Martin Sheen Who Do You Think You Are? USA

Actor Martin Sheen is embarking on a journey

into both sides of his family history,

where he discovers two ancestors...

..And the suffering that they endured.

..who help him understand the true meaning of activism.

You do it because you cannot NOT do it.

And before his search is over...

My God, it's cavernous, like an old cathedral.

..Martin will uncover a family connection

he never could have imagined.

Oh, my God!

With a career spanning more than half a century,

Martin Sheen is one of Hollywood's most versatile actors.

After achieving world-wide recognition

for his role in Apocalypse Now,

Martin began to let his passion for political activism

influence the roles he chose,

most notably in his Golden Globe-winning portrayal

of President Jed Bartlet on the hit series The West Wing.

Martin's four children - Charlie, Emilio, Ramon, and Renee -

all work in the entertainment industry.

Born Ramon Estevez to Spanish and Irish immigrants,

Martin and his wife of 50 years, Janet,

live in Malibu, California...

Hola, Emilio!

..just a stone's throw from his son, Emilio Estevez...

who is carrying on the family tradition of winemaking.

-What have you got today?

-Well, nothing you can have.

Nothing I can have, but I can look.

This is the new brew. New label.

-New label.

-Yeah.

-In Pop's vineyard in Galicia.

-Yes.

-This is the photograph we took in the vineyard...

-Yeah.

-..in 1969.

-Right. Amazing.

-And if you see, you are credited...

-Ah.

-..with taking the photo.

Ramon Gerard Antonio Estevez.

-The photographer.

-Yeah.

'I'm going on this journey for myself,

'but the residual effect could very well be beneficial

'to my children and their children. That would be'

a wonderful gift for them, I think.

I don't, uh, know very much about

my father's ancestry in Spain.

I have less information about

my father's side than my mother's.

My mother's name was Mary-Ann Phelan,

and she was born in Borrisokane,

County Tipperary, in Ireland, of course.

Unfortunately, she died very young.

She was just 48

when she died in 1951,

and I was almost 11. So a lot of her memory has faded over the years,

but she had a brother named Michael Phelan,

who I've always been fascinated with.

He was an Irish volunteer with the Irish Republican Army

in the war of independence from Great Britain.

But I don't know the extent of his, uh, activity

in the Civil War in Ireland in the 1920s.

So that intrigues me immensely,

because I've spent a good number of years

protesting for peace and social justice,

and I've been tossed in jail

more than a couple of times because of it.

So I'm really curious to know

where that committed spirit comes from.

Did my Uncle Michael, or anyone else in my family,

have similar convictions?

Here we go.

Uh, I see his death record here,

which tells me he died in Tipperary, but not much else.

Martin is travelling to Ireland

to see if he can find out more about Michael Phelan.

He's starting his search in Dublin.

Martin has come to the military archives

to see if there's any record

of his uncle Michael Phelan's involvement in the Irish Civil War.

Now, Mr Sheen, we found Michael Phelan's application

under the 1934 Act. So if you want to have a look,

and if you wouldn't mind wearing these gloves, please.

-I will.

-Thank you.

-Thanks so much. OK.

Oh, my.

Whoa. It's amazing. This is all in his hand.

This is an actual document that he filled out

in order to get his, uh, pension for service in the army.

All right, it's saying here, uh,

"Continuous act of service period

"from 12th July 1921 to June 30th 1922."

Michael's record proves that

he served from the beginning of the Civil War,

which began in Ireland on June 28th 1922,

as a result of political conflict

born out of Ireland's freedom from Great Britain.

Just six months before, the Anglo-Irish peace treaty was signed,

dividing the region into two territories -

Northern Ireland and the newly created Irish Free State,

which was deemed a self-governing dominion

under the British Crown.

For years before, the old IRA,

under the leadership of Michael Collins,

had been fighting for a truly free and entirely independent Ireland.

