Person
González Villa, Audelino (1901-1984)
Villarente (Villasabariego, León, España) 1901-07-01 - León (España) 1984-11-04
He was born on the 1st of July 1901 in Puente Villarente (Leon) and raised in a family with strong religious beliefs. His father carried out the agricultural and livestock activities while his mother managed a typical shop of the time. Their religiousness marked his life, his family environment, including his cousins from Mansilla Mayor, the Jesuits Segundo and Amando Llorente Villa. Segundo worked as a missionary in Alaska, where he arrived in 1935, for more than 40 years. He was the representative of the State of Alaska in the United States Congress and the first catholic priest that joined the North American legislature. Amando worked as a teacher at the Dolores de Santiago College in Cuba and as one of Fidel Castro's mentors until the expulsion of the Jesuits from Cuba in 1961. Audelino made contact with the Protestant circle of Leon due to his self-taught readings of the Bible. In 1919, he baptized (by immersion) at the evangelical church of Toral de los Guzmanes together with other believers. Among them was Abigail Vidal Somoza, the woman with whom he started a family. That same year, he moved to Madrid and attended a preparation course of Medicine at the Faculty of Sciences of the Central University of Madrid between 1919 and 1921. He entered the Veterinary School of Leon during the school year 1921-1922. During his last year of the degree, he presided over the "Ateneo Escolar Veterinario" in Leon, where he gave the conference "The Reading and the book". In June 1925, he passed the veterinarian's final exams and subscribed to "La Semana Veterinaria", edited by Félix Gordón Ordás in its early days at the printing house of "La Democracia" (Leon). He was also the founding member of the "Montepío Veterinario"* and the College for Veterinarian's Orphans. He was the member of the Spanish National Veterinary Association too. He took up reading at a very young age and acquired a large number of old books, especially editions of the Bible and old veterinary books. He created the widest private book collection in both specialties in Spain, with more than 15.000 copies from which one thousand where Bible's old editions. He started his professional career as a temporary veterinarian in Quiroga (Lugo) on the 25th of October 1925. He was rejected by one sector of the local society because of the fact that he was a Protestant. In July 1927, he took office in Fuentes de Ropel (Zamora) after entering into civil marriage with Abigail Vidal on the 28th of April 1927 in Leon and making a short stop in Melide (A Coruña). During his stay there, he had 4 children: Rodolfo (veterinarian and his most important biograph together with the professor Miguel Cordero del Campillo), Ernesto, Elena and Alfredo. He worked between 1927 and 1933 in Fuentes de Ropel, integrated by Castrogonzalo (Valdescorriel and San Miguel del Valle joined some years later). He was surrounded by a Protestant environment and the evangelical communities of Castrogonzalo and Barcial del Barco, motivated by the British missionaries William Willies and Arthur Shallis. Audelino González collaborated with this last one in his preaching at La Torre del Valle and Benavente. His stay in this town coincided with the Republic's arrival. Audelino celebrated it from the city council's balcony because it offered a freedom of thought's perspective. In 1934, he was a presenter at the III National Evangelical Congress. During his stay in Fuentes de Ropel, he started his friendship with the Galician José Almoína Mateos, a post office's worker in Benavente, mason and president of Benavente's socialist group. They shared intellectual preoccupations and their passion for books. They agreed on the fact that José picked up his correspondence until he returned in Benavente. During those years, Audelino was the spokesman of the Provincial Veterinary Association in Zamora, presided over by his colleague and friend Manuel Gutiérrez Acebes, a veterinarian in Cerecinos de Campos. They both created the Association's bulletin. In June 1933, he was chosen spokesman of the provincial Official College of Veterinarians, founded in 1903. He was chosen vice-president in August 1935. At the end of 1933, he was named municipal veterinary inspector of Benavente. He acquired a plot in order to create the first hospital for animals in Spain; he promoted the milk's health control, the slaughterhouse's usage and the organization of a livestock