Mercedes Núñez Targa

Mercedes Núñez Targa (Barcelona, 1911-Vigo, 1986), was the secretary of the poet Pablo Neruda during the Spanish Republic when he was the Chilean consul in Barcelona. She fought in the Civil War with the Catalan socialists and in 1940 was sentenced to twelve years in Ventas Prison. But she was freed the same year after a bureaucratic error and escaped to France where she continued in the anti-fascist movement. In 1944 she was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she survived several months of horror before being freed a few days before she was due to be executed.