Torres Family's Post-Civil War Reunions at Andorra's Hotel Mirador

In the summer of 1942, the Torres family gathered at the Hotel Mirador in Andorra la Vella for their first reunion since the Spanish Civil War. They hoped the poet Màrius Torres, then recovering at the Puig d'Olena sanatorium, would join them. His sister Núria had visited him there mid-year and found him so improved that they made concrete plans. But it was not to be: Màrius never made the trip and died at the sanatorium on 29 December that year.

A photograph from those gardens captures brothers Víctor and Màrius's sister Núria with friends, a poignant image of what might have been. Víctor Torres, a founder and militant of ERC who served as commissar in the Macià-Companys column, had fled into exile in Montpellier after the war and did not return to Spain until Franco's death. The family maintained a deep connection to Andorra and the Mirador for decades, as detailed in the 2022 biography *Una vida republicana* by Manel López, published by the Fundació Josep Irla.

The hotel, managed from 1941 to 1952 by Samuel Pereña—a Tàrrega native and cousin to the Torres matriarch—drew the clan repeatedly. Former worker Ramona Marsinyach recalled its open-door policy in the 1940s: it hosted up to 30 relatives at a time, featured summer orchestras from Organyà, gramophone sessions in the garden, lively poker games, lavish feasts, and parties with *parranos*—white Roma groups from Lleida. Víctor, a lawyer with a long political career, served as secretary to exiled Generalitat president Josep Irla in Paris from 1948 to 1954, later becoming a Catalan parliament deputy and Spanish senator. He chose Andorra for his 1946 honeymoon with Raymonde Sallé, pictured that year in Engolasters, and returned in 1949, 1951, 1956, 1960, and 1970—seen in one shot with his wife and an elderly Pereña.

French authorities granted Víctor a travel permit in July 1942 for "family affairs" at the Mirador, likely in hopes of seeing his brother. They never met again. Pereña handed over the hotel in 1952 to Joan Sasplugas and Magda Triquell, also from Tàrrega.

The Torres' bond with Andorra mirrored that of many Catalan exile families post-Civil War, who used the principality as a neutral haven. Notable examples include writer Aurora Bertrana, journalist Agustí Calvet (Gaziel), photographer Francesc Boix, and Joaquim Amat-Piniella, who wrote his Mauthausen novel *K. L. Reich* in late 1945 at Dr. Faustí Llaverias's Lauredià flat after his release from the camp.