market with sanity guarantees. In 1934, he was a presenter at the III National Evangelical Congress. His friendship with the socialist José Almoina continued in 1934. This last-mentioned figure had been exiled after the events occurred in Asturias in 1934 and, when he returned to Benavente, he was accompanied by the members of the popular demonstration formed spontaneously to the veterinarian's home. He lived there for some time. After the coup-d'état in July 1936 and the occupation of Benavente, the Falange sacked the chapel that the evangelical community possessed at the García Herández Square (currently, Madera Square), burnt the Bibles and hymnbooks in public and moved the banks to a café and the harmonium to a catholic church. On the 24th of August 1936, Audelino was detained by the Falangists and handcuffed moved to Zamora. He coincided with several prisoners from Benavente in jail, most of them murdered on the 9th of October 1936. The minor Eutiquio Altier was one of them. Vitaliano Barroso del Olmo, owner of a printing house at the Rúa Street and president of the Republican Left, recognised him. He was moved to Toro's jail on the 4th of September, two days before they incarcerated Pilar Fidalgo Carasa, Almoina's wife, and their newborn baby in the same prison of Zamora. He was released on the 6th of January 1937 due to his wife's discovery of several favourable reports of every authority in Benavente, except for the parish priest. His relationship with José Almoida, the fact that he was an evangelist community's member and, maybe, the shameful professional envy motivated his denunciation and his first detention by the Falangists in Benavente. Among all the prisoners in Benvaente that have been moved to Zamora by the Falangists, only Alfredo Rodríguez Enríquez, Leonor Martínez Robles, who came from la Torre del Valle and was José Maniega's wife (a baker that was murdered), Audelino González Villa and Pilar Fidalgo Carasa, who was Almoina's wife and was exchanged by the Semprún family of Valladolid, survived. Audelino lost his job in Benavente and his position as vice-president at the Veterinarian's College in Zamora. It was occupied by the provincial deputy Casimiro Barrigón on the 25th of September 1937. The relationship with Almoina was interrupted after his exile, firstly to France, where he reunited with his family from Benavente, and, later, to the Dominican Republic and Mexico. They stayed in touch by letter according to his son Rodolfo's testimony until his murder by two Cuban henchmen sent by the dictator Trujillo on the 5th of May 1960. Between 1937 and the end of the war, Audelino was not allowed to exercise his profession so he had to work as the administrator of a flour factory in Renedo and as a commercial agent. He also made handmade toys and sold them. Later, obliged by the economic necessity, he returned to Benavente to collect his outstanding debts, even though the Director of Toro's jail asked him nicely not to come back to the town. He was then detained, punched and purged with castor oil by local Falangists to make him leave the town. He tried to work as a free veterinarian in Leon without a fixed place or office where he could carry out his work. However, between the 24th of January and the 19th of February 1942, he was detained again at the jail of Leon. He was questioned for his relationship with Matías Bueno de Diego, a well-known man in Benavente that worked as a commercial agent in Valeriano Campesino. He also represented the laboratory IBYS in Leon with veterinary products. They had both coincided in Zamora's jail because he had been detained for belonging to the Spanish Communist Party. The authorities officially informed that he had committed suicide in jail. Audelino's detention was motivated by the discovery of a visit card of Matías in his home. Audelino tried to visit him after his wife's labour. Despite these hard hits, he continued his career and, in 1949, he sit the first exam to get his degree on Veterinary Science when the School became a Faculty. He attended all the specialization courses and lectures. He got his diplomas of the courses on health, specialist in insemination, etc. In 1951, he worked again as a titular veterinarian in La Pola de Gorgón (Leon), where he stayed until his retirement. He also continued preaching and, after the Second Vatican Council and the end of Francoism, he participated in ecumenical acts organized by the Catholic Church in Leon, city where he died in November 1984.
*Veterinary widows' and orphans' funds.