Portrait of the day: Dolores İbárruri; “We would rather die on our feet than live on our knees”

Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, known as la Pasionaria (the Passionflower) was a Spanish Republican politician of the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 and a communist known for her famous slogan ¡No Pasarán!. She was born on December 9, 1895, Gallarta, to a Basque miner and a Castillian mother. She left school at fifteen after spending two years preparing for teacher's college at the encouragement of the schoolmistress. Her parents could not afford further education, so she went to work as a seamstress and later as a housemaid. She became a waitress in the town of Arboleda. There, she met Julián Ruiz Gabiña, union activist and founder of Socialist Youth of Somorrostro. They married in 1915. They participated in the general strike of 1917. Dolores İbárruri spent nights reading the works of Karl Marx and others found in the library of the Socialist Workers' Centre in Somorrostro.

She wrote her first article in 1918 for the miners' newspaper, El Minero Vizcaíno. She signed it with the alias “Pasionaria.” In 1920, she joined the Communist Party of Spain and was named a member of the Provincial Committee of the Basque Communist Party. In the 1930s, she became a writer for the Communist Party of Spain publication Mundo Obrero. She worked to improve the living conditions of women. She was jailed and arrested many times for her activities. In 1933, she traveled to Moscow as a delegate of the 13th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). In 1934, she attended the First Worldwide Meeting of Women against War and Fascism.

Going into exile from Spain towards the end of the Civil War in 1939, she became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain, a position she held from 1942 to 1960. In 1961, she received a Doctor Honoris Causa in Historical Sciences from Moscow State University for her contributions to the development of Marxist theory. In 1964, she shared the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples, with three others. As confirmation of her retirement from active politics, she wrote her first memoir in 1960. The book, entitled El Unico Camino (The Only Way) was published first in Paris in 1962. In 1975, she returned to her country after the death of Spanish dictator Franco. Upon her return to Spain in 1977 she was re-elected as a deputy to the Cortes for the same region she had represented from 1936 to 1939 under the Spanish Second Republic.