Historic independence activist Blanca Serra dies
She had been tortured at the Vía Layetana police station during Franco's regime, according to the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office, which has recently acknowledged it.
BarcelonaA militant of independentism, sister of the historian Eva Serra (1942-2018) and daughter of the archaeologist Serra i Ràfols (1902-1971), Blanca Serra has passed away at the age of 82 in Barcelona, the city where she was born in 1943, in the midst of the post-war period. A graduate in classical philology from the UB, in the 1960s she began to militate in the antifrancohismo movement, initially in the Front Nacional de Catalunya, which she left in 1969 to join the PSAN (Partit Socialista d’Alliberament Nacional).
Always within the left-wing independentism, her political commitment first led her into exile in Northern Catalonia, where she lived through the dictator's death, and years later, already in democracy, to prison, in the late 70s and early 80s, accused of collaboration with ETA and Terra Lliure. She remained active until the end. Already very weakened by various health problems that had been undermining her physical condition, her last appearance was at the ANC demonstration for the Rodalies chaos.
A year ago, Blanca Serra was the first victim of Francoist torture to file a complaint against the Public Prosecutor's Office. The public ministry concluded its investigation two weeks ago: despite confirming that she was indeed tortured by the Brigada Político Social, it could not specify the identity of the perpetrators of the crime and, consequently, requested the case be archived. Despite this, the Centre Irídia and Òmnium valued Blanca Serra's initiative and the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office's resolution as the first time torture had been officially recognized in the Via Laietana police station in Barcelona.
In 1971, as a representative of the Col·legi de Doctors i Llicenciats, Blanca Serra participated in the promotion of the clandestine Assemblea de Catalunya, a crucial civic and political unitary platform at the end of the dictatorship that decades later would have its replica in the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC), in which Serra was also very involved from the beginning. With the slogan of the "right to decide", the ANC emerged from a long mobilization that had as its peak moments the demonstration against Rodalies in 2007 and the independence referendums of the years 2009-2011. Blanca Serra was linked to all these grassroots initiatives. In recent decades, in addition to the ANC, Blanca Serra had been linked to and had been a candidate on the electoral lists of the CUP.
Her professional life led her to become a language professor at the IES Narcís Monturiol in Barcelona. The personal collection of Blanca and Eva Serra, the result of the political and social activism of the two sisters, and of their academic work, is deposited in the National Archive of Catalonia: it contains manifestos, posters, correspondence, statutes, photographs, periodicals, and various papers from parties such as PSUC, POUM, PSAN, FNC, JSC, MCC, and PCE.