And when the treaty was offered,

Michael Collins felt it was a step toward their ultimate goal

and accepted.

But many of the staunch activists

who fought alongside Collins for years felt betrayed

and continued to push for

an Irish Republic,

resulting in the Irish Civil War.

All right, here looks like a letter.

"A statement in support of my application for a pension.

"After an armed attack on Free State troops

"with land mine laid on July 20th near Roscrea,

"I was captured with others and taken to Maryborough Prison

"and released there on December 23rd 1922.

"Whilst in Maryborough, I assisted to burn the prison."

Oh, my God, he burned down the prison.

"I continued with a small company

"in my own area to be active,

"blocking roads, cutting telegraph poles, etc.

"I was arrested on March 10th by Free State troops

"and served in Birr, Athlone, and Kilmainham jail.

"Released from latter in October 1923."

Michael's testimony has revealed

that he was captured by Irish Free State troops,

which means he was fighting against Michael Collins.

It's interesting, because I had thought

he was on the other side during the Civil War,

that he was supporting Mick Collins.

But evidently, he was on the other side,

supporting the Republic.

I didn't know this.

I'm inclined to become more and more interested

in the mystery of Michael Phelan

because, you know, he was a great mystery to all of us,

and particularly those in the States.

We only heard rumours about his involvement with the Civil War,

but until now, I didn't realise what side he was even on.

I thought it was the other one!

So this makes quite a big difference in understanding

where he stood and what it cost him,

because he was in prison on several different occasions,

and it leads me to want to know more.

To try and understand why his Uncle Michael

rejected the Anglo-Irish peace treaty

and to find out more about Michael's motivation

to continue the fight for

a fully independent Ireland,

Martin has arranged to meet with

historian Dr Edward Madigan,

who specialises in the Irish Civil War.

I was surprised to learn

this morning that he opposed the Free Staters.

And, uh, what really fascinated me was,

-uh, his imprisonment, and the number of times.

-Mm.

What happens is that

very staunchly anti-treaty IRA men and IRA officers,

especially in the south, places like Tipperary and Cork, say,

"We will never accept this treaty.

"We've sworn to fight for Irish independence,

"and that's what we're going to continue to do."

The people who are in favour of the treaty,

they form the National Army,

what Michael here refers to in his pension record as

the Free State army.

And the Free State army go to war against the anti-treaty IRA.

So you can understand the...

motivations of a very idealistic young man like your uncle.

This is something that he committed his life to.

And now he's been told, "Well, it was all in vain.

"We haven't established a republic,"

or, "We haven't defended the republic that we swore to die for."

So he's a committed republican. He's part of the movement.

He's active in it. And the sort of activity we see him involved in,

uh, in the pension records -

raiding barracks, um, getting in prisons, arrested,

this is very typical of IRA activity.

So he's right in the middle of it?

He's at the epicentre of what's going on. And when he's in prison,

it's not simply, "OK, I'm in jail now, and that's it."

He continues to serve. This is active service as well,

so he continues to resist the regime from inside the prison walls.

He's still active. He sees himself as a prisoner of war.

It's his duty to keep annoying the, um, the establishment.

-I heard he burned one down.

-Yeah, I mean, he was active.

There was organised disobedience and resistance to the prison regime

and destruction of the whole prison.

-Yeah.

-Uh, so... His activity during this period

definitely suggests that he was a man of commitment,

-a man of conviction and a brave man.

-Mm-hmm.

In a very real way, Michael Phelan's story

is the story of the Irish revolution.

I have a very great appreciation and admiration

for his idealism and his courage and his commitment

to a cause that he believed in, the cause of freedom,

and, uh, what he was willing to pay for that.

And so I'm looking forward now

to visiting one of the jails

that my Uncle Michael was confined to, and that would be

Kilmainham jail, here in Dublin.

-Hello.

-Hello, there.

-You're Will.

-I am. Welcome.

Good to meet you. Thank you so much.

-So this is it.

