His family: exile as homeland

Jorge Semprún was born into a bourgeois family in Madrid in 1923, the son of José María Semprún Gurrea and Susana Maura Gamazo. His maternal grandfather was Antonio Maura y Montaner, five times president of the Council of Ministers and a highly influential figure in Spanish political history. Jorge’s childhood and that of his six siblings was marked by the premature death of Susana Maura in 1932.

The Semprún family was on holiday in the coastal town of Lekeitio, in the province of Biscay, when the Civil War broke out in July 1936. A few months later, they set out for France aboard a boat from the port of Bilbao. It would be a one-way journey for most members of them.

For a few months the Semprúns were taken in by friends and associates of Jorge’s father in various towns in the south of France a nd Switzerland. Eventually, they settled in the The Hague, where José María was appointed to the Spanish Legation as chargé d’affaires for the government of the Republic. When the war ended in Spain they settled in Paris, given the impossibility of returning due to their support for the Republican cause.

From that moment on, Jorge Semprún, still a teenager, began using the name Georges de Semprún.