Xàbia : Facts and Anecdotes - Did you know...….that Xàbia has rightly dedicated the year 2024 to its most notable personality, a true Christian and a man of great humanity : Antoni Llidó.

Antoni was born in Xàbia on 29th April 1936. His parents were both from Xàbia. His mother was Mariana Mengual Roselló (Marianeta), his father was Antoni Llidó Fornet (Tonet). They lived in the Calle Mayor, no. 2, where his father had his butcher´s shop. His father also had a stall in the covered market hall, opposite the church. He was one of the four or five butchers in the pueblo. In 1947, when Antoni was only 11 and his sister Pepa 7, their father passed away (possibly of cancer) leaving Marianeta alone with the two children. She was unable to run the buthcher´s shop, so she decided to turn it into a shop selling all kinds of sweets, chocolates, tobacco and the like. The children helped  their mother as much as they could. And of course, they continued their education. Despite her limited means, Marianeta knew the importance of educating her children and worked hard to make it possible. Antoni finished his studies at the Academia Jesús Nazareno, after which he won a scholarship from the Cooperativa Agricola de Xàbia to study in Alicante. He graduated in Education in 1956. Pepa became a nurse.

Having finished his degree, Antoni surprised everyone by announcing that he had decided to become a priest. It was most unexpected. There was nothing in his life to presage such a decision.  Marianeta, who was a good person, took the children to Mass every Sunday, like everyone else. However, she was not overly religious and there was nothing in Antoni´s character to suggest such a choice : he was a sociable, cheerful extrovert. At large family meals, there was always much singing and joviality and Antoni was a merrymaker. He had many friends - boys and girls - and spent a lot of time with his „cuadrilla“ where he loved to sing and dance. 
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What made him suddenly turn to priesthood was a mystery that nobody understood ! He must have felt a vocation.

Antoni went to the seminary in Moncada, just over 10 kilometres north of Valencia, and was ordained a priest in 1963. On the 22 September of that year, he celebrated mass in the church of San Bartomeu in Xàbia. In 1961, while he was still studying at the seminary, his mother died of a stroke. On that sad day, Antoni picked up Pepa who was studying in Valencia and together they went to the funeral. He was 23 and Pepa was only 19.

It was in his first post as a priest, that Antoni´s social commitment became manifest. From 1963 to 1967 he was the pastor of 700 people in two villages, about twenty kilometres from Alcoy : Balones and Quatretondeta. The villagers were mostly agricultural workers who needed all the family members to work so as to earn just enough to subsist. As a teacher, Antoni was aware of the importance of education in overcoming poverty. He encouraged parents to send their children on to higher education after primary school. With the local school teachers, he organised for the students to attend radio classes after working in the fields. Through friends at the University of Valencia, he arranged for volunteer students from various disciplines to come and teach them on weekends. Not only that, he even worked in the fields himself to assist the parents whenever he could. By the end of his 4 years there, he had helped many students to go on to university. These two villages had the highest rate of children graduating from university, higher than any other municipality for kilometres around. 

Antoni already saw his role as a priest to be one of helping and serving those most in need. He was acutely aware of social injustice and felt it was his duty to do all he could to alleviate poverty. He saw in the teachings of the Bible a call to help those most in need.

But this did not please Antoni´s superiors in the Church, which  throughout history has identified itself with the ruling class. Antoni knew that when he was subsequently sent as a chaplain to the military hospital at El Ferrol, on the Galician coast, it was as a punishment. Again he clashed with the authorities there,  helping the lowly soldiers and sailors rather than the officers. Seeing the misery and poverty of the seafaring community, he became radicalised. After only ten months, he was suspended from this post. He realised that for him there was no future with the church in Spain and when the opportunity arose to work as a missionary in Chile, where there was a shortage of priests, he felt it was the path he had to take. In 1969, sent by the Episcopal Commission for Missions and Cooperation, he left for South America.

He was never to return to Spain.
 - Antoni Llidó´s struggle for a more just society in Chile follows in part II -.