In the months before the Spanish Civil War, she joined the strikers of Cadavio mine in Asturias and stood beside poor tenants evicted in a suburb of Madrid. Around this time, Federico García Lorca, La Pasionaria and friends were chatting and sharing a coffee in a Madrid cafeteria when Lorca, who had been studying Ibárruri's appearance, told her, "Dolores, you are a woman of grief, of sorrows...I'm going to write you a poem." The poet returned to Granada and met his death at the hands of the Insurgents before completing the task.