Hilda Farfante

Hilda Farfante Gayo (1931 – 13 May 2026) was a Spanish schoolteacher and activist for the recovery of historical memory.

Life and career Hilda Farfante Gayo was born in Besullo, a parish in Cangas del Narcea. She was the daughter of Balbina Gayo, a teacher and headmistress of the Cangas del Narcea school, and Ceferino Farfante, a teacher and member of the Misiones Pedagógicas (Pedagogical Missions) that brought culture to rural areas. Both parents, who were sympathetic to the Republican cause, were assassinated on 8 September 1936 by a column of Requetés from Galicia supporting the Nationalist faction. Her mother was buried in a roadside ditch, and her father, who was captured while attempting to aid his wife, was thrown off a cliff at the end of the day.

Fearing the killers' threats to wipe out the entire family, her grandfather and uncle fled into the mountains of Ponticiella with five-year-old Hilda and her two sisters, aged seven and four. The sisters were later separated, and Hilda went to live in Boal with her aunt Guillermina, who was also a schoolteacher.

In 2020, during the drafting of the Law on Democratic Memory, Farfante sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, outlining specific proposals for locating individuals missing from the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. She included a personal appeal with indications of the areas where she suspected her parents were buried.

Awards and recognition In 2013, director Pilar López Solano featured Farfante's testimony in the documentary Las maestras de la República (The Teachers of the Republic), which won the Goya Award for Best Documentary Film. That same year, she was honored with the Rafael del Riego Award for Liberties, a prize sponsored jointly by the municipalities of Tineo in Asturias and Las Cabezas de San Juan in Seville.