This magical week began to take shape on May 5, 2006 when Vicente M.U. opened an email from a sender with a very strange acronym. When his finger was about to press “delete”, an inner force stopped him. No, you’d better look at it… it may be important. Well,… the rest is history. This story.

The email was from Charo, who was replying, from Valencia, Spain, to an email Vicente had sent several months earlier to the author of a website about Forcall, a small town in the Maestrazgo, a very mountainous and rugged region about three hours drive at Northwest of Valencia, Spain. And why Forcall, you may ask?

For several years, Vicente had been searching for the family of his paternal grandfather Antonio Molinos Giner, a Spanish immigrant to Chile in the late 19th century. He had sent dozens of airmail letters to telephone subscribers with the surname Molinos in Valencia and had created a website to identify possible leads globally.

After hundreds of Internet searches, having only Valencia as origin and the surnames Molinos and Giner as confirmed, and Prats as possible, in 2006, Google showed him the following site:

Very hopeful, Vicente wrote a letter to Mr. Enrique P.M., kind author of the website copied above. Months passed without a response, until Charo and her mother, Angelines G.M. (est. 1930-2019), a resident of Zaragoza, during a a visit with relatives in Forcall, were notified that there was a letter for the Molinos family at the Forcall City Hall.

Several months of emotional emails and phone calls followed. From Vicente to Charo, to her mother Angelines and to Ricardo M.M. in Barcelona. Ricardo is co-founder of this website and is the great-grandson of Pascuala Molinos Prats, sister of Vicente Molinos Prats.

It became very clear that we had to meet this part of our family…soon. We set a date for the following year in May and with Charo and Ricardo we started to dream and plan visits and a family reunion.

Ricardo and Charo mobilized several relatives from the Molinos, Giner, Martín and Blasco branches, among others. Most of the Spanish descendants of the Molinos family from Forcall do not have the first surname Molinos as they descend from Pascuala Molinos Prats and the daughters of Liborio Molinos Giner. The exceptions were Rosita Molinos Martín and Consuelo Molinos Martín.

In Spain!

On Friday, May 4, 2007 we took the train from Madrid to Zaragoza where my cousin Angelines G.M. and her daughter Charo were waiting for us, my first family contact in Spain. It was a very emotional meeting.

Vicente, Angelines, Charo, Kathy. First Meeting, Zaragoza, 2007.

That same Friday, Charo and Angelines drove us to the walled city of Morella, a couple of hours south-east of Zaragoza. There we walked through the beautiful city that was the scene of occupation by Romans, Arabs, French and the Carlist revolutionaries of Ramón Cabrera.

We spent the night in the old hotel of Morella, very traditional, in front of a Molinos cigar shop whose owner was married to a possible relative of the Forcall branch, but they did not confirm it.

On Saturday at 8 am we woke up to a band of musicians from Morella leaving for a pilgrimage and marching through the narrow streets with their flutes and drums.

Fans of cheeses, hams and pastries will enjoy browsing the various rotisseries and pastry shops in town. With Kathy we went up to the gates of the fort but it was closed and we could not see the convent which seems to be very nice. We only managed to take some beautiful pictures of the poppies.

We visited Julián Prats Street and, from the outside, the Prats bar that was owned by the family.

The reunion-lunch of the families of the Molinos de Forcall.

On Saturday, May 5, 2007, exactly one year after Charo’s first email, we gathered in Forcall. Fifty descendants or relatives in some way of my great-grandfather Vicente Molinos Prats or his sister Pascuala.

Ricardo M.M. made a video in DVD of the event. The Mayor of Forcall came to the lunch to officially welcome us and delivered a beautiful book about Forcall gifted by the Colonia Forcallano-Catalana.

There were about six tables full, lots of youth and good humor all around. Kathy and I were seated with cousins of my generation: Consuelo Molinos Martín, Estrella Martín Molinos, Angelines Gil Molinos and Arístides Carbó Molinos. All of them grandchildren of Liborio Molinos Giner, the older brother of my grandfather Antonio Molinos Giner and heir to the farmhouse and its moleta.

There were gifts for the older cousins and especially for Arístides Carbó Molinos, who was celebrating his eightieth birthday.

Kathy was given a beautiful bouquet of flowers and I was given several family photos, including the original photo signed by my grandparents Antonio and Amelia on their wedding day in Chile on August 21, 1892. We received a commemorative plaque plus an allusive folder prepared by Ricardo M. M. and signed by the attendees. All very exciting.

Ricardo presented a summary of his genealogy of the Giner y Martín family and his historical work on the Masía del Huergo.

I made a presentation about the families of Chile and the USA and we hung a genealogical chart measuring 0.6m x 0.8m, handwritten by Consuelo Molinos Martín and her niece Marisa O.P. from Forcall. It was very gratifying to see how the young people tried to find themselves in the charts and how some made additions and corrections with pencil, as they went along. Vicente promised to send them an updated digital version.

A regional newspaper published a report and photo of the event.

Our thanks to the City Council of Forcall, to the Colonia Forcallana de Cataluña, to Mr. Enrique P.M., Periódico El Mundo and the attendees and organizers of the event. With our grateful memories and special affection for our departed ones.