahon (a medieval fortress in the Balearic islands). He died at 44, leaving my mother with four kids. I was the oldest. Life was very hard in all aspects and I became an adult overnight.

Why I left Spain to come to Australia

At eighteen I met my future husband a young fitter and turner. Like many young men he had dreamt of leaving behind the authoritarian regime. Many of these youngsters were organising themselves underground, and the government was putting them in jail or ordering killings in order to prevent a revolt against their dictatorial regime.

Andreu saw the fragility of the political and economical situation in the country. The only way that we could survive the situation (he thought) was to get married and leave the country. In 1973 newly weds, we arrived in Brisbane at Wacol Hostel.

A month later we were living in New Farm and Andreu was working as a fitter and turner. I was able to work for a few months and in 1974 our son Xavier was born.

My Journey was cut short

When our son was one year old, my husband became ill, he was admitted at Prince Charles Hospital where he was diagnosed with mesothelioma provoked by asbestos. After the shock, we realised that in Spain, Andreu lived beside an asbestos factory. Andreu was one of the first of many that would die or felt chronically ill due to the negligence of the factory. I vowed to fight for justice for him and all the other victims and we decide to return to Spain while he was still alive and sue the factory.

Six months after our return he died. Then a chain of devastating events followed: The autopsy papers were stolen, doctors were paid money in order to manipulate and ignore my husband\’s case. Distraught for having lost my husband, I realised how na•ve I was in believing that the new democracy in Spain was going to work in a country where among other problems, the legal system was corrupted to the core.

How I returned to Australia

Three years later by chance I met Tomas Gonzalez a widower that had lost his wife from breast cancer, when he was a political prisoner in Spain. (His history is today immortalised in a book written in 2006 commemorating a group of people who did fight to overthrow the dictatorship).

We were married in 1981, a few months later there was a revolt provoked by the military that seriously threatened the fragile democracy.

This was the final straw for us, as I feared for Tomas\’s safety. I used my Australian nationality and went to the embassy in Madrid where they studied my husband\’s case and was accepted in Australia in 1982. In May of the same year my second son Roger was born in Brisbane.

My integration and professional fulfilment

Determined to fulfil my desire to integrate and to feel part of this society I felt the need to study English beyond the basic level provided in the migrant classes.

Very naively I planned to choose a course at university that allowed me to learn English without the stress of complex studies.

I applied to study a Bachelor of Arts at Griffith University at QCA (Queensland College of Art) in Fine Art, thinking that the university would teach me techniques on how to draw or paint, my knowledge of art was zero.

The requirements for my application was to present an art folio. My desire to succeed made me fearless and I used colour pencils to draw my cat, my children etc. until I put together a folio. Looking back I can see that probably my interviewee saw that my enthusiasm was stronger than my artistic merit.

My life at College was not easy, I had to prepare myself at night reading books that would teach me techniques in order to raise the art skills to a proficient level.

I have many anecdotes from those days and I went through many struggles. However, I never gave up. I graduated in 1988; that was the starting point in my professional life and I did not stop when I had my first degree. I became a High School Teacher, I have an honours degree from Queensland University, and at present I teach Spanish at University of Queensland. At the same time, I have become an accomplished artist. A few months ago I finished my masters degree in fine art with many accolades. My artwork is exhibited in galleries, and can be seen at my web page: annagonzalez.com.au

My achievements in art represent my personal offering to this country that has allowed me to find in myself the confident person, which I became.

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