Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Vicenta Camacho Abad was born in 1921 in Osma La Rasa. Vicenta details the rights women acquired and the educational and cultural advancements made during the Republic. She remembers that her father and brother joined the Front during the Civil War. Vicenta explains that when the war ended her father lost his job at RENFE and was jailed in Soria, and her brother was detained in the Fomento police station, the Comendadoras jail, and a concentration camp from which he escaped and fled to Algeria. She recalls the dictatorship, noting the repression carried out against women. Vicenta narrates that for her participation in the Communist Party, she was detained in 1943, taken to the Dirección General de Seguridad (General Security Directorate), jailed in Ventas, transferred to Segovia in 1947, and released on provisional liberty in 1952. She describes the two hunger strikes in which she participated in Segovia and Ventas, and how her death sentence was reduced to twelve years in jail. Vicenta recounts taking a nursing course after the Transition and working in a hospital where she helped form a union. She relates joining the Club de Amigos de la UNESCO (Friends of UNESCO Club) in 1962 and helping form the Movimiento Democrático de Mujeres (Women's Democratic Movement) in 1964. Vicenta discusses Franco's death, the Moncloa Pacts, historical memory, and the current political climate