-This is Kilmainham.

Wow. Oh, my God.

Draconian, to say the least.

This is probably the most iconic prison of the revolutionary period.

So was my uncle held in this very...compound?

As far as we know, your uncle was held in this wing.

Our best guess is that he was held up on this floor here.

-The second floor?

-Would you like to go up and have a look at that cell?

-Yes, I would. Yes, thanks so much, yeah.

-OK.

-Here we go. Wow.

-This is the cell where we think, perhaps, your uncle was held.

-Wow.

So you can see the conditions here.

Uh, they're not very pleasant. Very small cells.

You've got very poor sanitation here.

It's quite overcrowded during the Civil War period,

and you've got very basic bedding.

And there would be one person in here?

-He would've been alone in here?

-Um, it varied.

So the ideal was that there would be one person here,

but the Civil War is a period when you have,

you know, a lot of people in prison.

Come the end of the Civil War, we think there were about 12,000 people

-in various prisons and camps around Ireland.

-Wow.

I'm enormously proud of him.

I would like to hope that, if I had been here

in Ireland at the time,

I would've followed him, and I'd have been as committed as he was.

I've been involved

in a lot of campaigns for peace and social justice.

And I had the same kind of,

uh, commitment in those areas

that he had here,

and that is that you really do it for yourself.

You don't expect to change the world.

You don't expect to even influence your family or your friends.

You do it because you cannot NOT do it and be who you are

or who you're meant to be.

This part of the journey is over.

And now we're headed, uh, to my father's side in Spain,

and I'm enormously curious about what, uh, awaits me there.

Martin is travelling to the Spanish capital of Madrid

to start investigating his paternal Estevez lineage.

And we'll be visiting one of my favourite people

in all the world, my sister Carmen.

She has a lot of information

because she's lived here for so long and worked here.

And so she has a lot more knowledge

and a better understanding

of our father's Spanish heritage than I could ever have.

You were going to do this without me!

Before we talk about Pop,

I just thought it might be nice to look at us.

Sons and daughter of immigrants.

See, at a very early age,

you obviously didn't want much to do with the rest of us.

-Hiding over here, trying...

-I removed myself from...

You've already got that James Dean pose.

-Before HE had it.

-Before he had it.

"Oh, God, don't look at me. Don't look at me!"

I think I had a big, uh, safety pin

holding up my overalls.

-This is our grandmother...

-Oh, my God. That's her...

In Parderrubias. Yes.

-That's the old homestead.

-Yes, yes, yes.

We think we were poor, but they were really poor.

I mean, really poor.

Martin knows that his grandparents, Manuel and Dolores,

had seven children.

But he knows very little about his father's youngest brother,

his Uncle Matias.

-You remember the Spanish Civil War?

-Sure.

-Yeah, well...

Matias was arrested as a communist,

and he was in jail in Tui.

Every time he would go by that,

what is now a cultural centre,

he would say,

"Oh. They had me in there, and they were going to kill me.

"And now they're all dead, and I'm still alive."

This is news to me because I only heard kind of rumours and stories.

I didn't know about, uh, Matias's background.

I knew that he was forbidden to travel.

-Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's when he was marked as a communist.

-Yeah.

Matias's home in Galicia was where the Spanish Civil War began.

In 1936, General Francisco Franco and his rebel forces

launched a violent coup

against the democratically elected Spanish Republic.

Anyone who opposed Franco's regime

and fought to restore the elected government,

like Matias Estevez, was imprisoned.

The resulting civil war raged for three years

until Franco emerged victorious.

Franco's fascist dictatorship

remained in power for nearly 40 years until his death in 1975.

-And this is Matias.

-Oh, my God.

This is Matias with Joaquina and his daughters,

Angelita and Lola.

It's so interesting because there were civil wars

in both of our parents' countries.

-Yeah, and we had no idea.

-Yes.

And the suffering that they endured.

I'm particularly interested in Matias and his background.

