[1] She was nicknamed la Dinamitera (the Dynamiter) for her expertise with explosives, and was a Republican heroine in the Spanish Civil War.

[3] Sánchez was one of the first women to join the Republican militias against the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco.

[1] However, Sanchez's right hand was blown off within two months of the start of the war while she was in the trenches making explosives and other bombs.

[1] After her recovery, she worked first as a telephonist at military headquarters[2] and then became a postwoman in 1937 when the Spanish government ordered all women off the front lines.

For example, she worked with Dolores Ibárruri, the President and Secretary General [4] of the Communist Party nicknamed "La Pasionaria", to recruit women to take jobs left by men who had gone to fight the Nationalist forces.

Burcet almost immediately left to fight in Teruel and the couple lost touch for the rest of the Spanish Civil War.

[1] When the Nationalist forces amassed at Madrid in 1939 before the fall of the city, Sánchez buried her rifles and burned papers which linked her to the Republican cause.

[1] She learned that the Francoist State had dissolved all Republican civil marriages and that Paco had remarried and now had two sons.