Dolores
Ibárruri ‘La Passionaria’
Source: Biografias
y Vidas
olores Ibárruri [The Passion Flower]
Source: Biographies and Lives
(Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, called La
Pasionaria) Spanish communist leader (Gallarta, Vizcaya, 1895 - Madrid, 1989).
Born into a conservative mining family, Dolores Ibárruri became interested in
the workers' struggle under the influence of her husband, a socialist militant
whom she married in 1915.
Since she
took action on the occasion of the revolutionary general strike of 1917,
Dolores Ibárruri gained prestige as a political speaker and columnist, despite
the fact that she had interrupted her school training very soon to start
working as a servant.
Impressed
by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Dolores Ibárruri
participated together with the Somorrostro socialist group, of which she was a
member, in the split from the PSOE that gave rise to the birth of the Communist
Party of Spain (PCE) in 1920, reaching to form part of its Central Committee in
1930; In 1931 she moved to Madrid to work in the editorial office of the Party
newspaper, Mundo Obrero.
Her
activism as a tireless fighter of hers landed her in jail twice in 1931-33.
Recently elected deputy for Asturias in 1936, the uprising of the military
against the government of the Republic increased her popular charisma, by
deploying during the following Civil War (1936-39) a great propaganda activity;
her passionate, sensitive and coherent prose made her a symbol of the
resistance and combativeness of republican Spain.
La
Pasionaria signing autographs for soldiers
of the
international brigades (1938)
Already
during the war she rose to second place in influence within the party, after
its general secretary, José Díaz. After the military defeat, she went into
exile in the Soviet Union (1939-77), continuing her work as the representative
of Spain in the Communist International. When Díaz died in 1942, she Pasionaria
replaced him as general secretary of the PCE, a position from which she would
be displaced by Santiago Carrillo in 1960; she remained, however, in the honorary
position of president of the Party.
Dolores
Ibárruri returned to Spain after the death of Franco and the transition to
democracy, and she was again elected as a deputy for Asturias (1977). Even
then, she remained clinging to the old ideals of pro-Soviet communism, which
barely had any echo in Spanish society or in the PCE; Plagued by health
problems, she soon left her seat and withdrew from active politics.
Monument to Passionanaria
How to
cite this article:
Fernndez, Tomás and Tamaro, Elena. «Biography of
Dolores Ibárruri [La Pasionaria]». In Biographies and Lives. The
online biographical encyclopedia [Internet]. Barcelona, Spain,
2004. Available at https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/i/ibarruri.htm
[date of access: November 23, 2022].
With affection,
Ruben
(Dolores
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