He, uh, went through the Civil War

and I'm interested in finding out

specifically what happened to him and why.

According to Martin's sister, Carmen,

their Uncle Matias served in the Spanish Civil War

and was imprisoned under General Franco's brutal regime.

To find out more about when his uncle joined

the fight against fascism,

what he did and where exactly he was imprisoned,

Martin has come to the national library in Madrid.

He's arranged to meet

with historian Alejandro Quiroga,

who has uncovered some records on Matias's Civil War activity.

I'm hoping, Alex, that you can enlighten me

with some truth about Matias.

Yeah, he had, um, a very interesting life

and, um, and a very difficult life.

The first reference of, uh, your Uncle Matias

is a reference in this book that was written by a pro-Franco priest.

So this is a propaganda book.

So this is the actual translation.

"By mid-July 1936, armed groups

"committed all kinds of abuses.

"One of those groups was led by Matias Estevez Martinez,

"also known as El Rato. The Mouse.

"His gang went on a van to the house

"of the mayor of the village, Mr Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez.

"The group required the mayor to join them

"in an attack on a local military police barracks

"and threatened to kill him if he was not to obey."

So basically, he was fighting against the rebels.

Yeah. The thing that's quite important are the dates.

The dates are the 20th and the 21st of July 1936.

That's very near the start of the Civil War.

That's the very, very beginning, exactly.

So he is actually attempting to stop the coup d'etat,

and what we know is that he was arrested after that

and was put in front of a military tribunal.

And they charged him with military rebellion.

They weren't even a legitimate government.

-No, of course not.

-They were a military coup,

and they were already holding tribunals.

-So these fascists...

-Mm-hmm.

..were forcing their form of law

on people who were law-abiding.

That's the bottom line, isn't it?

-That is the bottom line.

-Yeah.

And you can read this sentence.

"We do declare that Matias Estevez Martinez

"must be condemned to life imprisonment."

So... My God, huh?

Life imprisonment?

-Do you know where he was...

-Yes.

-..in prison?

We know that because this book is, um,

Episodes Of Terror During The Civil War In The island Of San Simon.

And this is the list of, um, prisoners.

Wow, there were a lot of Estevezes.

I probably had a whole...

a whole bunch of, uh, relatives there with him.

My God. So here he is.

He's... It would he be 611?

Is that his prison number?

His prison number, yeah.

This is a place of extermination, place of terror,

a place created with the idea of, um,

in a very fascist manner, of purifying the nation.

The idea is to put as many people as possible there.

If they die out of starvation

or, uh, lack of sanitary conditions,

it doesn't matter.

Prior to the Civil War, Spanish prisons held some 12,000 convicts.

But after the war's end, the number of detainees

swelled to more than one million.

Nearly 100,000 of them died behind bars.

Matias Estevez served a year of his life sentence in San Simon,

before he was transferred in 1937

to Franco's largest and most notorious prison,

San Cristobal, near Pamplona.

We have found the, uh,

actual register of, um, San Cristobal.

This is the sort of, uh, clase de penas, sort of sentence,

life imprisonment.

He is actually sentenced on 24th September 1936.

But I know he didn't serve a life sentence.

Does it say anything about when he is to be released, or...?

He is to be...released here.

Oh, my God. 1966?

-Did he serve that whole time?

-He didn't.

He was released in 1940.

Thank God.

-Yeah.

-And what does this say?

"Prision atenuada,"

which means that he was released

but still under, uh, surveillance.

He was, like, uh, under house arrest.

And it says here until 1966.

It's astonishing. So he spent a total of four years in prison -

one year on San Simon island

and three years in San Cristobal in Pamplona.

Mm-hmm.

And they kept records of all these people that far...

after the war? That's, like, 30 years.

I had no idea

that he suffered this gravely.

What a brave guy.

He survived four years in two different concentration camps.

They were instituted

to break people's will and to create fear in the populace,

and that's what they did.

