Dolores Ibarruri

Dolores Ibarruri

Dolores Ibarruri (December 9, 1895-November 12, 1989) also known as la Pasionaria (“the Passionflower”), was a Spanish Republican in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and a Communist known for her slogan ¡No Pasarán! (“They shall not pass!”) issued during the Battle for Madrid in November 1936.

She joined the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) upon its founding in 1920. In the 1930s, she became a writer for the PCE newspaper Mundo Obrero and in February 1936 was elected to the Cortes Generales as a PCE deputy for Asturias. After the Spanish Republican defeat (1939), she went into exile in the Soviet Union where she worked for the Communist International. She became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the PCE in 1942, a position she held until 1960. The Party then named her honorary president, 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 Generales in the same region she had represented from 1936 to 1939.