Carlota O'Neill (1905–2000)

Carlota O'Neill was born in Madrid, Spain. Her parents were Enrique O'Neill Acosta, a Mexican diplomat of Irish descent, and his wife Regina de Lamo y Ximénez (also known as Nora Avante), a Spanish writer and pianist. Her sister Enriqueta O'Neill also became a writer under the pseudonym Regina Flavio. She published her first novel in 1924 at age 19 and was a prolific writer throughout her life. The family moved to Barcelona, where Carlota met Virgilio Leret, an army officer with whom she had two daughters; they married in 1929. From 1931 to 1936, she participated in a Communist theater group for which she wrote plays such as Al Rojo (1933) and founded and directed the magazine Nosotras. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when her husband was sent to the Spanish city of Melilla, on the north coast of Africa bordering Morocco, with the Republican Army, she and the children accompanied him. The Nationalists overran his base and Leret was assassinated. Carlota was arrested, tried by a military court, and sentenced to five years in prison in Melilla. The case against her was dismissed for lack of evidence but she was detained by the Franco government until 1940. During this time, she served as a correspondent for the weekly Redención under the pseudonym Laura de Noves. After her release, she returned to Barcelona and fought to regain custody of her children. They went into exile in Venezuela and later settled in Mexico. She wrote romance novels and biographical novels, including Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun: pintora de reinas (1944). Later she published two volumes of memoirs, Una mexicana en la guerra de España (A Mexican Woman in the Spanish War, 1964), translated into English in 1978 under the title Trapped in Spain; and Los muertos también hablan (The Dead Also Speak).