The little town of Piles, in Valencia, Spain, looks like a nice place, if a little sleepy. It has a population of around 2500. It has some nice Mediterranean beaches. But it has a grim incident in its history.
Carmelo Sastre Sastre (I admit to selecting him because I enjoy names that repeat, like Sirhan Sirhan and Boutros Boutros Ghali)… start again.
Carmelo Sastre Sastre was a humble parish priest with a demonstrable desire to give everything he had to serve the poor. He started out with a literacy campaign, thinking that education was the best way to serve the neediest folks. He taught people in his home, then the most proficient students became instructors, and through 1920s, his literacy campaign spread. He arranged trips for his own young students, making school fun enough that they wanted to stay involved.
Go here to read the rest. One of the thousands of priests martyred by Republican forces at the onset of the Spanish Civil War.
