Background
Lina Odena was born on 22 January 1911 in Barcelona, Spain. She was born into a working-class family.
Lina Odena was born on 22 January 1911 in Barcelona, Spain. She was born into a working-class family.
Lina Odena visited the Soviet Union and was instrumental in organizing the unification in 1934 of the Spanish Socialist and Communist youth wings into the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas. Arrested, and later released, as part of the political repression associated with the Asturian uprising in October 1934, she campaigned with Dolores Ibarruri, "La Pasionaria," for the Communist Party in Asturias in the Popular Front elections in February 1936.
When the civil war began in July 1936, Odena was in Almeria and joined a militia unit at the front near Granada. While she was on a reconnaissance mission, she was cut off from her unit in ambush. Rather than face capture by the Nationalist forces, she committed suicide.
Odena was transformed into a Republican heroine, particularly by the Spanish Communist Party. A military training school was named after her, as was a women's self-defense unit. Her courage and self-sacrifice were memorialized in popular ballad and song, and the story of her death is included in many of the patriotic writings from the Republican side during the war.
In 1931 Lina Odena joined the Communist Party.
Lina Odena was a member of the national committee of the movement of Women against War and Fascism.
