For this article I prefer to write about "an encounter" of my family. More exactly, about a possible encounter of nationalities and curiosities of my own family.
I was born in Merton (London), then I am English1, but my father is Argentinian and my mother is Catalan, my name is Italian, my surname is Portuguese that comes from a denomination of the "moros or moras": ALESSANDRA MOURA. And I am left-handed2. My mother divorced and married again with a man from Almeria who had also been married before with an English woman and had a girl -she is elder than me-, Mum and Dad-in-law had a boy and a girl. We are four but we have differents surnames. My elder sister (technically she is the sister-in-law of my brother and sister-in-law) and me have different parents so we have different surnames. She is Ramφrez and I am Moura3. While my brother and sister have the same parents, he is British and she is Catalan. Argentinian and British use only one surname but Spanish two. My brother is E.B. Ramφrez Ronco (the two surnames of his father, he seems to be his brother not his son) and the little one is Ramφrez Martφnez.
Almost all of my mum┤s family is Catalan, from Barcelona. My grandmother┤s dad and family went to Cuba (I still have some family there). And one of his brothers went to Miami, because of Fidel Castro. My great-grandfather, blond-haired with blue eyes, returned to marry the prettiest girl in his village (Castellar del VallΦs). She accepted because when she told her boyfriend that she would be disinherited if they got married, he fled. She did not mind marrying a handsome man, my great-granddad. They had two girls: M¬ Rosa and Paquita. My grandfather┤s mum was a spinster mother of Madrid who had to give birth in Barcelona. He grew up with his cousins in Madrid. My grandparents (avi and iaia) knew each other by a coincidence in the Civil War. She happened to be his godmother and they fell in love by letter, when they met, avi said: "Si que ets alta, Paquita!"

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1 I was born in Merton because I needed an especial hospital -there was not any in London-, I was too small and I stayed there my first month.
2 If I do not say anything specific, in general, my family are typically Spanish, Brown-haired with brown eyes and right-handed, and normally are short.
3 She is married with the Scottish Jon Sherry (Jerez), blond-haired, blue-eyed and left-handed.



They had five kids. Matilde married Joan Garriga, they lived in La Garriga and had Joan and N·ria (they divorced). M¬ Asunci≤n had five: Luis E., left-handed, Mariona, Susana, Maite, left-handed with blue eyes, and Joan Marc (Xiqui). M¬ Rosa or Rosatina (mummy) had three. Juanin married but unfortunately died -October 91- congealed in Himalaya. And Jaime who had the last child of the family, my smallest cousin who has the most beautiful big blue eyes, like his father. It is curious that perhaps we would not be here. Avi was one of the soldiers of the Blue Division that went to Russia, he was slightly wounded and returned to Spain just one or two months before Russia had closed their frontiers; he wanted to go again but my grandmother convinced him to stay. My sister┤s iaia married and had two boys and a girl. Just the one who seemed not to marry ever, and eternal bachelor, reciently did it and had the first boy: Isaac, and they want to have lots and lots of little "monsters".
About my father┤s family, my great-grandfather Julio CΘsar Moura Abreau has two Portuguese surnames (I suppose then he could be Portuguese). About my great-great-grandparents, Juan Tiscornia Virteau (Italian and French surnames) from Lavagna, Genove, went to Buenos Aires and married Angela Loray Fesferry (from Alsacia when Germany was dominating). They had nine boys and one girl. One of them, Luis E. married Juanita Sevilla Jaureguy (Vasc-French surname) and had a boy and my father┤s mum: M¬ Luisa (I may have cousins but I do not know them. She married Rodolfo Moura but he disappeared or died (unknown). Then, she married Mario Sßnchez.
Tata Ricardo married mamß in Barcelona and divorced in London. Mummy married again there but daddy did it in Per·. Then, my mother and my dad-in-law are not married in Spain. Mum is still the wife of dad and in Argentina is M¬ Rosa Martφnez de Moura.
About my father-in-law, papß, he had three sisters who died of tuberculosis, but he has his elder brother in Alicante with five children and five or six grandsons. And another brother, who first went to London and has his family there, but now he is in South Africa. But the most curious thing is that daddy has a cousin in San Pedro de Alcßntara, near Marbella, who had a strange but not a great encounter with an illegitimate brother from Australia. One of the young adventures of his father.
I can tell more things about my family but perhaps that is enough at the moment. And all is true. I only forgot to say that my first seven years I lived in London, in several places, and went and stayed in Barcelona, Rotterdam, Corf·, Jersey and Marbella.

Alessandra Moura, 1║ Fil. Ingl. C
March 1994

WELL DONE