Spain Visit: Part 2

Kevan Nelson, Eddie Redmond, Mike Derman & Ray Short

During their visit to Spain last week CPB members visited the grave of Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez. Isidora, or "the Passionflower" as she was known, joined the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) when it was founded in 1920, and in the 1930s she wrote for their publication Mundo Obrero.

She was elected to the Cortes Generales as a PCE deputy for the Principality of Asturias in Northern Spain from 1936 until the end of the Spanish Civil War when she went into exile.

When she returned to Spain in 1977 she was re-elected as a deputy to the Cortes for the same region she had previously represented under the Spanish Second Republic.

The next visit was to pay their respects at the memorial of the 13 Roses; 13 young Socialist women who were imprisoned, tortured and summarily executed by a Franquista firing squad four months after the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Left to right: Mike Derman (Morning Star Readers & Supporters Group), Kevan Nelson (CPB Liverpool),  
Eddie Redmond (CPB Manchester), Ray Short (Morning Star Readers & Supporters Group).

In postwar Madrid there was vicious persecution and resentment of any citizen suspected of “joining the rebellion”.

Kevan Nelson lays flowers at the 13 Rosas Memorial

These women aged 18-27 were rounded up in Madrid in July 1939 in a wave of arrests of members of the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas organization of young Socialist and Communist party activists.

Following imprisonment and torture, the thirteen were executed by firing squad along with 47 other civilian opponents of the Franco regime on 5th August 1939.

Widely known as the “13 Rosas” ever since, seven of the women were under the age of 21 and considered minors in Spain at the time.


Further Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Ib%C3%A1rruri
https://howlinginfinite.com/2019/04/02/las-trece-rosas/