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Magdalena Medina

Magdalena Medina was a Spanish aristocrat who served as a Red Cross nurse in Morocco during the Rif War.

Biography[]

Magdalena Medina was born in Spain to an aristocratic family, and she was one of many aristocratic women to join the Red Cross under Duchess María del Carmen Angoloti y Mesa during the Rif War of the 1920s. While she was engaged to Daniel de Zumárraga with plans to marry in November 1921, she and Angoloti's other nurses were called up for service in Melilla by Queen Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg that July, following the disastrous Battle of Annual; before leaving on the train, Medina tearfully begged Zumárraga not to fall in love with another girl while he was gone (even if she was "prettier or a better dancer," in Medina's words), and promised him that she would be back in three months. While Medina was seasick during the voyage, her friend Pilar Muñiz de Solaruce noticed that her seasickness had somehow vanished when Medina met the Berber porter Larbi al-Hamza upon the nurses' arrival in Melilla; the attraction between them was mutual, leading to Medina acting awkwardly and nervously when al-Hamza attempted to help her and her belongings onto a Spanish Army truck bound for the Spanish hospital. When she arrived at the army headquarters, she was happy to see that her childhood friend Susana's father, Colonel Vicente Ruíz-Márquez, was in charge of the army's sanitary department, and that he would be in charge of the military hospitals in Melilla.

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