Marina Ginestà (1919-2014) was born in Toulouse into a family with a long leftist tradition. Her grandmother, Micaela Chalmeta, a feminist and pioneer of the Catalan cooperative movement, translated The Power of the Market Basket, by Honora Enfield. Her father, Bruno, was a trade unionist, and her mother, Empar, headed the Spanish delegation at the international congress of the women's movement in Moscow in 1935. Marina and her brother, Albert, belonged to the communist youth.