"Better to die on your feet than live forever on your knees".

These powerful words accompany a statue sitting at Custom House Quay along the Clyde Walkway, of a woman reaching her arms towards the sky.

La Pasionaria, the Passion Flower, is a dedication to the 65 Glaswegians from the International Brigades who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s.

Britain, France and the United States pledged non-intervention in the war, but when it seemed inevitable that Nationalist leader General Franco could triumph, 2100 British volunteers made the journey to the continent.  

Glasgow Times:

Franco won the war in 1939, and Spain remained a dictatorship until his death in 1975. In 1978 the Spanish Constitution under the new King Juan Carlos restored democracy.

La Pasionaria depicts Dolores Ibárruri, a communist politician who was also known by the powerful moniker.

She founded a women’s anti-war movement, rescued over a hundred starving children from a small mining town, and delivered inspirational speeches during her incredible life.

Glasgow Times:

In 1974, the statue was commissioned by the International Brigades and was met with controversy as Conversative politicians viewed the idea as commemorating a ‘war criminal’.

Nevertheless, the statue was unveiled to a modest crowd and is still standing, despite suggestions that a Winston Churchill monument be placed there instead.

83-year-old Ibarurri sent her thanks in a telegram, saying that she felt ‘honoured’ to be represented.

Forty years before, just mere months before Franco’s victory, Ibarurri addressed the volunteers in an emphatic speech as they departed Barcelona.

She told them: “You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend.

“We shall not forget you; and, when the olive tree of peace is in flower, entwined with the victory laurels of the Republic of Spain — return!”