Spanish Civil War Memory Project

Summary

Rosario Cunillera was born in France. Rosario explains that her parents were Spanish exiles and met in a concentration camp in France in the 1940s. She tells that her father was a Republican Lieutenant and remained connected with the Communist Party of Spain and the French guerrillas. Rosario narrates that her father and other anti-Fascist combatants returned to Spain in 1944 and were detained by the Civil Guard. She comments that her father said he was French and was sentenced to twenty years in jail, but received another twenty-year sentence in 1952 when his real nationality was discovered. Rosario recalls that in 1957 an amnesty granted her father provisional liberty and he escaped to France, where he joined the Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia). She remembers always feeling proud of her father and meeting him at age thirteen. Rosario recounts her initial politicization at age fourteen, joining the Juventudes Comunistas (Communist Youth) at eighteen, and attending a demonstration in Paris to protest the execution of Julián Grimau in 1963. She relates attending a school of the Communist Party in Germany in 1966. Rosario describes moving to Barcelona, joining Comisiones Obreras (Labor Commissions), and her clandestine militancy. She speaks about the monarchy and the Transition. Rosario discusses her participation in the Associació Catalana d'Expresos Polítics (Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners)