23-04-2025
Maria Teresa Carbonell obituary: revolutionary socialist
Etched in Maria Teresa Carbonell's memory was her mother screaming from the window of their flat: 'Murderer!' They were watching a priest with a rifle on the bell tower of the local church in the Sants neighbourhood of Barcelona. It was July 19, 1936. In response to the military coup led by General Franco, a revolution had erupted in Barcelona. The priest was firing on the masses in the street.
Maria Teresa was a lifelong revolutionary socialist in France and Spain. Her parents belonged to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (Poum), a revolutionary, anti-Stalinist party allied with Britain's Independent Labour Party. It was relentlessly persecuted by the official Communist Party, backed by Stalin's Soviet Union. In the Barcelona May Days of 1937, a small
