I just realized you are also Spanish and I have a funny old story for you. Some decades ago the woman I was with had a mother who was Spanish, father was from a Caribbean island and they lived in the US. The mother was born in Tangir Morocco from Spanish parents, I knew of this for a while but didn’t think much more of it. At some period elections were coming up and between joke and casual discussion the mother said she was and will always vote republican (the more conservative of the two conservative parties dominating US elections). I dared asked why and she said my father was republican so I am a republican too. Republico in Spain in her father’s time meant he was against fascism and Franco. To confirm how much of a republico he was she explained that his friends (fishermen) called him Rojo. So I returned and I said that not only was he an anti-fascist he must have been a communist. She went crazy and didn’t want to hear about it, but she said the entire family and many relatives were exiled from Spain because they were “republican”.

The youngest son in early teen age, somehow paid extra attention and found this discussion interesting, so I offered to bring him books or what to ask for in library. I guess because he never met his grandfather but had his name became overly interested on what all this really meant. A few years later he has a music group playing songs about class war, filling up his school and neighborhood walls with graffiti about class war, and dedicated his life to radical anti-capitalism.

I had a cat named rojo for a while and many times I thought of this story when I used his name.

Rojo Vive no struggle is ever waste … it travels through time and generations, it is a seed that grows and replants itself and will never be uprooted.