Obituary: Angeles Florez Peon, a heroine of the Spanish civil war who spent half a century in exile

Known as Maricuela, she spent four years in prison and 55 years in exile, becoming a symbol of the Spanish women who fought, and continue to fight, against fascism.

Her story began when her eldest brother, Antonio, was among the 24 “martyrs of Carbayin” murdered in Asturias by government troops during the general strike of October 1934.

“They killed them with bayonets,” she said. “When they found my brother’s body, his jaw was missing.”

The atrocity inspired her to join the Socialist Youth.

‘We moved between shootings and bombs and slept with our clothes on’

When civil war broke out in July 1936, Angeles Florez Peon was playing the protagonist Maricuela in Jacinto Sanchez’s play Arriba los Pobres del Mundo (‘Up with the poor of the world’) and her character’s name stuck.

She enlisted in the militia, and later recalled that men and women were treated equally.

“We moved between shootings and bombs and slept with our clothes on so we could run when necessary. I remember that one of the things I enjoyed most when I came home on leave was sleeping in a bed with sheets,” she said.

While she did not bear arms, she was “never afraid of General Franco’s bullets”.

To her regret, women were withdrawn from the front and she was deployed to a field hospital as a nurse. After the fall of Asturias in October 1937, she was arrested at home during dinner.

At a 15-minute court hearing, she was accused of killing two soldiers.

‘I’ll get married, but I’m not going to be a piece of furniture at home’

“They were lies. What was true is that I belonged to the Unified Socialist Youth and that I went to the front as a volunteer,” she said.

Jailed for 15 years (later reduced to nine), she was guarded by nuns at a women’s prison.

From her cell she could hear fellow prisoners being taken out to be shot.

“What truly keeps me alive and active is that desire to remember all those women who were tortured, murdered without trial and erased from history,” she later said.

In 1939 her boyfriend was shot and killed.

Released on parole in August 1941, she joined her sister in the Basque country, working in a pharmacy.

In 1946 she married a union official who had been captured while serving with Republican forces.

Before their nuptials she told him: “If you want to get married, I’ll get married, but I’m not going to be a piece of furniture at home. I believe in the equality of women and men.”

With disappearances and arrests continuing, her husband fled to France in 1947. A few months later she heard she was being sought as a terrorist and joined him, arriving by boat with a 10-month-old daughter in her arms.

French police fined her 1,000 francs for entering France illegally.

‘I never had a doll and I never went to school’

Angeles was born in northern Spain on November 17, 1918, the fourth of five children of a miner and his midwife spouse. Her parents separated when she was young, and by the age of nine, Angeles was earning a living scrubbing floors.

“I never had a doll and I never went to school,” she said, adding that she learnt to read in prison.

After Franco’s announcement in 1960 that those “without blood on their hands” could return to Spain, she decided to visit her mother, but was detained at the border.

Eventually she was let through, though the experience deterred her from trying again until her husband’s death in 2003, when she returned to bury his ashes.

Now hailed as a heroine, she remained.

One of her first acts was to persuade socialists and communists to stop celebrating separately the annual tribute to the martyrs of Carbayin. Latterly she was honorary president of the Socialist Youth of Asturias.

Determined that the world should not forget the women of the Spanish civil war, she published two books, Memories of Angeles Florez (2009), detailing the hardships of her life, and Maricuela’s Surprises (2013), describing the good things that had happened since her return.

In 2016, at the age of 97, she opened a Facebook account, saying: “Without memory we are nothing.”

She continued to stand up for her beliefs, taking part in Pride marches and joining protests to protect pension rights, though she maintained that “the fascists are still there to undermine freedoms.”

Angeles Florez Peon, who died on May 23, is survived by a daughter and a son.