Maria Luisa Suarez Roldan

María Luisa Suárez Roldán (Madrid, 9 September 1920 - Madrid, 4 January 2019) was a Spanish lawyer of communist ideology, founding partner of the first employment law firm promoted by the PCE in Spain, which had a key role in the fight for democracy and freedom during the last years of Franco’s dictatorship.

Biography María Luisa Suárez Roldán was born in Madrid, within a Republican middle class family. She studied at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, but the Spanish Civil War interrupted her studies. Eventually, in 1941 she could enroll in Law Studies at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, where she was the only woman in the class. She completed her studies in 1944, being among the first three women to obtain a bachelor's degree in that department after the war. Fernando Ontañón passed in 2008, and to him, to the «love of her life», she dedicated in 2011 her memoirs, Recuerdos, nostalgias y realidades ("Memories, nostalgia, and realities").

Her last book, Ensayo sobre el feminismo, was presented in 2014 for the first time and without her (as she was already 93 years old) by the employment lawyer Juan José del Águila at the Valle-Inclán Association. In this book, the writer makes an analysis and explanation of feminism from its origins back in the XIX century, with the fight to obtain the right to education, culture and the right to vote and be eligible by women. It goes to current times, setting out that there is still much to do to achieve equality in several areas, and she suggests some ways to get there.

She died in Madrid at the age of 98 assisted by her colleagues at the Valle Inclán neighbours association, of which she was a member. She had an adopted child, which in her memoirs she refers to as Taqui or Taki and who joined the tributes paid by the municipal council of Chamartín (in Madrid) on 14 May 2019.

Professional career In 1947 she joined the Madrid Lawyers Bar, one of the first females, together with Ascensión Chirivella –who had enrolled in University in 1922–, as in those years it was not easy for women to have a professional life, less so in the legal world. She started as a trainee in the law firm of Manuel Escobedo, at the time dean of the Madrid Bar, but their collaboration ended in 1955, as a consequence of dictator Francisco Franco being appointed honorary dean.

From 1956, she worked actively at the Bar activities, with a newly formed group of young lawyers that included people from different ideologies and parties, where she was known as a member of the Partido Comunista de España (PCE), that she had joined in 1954.

She worked together with Alejandro Rebollo, lawyer of the army, in the defence of Julián Grimau, but she could not appear as a lawyer, as this was an military tribunal.

Towards the end of 1965, further to the call from Francisco Romero Marín, at the time head of the PCE in Spain and with the support of Marcelino Camacho and other union leads, the first employment law firm at calle de la Cruz, n.º 16 in Madrid was set up. Suárez Roldán was a founding partner, together with Antonio Montesinos, José Jiménez de Parga y Pepe Esteban. Eventually other similar law firms were set up, that were key in the fight for democracy and freedom during the last third of Franco’s dictatorship.

Tributes and awards Suárez Roldán received several honours both during her life and after she passed:

1985ː Orden de San Raimundo de Peñafort. 1986ː Golden medal to Work. 2005ː Award of the Fundación Abogados de Atocha, for her work leading the law firm at calle de la Cruz, the first employment and labour law firm in Spain. 2006ː Award Irene Falcón granted by the Women Section of the party Izquierda Unida of the Madrid Region. 2019ː Acknowledgement from the Madrid Town Hall setting up a plaque in the building where she lived. thumb