So I'm just anxious

to get to Pamplona and discover his circumstances

in San Cristobal.

Martin is meeting

with Spanish Civil War historian Julius Ruiz.

Matias would've arrived by bus or by van.

He would've been driven through those gates,

and then he would've been driven through this tunnel.

Oh, my God, it's cavernous, like an old cathedral.

-Extraordinary.

-Amazing, yeah.

-Absolutely extraordinary.

-Yeah.

How many were confined here?

When it was used before the Civil War,

um, to hold, um, the prisoners for the revolution,

maybe 600, 700 prisoners were here.

But by the time your uncle arrived,

um, prisoners were arriving en masse from all over Spain.

-And, uh, so in 1938, there were 2,500.

-Wow.

If we walk here, what we're going to see

is something that's Dante-esque.

We're now entering the worst of the very worst.

Wow.

This is kind of what it would've been like,

uh, at night down here.

Well, or even in high noon, huh?

-Yeah.

-Oh, my.

So here we are. This is just one of the cells

-in which 25 to 50 prisoners would have been held.

-What?

This is the only source of light?

This is the only source of light that they had.

-Do you see, there's no glass?

-Yeah.

Uh, so you know, they were... it was open to the elements.

We're very close to the Pyrenees,

so in winter, we're talking subzero temperatures, uh, biting winds.

This is a reasonably warm sunny day,

so you can just imagine.

This is where, you know,

he was expected to serve his 30 years' sentence.

Wow. Boy, oh, boy.

There's a great similarity here on this journey, uh,

to San Cristobal from Kilmainham.

The idealism of both of these young men,

both uncles the same age, a year's difference maybe.

Idealistic, tough, deeply human.

And they suffered greatly for...

I... This place is like, I've never seen anything like this.

I can only imagine what being confined here

at that time and never knowing how it was going to end

and how he must have felt when he was released,

because he really wasn't released.

He was on a tether. He was out from behind these walls,

but he was confined to the walls of his own village.

And, you know,

these scoundrels denigrated him

by calling him El Rato, which means The Mouse.

He outlived all of these fascists.

So in the end, he was the mouse that roared,

and I say, "God bless him."

Martin has found out as much as he can

about his Uncle Matias's political past.

Now he wants to dig further back into his paternal Spanish ancestry.

Martin's sister Carmen has sent him

their father Francisco's birth certificate

and he's come to the town of Tui,

where he's meeting with genealogist Matthew Hovius

to see what information the birth certificate contains.

So, Matthew, this is my father's birth certificate. The problem is,

it's in Galego, and, uh, not only do I not speak Spanish,

I don't speak Galego either. So if you could help me, I'd be grateful.

Sure, I'd like to just go through the text here.

Now, let's see, we've got your father Francisco.

So it says, um, he is the legitimate son of Manuel Estevez Fernandez,

and that would be your grandfather,

and of Dolores Martinez, that would be your grandmother.

And, uh, the maternal grandparents of the child

are Carmen Martinez and grandfather unknown.

Martin has discovered

that his great-grandmother

was called Carmen Martinez.

With Matthew's help, he's been able

to trace his family back

a further three generations to the 1700s,

to his four-times great-grandparents,

don Diego Francisco Suarez and Maria Gonzalez.

Matthew's research has also found something intriguing

about don Diego and Maria Gonzalez

in the marriage record of their daughter Paula.

This gives us a lot of interesting information,

but there's one particularly important aspect of the record.

Um, if you notice here where it describes Paula, it says,

"Hija natural de don Diego Suarez y de Maria Antonia Gonzalez."

And what that means is

that Paula was the natural daughter of don Diego...

-Of don Diego Suarez and Maria Gonzalez.

-That's right.

-Uh-huh.

Why is it important to say that?

Well, because what that means is that she's the natural daughter.

You notice that, um,

Pelayo, her husband, is described as the legitimate son of his parents.

