Angela Giral was born in Madrid less than a year before the Spanish Civil War started. The family escaped from their summer residence in San Rafael, walking all night through the Segovia Forest. In 1939, they moved to Mexico, where Angela attended the National University (UNAM). In 1956, she moved to Ann Arbor, where she obtained a Masters of Library Science. In 1970, she became an American citizen. She has worked as a librarian at Princeton (Urban and Environmental Studies), Harvard (Graduate School of Design), and Columbia (Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library). After retiring from Columbia she engaged in the conservation and processing of the private papers of her grandfather, Jose Giral Pereira, a minister of the republican government during the war, as well as in exile.  The archive, consisting of over 10,000 letters and documents, was donated by the family to Spain’s Archivo Historico Nacional in 2009. Several books have been since published based on its contents. From her early childhood, listening to the songs of the Spanish Civil War, she was in awe of the young people who gave their energy, youth, and, sometimes, their lives, to defend democracy and the republican ideals of her country when it was an early victim of fascism.