Costa de la Luz
Sanlúcar bids farewell to the Duquesa de Medina Sidonia, the Red Duchess
By m.p.
Mar 9, 2008 - 7:32 PM

The funeral took place in Sanlúcar de Barrameda on Sunday for the Duchess of Medina Sidonia, Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo y Maura, who died at the age of 71 on Friday. The local Town Hall called three days of official mourning and described her death as an ‘irreparable loss.’ An extraordinary council meeting is to take place to name the Duchess an adoptive daughter of Sanlúcar.

Her title is one of the oldest in Spain, and dates back to the 15th century. Born in exile in Estoril, Portugal, in August 1936, she became known as the Red Duchess for her opposition to the Franco regime. She had a spell in prison in the 1960s for taking part in a protest to support compensation for farmers whose land was affected by the Palomares nuclear bomb accident in Almería province, and faced a military court after the publication of her novel ‘La Huelga’ – ‘The Strike.’

She returned from a seven year self-imposed exile in south western France in 1976 only to be arrested again, this time for allegedly assaulting an officer.

She spent the latter years of her life in her 16th century palace in Sanlúcar cataloguing her private archive of historical documents, said to be one of the largest in Europe, numbering some one million documents.