Angelines Fernández, who years later would become known to millions of Latin American television viewers as the grumpy neighbour in Chavo del Ocho's tenement, was a militia fighter who battled Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and was forced to flee the country to save her life. According to what her daughter Paloma Fernández recalled, the actress "was branded as anti-Franco" after taking part in guerrilla operations and "needed to leave her home country, considering that her life was difficult".
María de los Ángeles Fernández Abad was born in Madrid in 1922. At twenty years old she had already taken up arms in the ranks of labour, trade union, feminist and republican movements that were fighting the fascist bloc during the conflict that erupted in 1936. The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 with victory for the insurgent forces led by Franco, leaving approximately 500,000 dead and more than 100,000 missing according to official figures. The subsequent repression by the regime turned intellectuals, artists and social leaders into enemies of the State.
Details about Fernández's guerrilla participation are fragmentary, with no precise records of her unit or the fronts where she fought. At twenty-five years old, aware of the danger she faced in Madrid, she decided to cross the Atlantic. She first settled in Havana and then in Mexico, a country that would become her permanent home thanks to the asylum policies of then president Lázaro Cárdenas, which attracted approximately 25,000 Spanish refugees during that period.
In Mexico, Fernández took up film work before becoming a television figure. Her daughter recalled that she worked "in films with Cantinflas and Arturo de Córdova", appearing in more than 25 films during the golden age of Mexican cinema. She also acted in television, theatrical productions and radio drama. It was in these circles that she renewed contact with Ramón Valdés, with whom she had worked in film years before. Valdés later became the bridge that connected Fernández with Roberto Gómez Bolaños, the creator of the tenement that would make her famous.
