My dad’s love of foreign languages began when he gave up bus-conducting and crossed the Channel to fight Franco and become a communist. In Catalonia, a fighter told him that if the International Brigaders had known Esperanto, they might have had more success. When someone at a party school called Esperanto petty-bourgeois — then the line — he was shocked and disappointed. He told me later, “He’s wrong; it’s a good idea. It’s communism in words. One day, everyone will speak it.”

I loved this idea of a universal language. Its inventor designed it to be simple, and I learned it in just three months. In 2011, the Catalan Esperanto Association invited me to give a eulogy commemorating the International Brigadiers at their memorial in Montjuïc Cemetery. They wanted it in the form of a tribute to my father, so I gave it in Esperanto.

In the early twentieth century, revolutionaries embraced this language, seeing it as a tool to build international solidarity. Esperanto faded along with many of those hopes as it faced decades of attacks from fascist and Communist states alike, but its legacy is worth preserving.