Dolores Ibarruri
Dolores Ibárruri, known as La Pasionaria, was the most famous orator of the Spanish Republic and a Communist leader for half a century. Born in Gallarta in the Basque mining region in 1895, the eighth of eleven children of a Basque miner and a Castilian mother, she wanted to be a teacher and could not afford it, working instead as a domestic servant and seamstress before marrying a miner. She joined the socialist group in Somorrostro, and wrote her first article for a miners' paper during Holy Week in 1918 under the pen name Pasionaria, meaning passion flower. She was among the founders of the Spanish Communist Party in 1920, joined its central committee in 1930, and was elected to the Cortes in February 1936. When the generals rose in July 1936 she became the Republic's most recognisable voice. She broadcast on the first day, ending with No pasarán — they shall not pass — which became the slogan of the defence of Madrid, and she is credited with the line that it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. Her farewell address to the departing International Brigades in Barcelona in 1938 is among the best-known speeches of the century. Her life was hard beyond the politics: four of her six children died in infancy, and her son Rubén was killed at Stalingrad in 1942 fighting with the Red Army. She went into exile in 1939 and led the party from Moscow for decades. She returned to Spain in 1977 after Franco's death, aged eighty-one, was elected again to the Cortes for her old Asturian seat, and died in 1989.
- Lived: 1892 CE – 1989 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: political_leader, orator