If, uh, Paula is described as the natural daughter of don Diego,

um, that means that her father wasn't married to her mother.

-Her father don Diego was not married to...

-To Maria Gonzalez.

Now, let's take a look at Diego's own marriage record.

Everything we've seen so far have been books from Parderrubias.

This register is actually from the cathedral in Tui.

This is in 1740, and what the priest is telling us is,

"I celebrated the marriage contracted by...

"don Diego Suarez Delago, who married Manuela de Alfaya."

-We have Paula Suarez's mother as Maria Gonzalez...

-Yes.

-And here we see don Diego marrying Manuela de Alfaya.

-Whoops.

According to the church records,

don Diego was not married to Maria Gonzalez,

but was actually married to a woman named Manuela de Alfaya.

But don Diego didn't stop there.

In addition to Martin's three-times great-grandmother Paula,

don Diego and his mistress Maria

went on to have five more illegitimate children together.

And, uh, this is the baptism book covering...

-1739 to 1780.

-But they also used the baptism register

-for some other sacraments, such as confirmation.

-I see.

And the way confirmation was done at the time

was usually not every year, but every few years,

if some prominent local churchman would happen to come through,

like the Bishop of Tui. All the children who hadn't been confirmed

since the last visit would be brought out for confirmation.

If you notice, this was in September 1777.

And I can tell you that

your great-great-great-great grandfather don Diego,

uh, died just three years before this.

So this would've been the first confirmation ceremony

in Parderrubias since Diego had passed away.

-And she came out of the closet with this brood of children.

-Exactly.

After they put him in the ground.

And I think what that says about her is that

she must have been a very loyal person

because she seems to have kept all these children out of sight

for as long as she could.

This is an extraordinary woman, Maria Gonzalez. Wow.

How did don Diego come to his status as a don?

For Galicia, the first place I would look would be the regional archive,

known as the Archivo del Reino de Galicia in La Coruna.

This investigation is getting curiouser and curiouser.

We have landed on a very interesting couple,

namely don - I want to say don Juan,

it appears he was a bit of a don Juan - don Diego Suarez.

And I have to go to La Coruna to find out more

about don Diego and see just what his life was all about

and how many relatives he left on my tree.

Martin has discovered that his four-times great-grandfather

don Diego Francisco Suarez

had six illegitimate children...

..but was also referred to in the records as a don.

So Martin is enlisting the help of historian Edward Behrend-Martinez

to find out who this titled

and prominent man really was.

I have here, um, the only document that we have

relating to don Diego Francisco Suarez,

your great-great-great-great grandfather.

Um, and, uh... So I'll let you take a look at that.

-Oh, my.

-And it says...

I translated it here for you.

All right.

"In the said town in jurisdiction

"on 24th June of the said year,

"his honour don Diego Francisco Suarez,

"the said ordinary judge..."

What is this all about?

Is don Diego Francisco Suarez a judge?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

He is the highest...authority...

Yeah.

..legal authority in the community?

-Yeah, absolutely.

-Unbelievable.

So the judge, "Stated that, based on the contents of the said proceedings

"regarding the absence of Antonia Pereira, single woman,

"he would and did order that the following edict

"be made public, as specified in the law."

So please tell me, uh, this...judge,

don Diego Francisco Suarez, has decreed

-someone is a criminal.

-Yes.

He's going after a young woman, Antonia Pereira,

who had had an affair with a very privileged man in the community.

When they say "privileged", meaning he's untouchable,

-they mean, very likely, a cleric or a priest.

-Oh.

And then it turned out in the spring of 1748, she gets pregnant.

And then Antonia goes off to a midwife

to seek remedies for the pregnancy.

-An abortion.

-Yeah.

Wow, so the basic crime here, if you will,

is not the affair or the impending birth,

-but the abortion.

-Yeah.

So don Diego Francisco Suarez was pursuing Antonia

with, um, as much power and, uh, vigour as he could.

