Isidora Dolores Ibarruri Gomez

Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez (9 December 1895 – 12 November 1989) – known as "La Pasionaria" (Spanish, "the Passionflower") – was a Spanish Republican heroine of the Spanish Civil War and communist politician of Basque origin, known for her famous slogan ¡No Pasarán! ("They shall not pass") during the Battle for Madrid in November 1936.

She joined the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) when it was founded in 1921. In the 1930s, she became a writer for the PCE publication Mundo Obrero and in February 1936 was elected to the Cortes Generales as a PCE deputy for Asturias. After her exile from Spain at the end of the Civil War, she was appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain, a position she held from 1942 to 1960. She was then named honorary president of the PCE, a post she held for the rest of her life. Upon her return to Spain in 1977, she was re-elected as a deputy to the Cortes for the same region she had represented under the Second Republic.

New York Times Obituary Dolores Ibarruri, 'La Pasionaria' Of Spanish Civil War, Dies at 93; An Indomitable Leftist By PAUL HOFMANN Published: November 13, 1989 Dolores Ibarruri was better known at home and abroad under her battle name, La Pasionaria, the Passion Flower. A Basque left-winger who was a founder of the Spanish Communist Party, she won international renown during the Spanish Civil War for her indomitable stand.

In her first broadcast after the outbreak of war in 1936 she told Spanish republicans: It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees! They shall not pass! The last two words - no pasaran in Spanish -became the rallying cry of the dying republic.

Later, in her years living in Moscow, she met many Soviet and non-Soviet Communist leaders, including Mao and Ho Chi Minh. Asked in a 1983 interview which of them was most impressive, she answered without hesitation, Logically, Stalin. In many broadcasts and messages from the Soviet Union to Spain, she advocated collaboration between Communists and all other left-wing and so-called progressive forces, including Roman Catholic groups.

While the Franco regime never forgave her for her role before and during the civil war, which ended in 1939, Spanish anti-Communists would reluctantly acknowledge that she had shown courage and determination. Some backers of Franco would even say privately that La Pasionaria, though in error, was a great Spaniard. A Delicate Child

Dolores Ibarruri was the 8th of 11 children of a miner's family in the harsh mountains near Bilbao, in northern Spain. Born in the village of Somorrostro on a day in December 1895, as she wrote in her autobiography, she went to school until she was 15, two years longer than required by law, because she was of delicate health and her parents thought she might become a teacher rather than a manual worker.

The family's poverty prevented this. After being apprenticed to a dressmaker for a short time, she worked for three years as a maid.

At the age of 20 she married Julian Ruiz, a miner from Asturias who had migrated to the Basque country. In her memoirs, The Only Way, published in Paris, Havana and Mexico in 1962-63, La Pasionaria wrote curiously little about her husband, by whom she had six children, including three girls born as triplets in 1923. All but two of the six died soon after birth. Her only son, Ruben, born in 1922, was reportedly killed in World War II fighting for the Soviet Union.

Deeply religious as a girl, she lost her Roman Catholic faith when she started reading Karl Marx and other radical writers. In 1918 she began working on the miners' newspaper El Minero Vizcaino. Soon she chose her pseudonym for contributions to revolutionary publications. A Founder of Party

She was a member of the first provincial committee of the fledgling Spanish Communist Party in her home province in 1920 and was elected a delegate to the first national Communist congress, which led to the formal founding of the party in 1921. During the next years she emerged as a spellbinding orator, agitator and organizer.

In 1930, elected to the Central Committee of the party, she backed the national leadership in its fight against Trotskyists in Catalonia - a quarrel that was to come into the open again during the civil war.

La Pasionaria moved to Madrid in 1931, having been placed in charge of the party's official organ, Mundo Obrero. Her first visit to the Soviet Union was in 1933-34. She was elected to the Spanish Parliament as a deputy for Asturias in 1934. There, as in other public places, she invariably appeared dressed in black.

In a dramatic session on July 11, 1936, La Pasionaria is said to have exclaimed, This is your last speech! when Finance Minister Jose Calvo Sotelo, the monarchist leader, attacked the republican Government. On July 13 Mr. Calvo Sotelo was kidnapped and slain by left-wing terrorists, an event that marked the beginning of the civil war. Anti-Communists accused La Pasionaria of having instigated the killing. She denied it.

Throughout the war she made many speeches and broadcasts to urge the country to resist the Nationalist insurgents the way it had resisted Napoleon's troops in 1808. She told women to fight with knives and burning oil. In contrast to her verbal truculence, she is credited by some reports with having saved the lives of nuns who were threatened by mob violence in Madrid early in the war. Communists Grow in Power

As the civil war proceeded, the Communist Party, though comparatively small, became more and more powerful in the republican camp, and La Pasionaria was the most influential Spanish Communist. She consistently backed Palmiro Togliatti, later leader of the Italian Communist Party, whom Moscow had sent as its representative in Spain.

In the spring of 1936, acting on Moscow's orders, she helped bring about the downfall of Francisco Largo Caballero, the Socialist who had been the republic's Prime Minister since September 1936. Juan Negrin, who was Mr. Largo Caballero's successor, is known to have intensly disliked La Pasionaria, but he kept collaborating with the Communists until the republic's collapse in 1938.

La Pasionaria left Spain early in March 1938, shortly before the fall of Madrid. Together with Mr. Negrin and other republican leaders she flew to France and then proceeded to Moscow, where she had sent her two surviving children, Ruben and Amaya, in 1934 for schooling. Organized an Underground

During World War II La Pasionaria made propaganda broadcasts in support of the Soviet war effort. Later she devoted much time to organizing a Communist underground movement for Spain.

After 38 years in Moscow, she returned to Spain in 1977, two years after Franco died. When she made her first appearances in post-Franco Spain, crowds greeted her with chants of Si si, si, Dolores esta aqui - Yes, yes, yes, Dolores is here.

The Spanish Communist Party was made legal two years after Franco's death. In 1977 La Pasionaria was re-elected to Parliament, but she later withdrew because of infirmity and age.

She was separated from her husband, Mr. Ruiz, in the 1930's. He died not long after her return to Spain.

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