Maruja Lara

Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, miliciana, nurse and activist in the clandestine prisoners support group, Unión de Mujeres Demócratas, born. When she was three, her family emigrated to Brazil and then Argentina, where her father was a militant in the syndicalist Federación Obrera Regional Argentina. In January 1932 she returned to Granada, where she joined the Sindicato de Minyones (domestic workers union) of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), of which she became secretary, and the Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL), at the age of fourteen.

With the fascist coup, she fled Granada for Tocón, Baza and Guadix, fighting nominally as a miliciana in the Columna Maroto. In mid-1937, she moved to València, joining the Sindicat d'Infermeres (Nurses Union) and working in Hospital Número 1 near Torres de Quart, València. In Valencia she became branch treasurer of the Mujeres Libres and got to know militants like Amelia Torres, Lucia Sánchez Saornil, Suceso Portales, Carmen Pons, Natacha Cabezas, Paquita Domínguez, America Barroso, Pura Pérez, etc. and especially became a good friend of Isabel Mesa. When the war ended in March 1939, she and Mesa got on to a truck for Almeria to catch a ship for Algeria, but she ended up in the port of Alicante and then was imprisoned in the infamous Francoist concentration camp of Albatera. Here 25,000 were murdered by the Francoists and thrown into mass graves.

She finally managed to escape from Albatera to Almeria and then Granada. She worked for a while in a caramel factory there. In late 1939 she returned to Valencia. With Isabel Mesa she set up a newspaper kiosk in Valencia, which secretly distributed the anarchist press. In 1942 with Isabel and others, she set up the underground group the Unión de Mujeres Demócratas (Union of Democratic Women) to help prisoners and their families. In 1955 she was arrested because of her anarchist activities. Except for a few months in Palma, Mallorca, in 1940 and a year in France in 1960 to escape repression, she always lived in Valencia. After the death of Franco, she was actively involved in the reconstruction of the CNT and supported the creation of the free radio station Radio Klara. In 1997 she contributed to the anarchist journal 'El Chico'.

She died on February 29, 2012.