In fact, your ancestor sends out

an order to have wanted posters put up all over, uh, the area.

But his motivation, uh, really strikes me

as a double standard, obviously,

because he was engaged, while he was married,

in an illicit affair with Senora Gonzalez

and he had six children.

Right, but I don't think it ever occurred...

So in essence, he was quite above the law, we would say.

-Yeah, he is the law.

-He is the law.

-Right.

-OK.

-Wow.

Don Diego, you son of a gun.

We've done a bit more research.

Uh, we have a family tree for you.

Wow. That's taking us on

my grandmother's side

to don Diego.

And he is buried 6th December 1773

in the cathedral in Tui, Galicia.

-He's buried in the cathedral?

-Yeah.

Wow, he really was a big shot.

-Yeah, he was.

-Hmm, now we're going to look at

my grandfather's side.

His father was Augustin Estevez Martinez.

And Augustin's father was Jose Estevez,

and he was married to Maria Rosa Martinez.

And her mother and father are Juan Martinez

and his wife, Liberata.

And her father

is Ramon Martinez.

Mm-hmm.

And his wife is Antonia Pereira.

The young girl.

Oh, my God.

Isn't that amazing?

Nearly 150 years after don Diego Suarez's attempted prosecution

of the young Antonia Pereira,

an extraordinary thing happened.

Two lines on Martin's family tree converged

when his grandfather, Manuel Estevez Fernandez,

married his grandmother, Dolores Martinez,

which means that it was his four-times great-grandmother

who was being relentlessly pursued

by Martin's four-times great-grandfather.

Unbelievable!

It's amazing that we have one document that leads to this result.

It's just astonishing

that the connection...

..is so far back and so intimate,

and yet so spread apart.

-Over two centuries.

-Mm-hmm.

-This is the Antonia...

-Yeah.

..that was so scandalised and brutalised and pursued.

But apparently, she was able to come back to Parderrubias

-and make a life for herself and get married.

-Astonishing.

This extraordinary young woman,

pursued by this...

..unbelievable figure,

don Diego Francisco Suarez.

Wait till Carmen gets a load of this!

It makes me feel a bit more human

to have uncovered

what this dear woman, particularly,

Antonia, did as a young, single girl, what she endured,

and how she kept her life together

and stayed in that community

with all of this exposure falling on her.

This disgrace makes me extremely proud

to have been grown on the same tree as

my great-great-great-great grandmother Antonia.

Martin has one final thing left to do on his journey

and that is to share everything he has learned with his family.

He's travelling to the village of Parderrubias,

where his father was born and raised,

to meet with his sister Carmen and son Ramon.

I've been on quite a journey

these last few weeks,

and I have a lot of information I need to share with you.

To have uncovered information

on two uncles,

both of whom suffered imprisonment

and ostracisation by the community,

I didn't have a clue.

It encourages me to continue my work in peace and justice,

and, uh, now I have a sense

of where that gene comes from.

And then to have had this whole other section of the tree

suddenly blossom before my eyes,

where we go to Maria Gonzalez,

who has this association with a don.

If you had told me at the beginning of this journey

where I was going, I wouldn't have imagined such a place.

Tell me the name of the girl again.

-Antonia Pereira.

-And who prosecuted her?

Don Diego Francisco Suarez.

Your great-great-great-great grandfather.

Are you ready to meet your great-great-great-great grandmother?

-Tell me the name...

-Oh, my God!

Say her name.

Antonia...

Antonia Pereira.

He is our great-great-great-great grandfather,

-who prosecuted her...

-And he prosecuted her.

This is the Spain where these people live.

-Oh, my goodness.

-It's unbelievable.

I mean, you couldn't...come up with this if you tried.

-You couldn't.

-I mean, this is, uh, unbelievable.

It's astonishing

that the tree has revealed

what you couldn't have imagined

and, if you'd written a novel with all these truths in it,

they'd say, "Ah, it's a bit over the top." It actually happened.