Enriqueta Borràs (Rosa Mateu Segalès)

Enriqueta Borrás, ‘Irma’ (Barcelona, 1934) was a prisoner’s child and her story is defined by that fact. She was the daughter of the libertarian Rosita Mateu. Her memories of Les Corts are those of a child and teenager who regularly visited her mother during her 8 years long sentence.

In Les Corts, Rosita ran into many libertarian comrades, like the teacher Matilde Escuder.

When she was 10 years old Enriqueta was sent to a religious school in Reus sponsored by the Patronato para la Redención de Penas por Trabajo (the Foundation for the Reduction of jail time through Work). Her mother managed to give her up in adoption to a fellow trade unionist (to prevent her from being sent to a nunnery by the Sisters) through her CNT relations (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) (National Confedaration of Labour)

Enriqueta Borrás emigrated to France in 1961 and returned to Spain in 1976. She remained an anarcho-syndicalist all her life. In 2004 she published a memoir entitled ¿Qué pasó con los niños desamparados de la guerra?

She fought a long campaign with the support of the Catalan branch of CGT to get a memorial plaque installed at the site of Les Corts prison (occupied today by El Corte Inglés department stores in Diagonal Avenue).

She died in Viladecans (Barcelona) in 2017 and was buried in the council cementery.