Hermínia Puigsech i Puig, “Herminia Muñoz” (1926-2013)

In France, Ramon Puigsech lived in a farmhouse in Dalou (Ariège). The house was one of the bases of the Maquis in the region, an environment with a rugged geography, difficult to access, with a large wooded area which made it the ideal place to set up guerrilla bases. Many of these bases consisted of logging exploitations, known as chantiers, where the militants would live with their families and work there as loggers or charcoal burners, thus concealing their real political activity. These logging camps ended up be-coming important logistical support points for the guerrillas.

A large part of the Spanish resistance that moved to France was organised after the occupation around the Spanish National Union (UNE). Later, in the concentration camps, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC) and its youth wing, the Unified Socialist Youth of Catalonia (JSUC), began to reorganize.

Although all political tendencies were represented, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) was the one in charge of organising secret guerrilla groups under the name of the 14th Spanish Guerrilla Brigade –the name of the brigade that had participated in guerrilla warfare during the Spanish civil war. The brigade was first led by Jesús Ríos, the first national leader of the Spanish guerrillas. There were different brigades and sections un-der the Higher Command. The 3rd Brigade was the one operating in the Ariège region.
At the beginning of May 1944, the UNE decided to change the name of the 14th Guerrilla Command to Agrupació de Guerrillers Espanyols (AGE), in order to make clear its independence from any other Resistance movement. Around mid-May, the AGE was di-rectly linked to the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). The collaboration consisted above all in establishing a crossing route across the Catalan border and organising es-cape networks.

Hermínia, who was 17 years old at the time, would make herself useful by helping, like many other women in the Resistance, to provide food, medicines, supplies, clothing and information, as well as moving packages and weapons between the different points of support, such as the chantiers, for example. Without these support tasks, it was quite impossible for the Maquis to survive in such adverse conditions, especially with Pétain, the German and Gestapo militia chasing them. The 14th Guerrilla Brigade of the Ariège recruited her into the 3rd Brigade to act as a liaison between its three battalions and as a courier between the other brigades of Haute-Garonne, Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales. She would say of herself: “I became a little soldier, available 24 hours a day”. The 3rd Brigade from 14th July 1943 until 11th November 1943, was responsible for 40 sabotage attacks on the railway lines, 60 on the high voltage lines and for the paralysis of industrial production in the areas of Pamiers and Tarasco. On 1st May 1944 the aluminium factory of this town was sabotaged, and four days later, the attack was repeated.

These were all very dangerous tasks, especially due to the strict German control and the extension of the area, and Hermínia had to travel up to 80 km by bicycle or train to transport weapons. She was also supposed to take people from train stations to safe points. All these women were extraordinarily brave and courageous. They travelled the whole of the Ariège by bicycle with messages hidden in their saddles or in their handlebar tubes. Despite the danger, they never hesitated in their mission. In her own words: “Séraphine and I cycled there and back on the same day because we also liaised with the guerrilla group in Toulouse. The papers were normally hidden in the handlebars.”

In 1944, she even transported two dismounted machine guns from Toulouse to Verniolle, each in a cardboard suitcase. “On that day, it was raining heavily, the cardboard was wet and the suitcases yawned, exposing their contents. There was no one at Varilhes station to meet with the Maquis, who were due to arrive but had been blocked by a landslide on the road. So, we hid the suitcases in the bushes.”

In addition, she would go to pick up young men who wanted to join the fight and she had to guide them with very specific codewords in order not to be exposed. She recalls that, on one occasion, her companions suspected that the meeting with one of the young men was being watched by the Germans. They warned her and she decided to proceed regardless, knowing that there was a risk of being arrested –with everything that was involved– or killed by her own companions, who were watching them from a distance with grenades in case they were caught. If that happened, their order was to finish them all off, including her. “Two guerrillas were hiding in a bush at some distance from us. In case the Germans caught me, their job was to throw grenades to kill them, and me with them, to avoid torture so that I couldn’t talk”.

Hermínia was directly involved in two military actions during the Liberation. Although she always carried a gun, she never had to shoot. And she always considered herself as an equal to all the other guerrillas. “She was a fighter like the others, there was a real brotherhood between us, she was their equal“. During the combats of 19 July 1944 for the liberation of Foix she fought in the 1st Battalion attached to the 3rd Brigade, which was led by commander Fernando Villajos (Tostado). The battle began at 4:30 pm and lasted more than 4 hours. At the end, 152 Germans were captured out of a total of 250 that made up the garrison of the city, including two senior officers and 25 officers, and three Maquis were killed in the confrontation. The second battle was at Castelnau-Durban on 22nd August 1944, when the German army capitulated in Ariège.

The French Republic decorated her for her participation in the resistance with the Cross of the Legion of Honour in 2009. That same year, her adopted town, Vernhola (Ariège), decided to name the town’s elementary school after her in recognition of her fight against fascism and in the defence of democracy and human rights. Hermínia was married to Crescéncio Muñoz, so she was also known as Herminia Muñoz. Her husband was also given the same recognition. The couple had two children, Luzbel and Numen. She died at the age of 87 on 17 February 2013 in Vernhola.