Fernanda Jacobsen OBE was commandant of the Scottish Ambulance Unit (SAU) which provided humanitarian assistance in three convoys during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
She was appointed an Officer in the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her work in Spain, which continued through the end of the war after the rest of the unit had returned home.
The Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 and Glasgow businessman Sir Daniel Macaulay Stevenson funded the creation of the Scottish Ambulance Unit to provide humanitarian help.
[6] Four members in all had left to join the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in March 1937 in opposition to Jacobsen's view that the SAU should remain in Madrid if it were to become surrounded—something Stevenson had instructed against—and complaining that she was not co-operating enough with government authorities.
[6] Conditions in Madrid continued to be very serious and in August 1938, after the other members of the third convoy had returned to Scotland in July, Jacobsen, who had remained behind, appealed for contributions in The Guardian, saying of the people there that "Weakened as they are by malnutrition, not to say starvation, without fuel, without the necessaries of life, the coming of winter is to many of them a sentence of death.
[4][6] She was insistent that the work of the ambulance unit should be humanitarian, not political, and should help anyone who needed it, regardless of allegiance, but her approach caused opposition from some Communists and led to allegations from them that she was a Fascist sympathiser.
"[7] Sir H. V. Tewson, then Vice-Chairman of the Basque Children's Committee and later General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, wrote in a memorandum of an interview with Jacobsen that she "struck me as being a shrewd and capable person, exceedingly enthusiastic in her work.