Picornell was born in
Palma,
Majorca in the El Molinar district on 1 October 1912. She was a seamstress and political activist. She was the sixth of seven siblings. She became politically active at a young age. At age 14 she left school to begin working as a seamstress. As a pre-adolescent she was a feminist and was involved in
anti-clericalism against the Roman Catholic church. In 1931, she organized the seamstresses' union in the
Balearic Islands. Later she joined the
Communist Party of Spain (PCE), in which she was one of the main leaders of their Balearic Federation. At 16 she published her first of many articles in the Communist newspaper
Nuestra palabra ("
Our Word"). She lived for some time in
Valencia, where she married Komintern agent . In 1934, she helped establish the Communist Party on the island of
Menorca. At the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War, Majorca fell into the hands of the Francoist rebels after a military coup. Picornell was the first woman arrested in the
Casa del Poble ("House of the People", i.e. Party headquarters), and incarcerated in
Mallorca's women's prison. Her colleagues tried to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, but before that was achieved she was taken by
Falangists to the convent of
Montuiri, where she was tortured. She was murdered on 5 January 1937 Picornell's father Gabriel and two brothers Gabriel and Ignasi were also murdered. Aurora's younger brother Joan died shortly after being liberated from the
Dachau concentration camp while her sister Llibertat exiled to Mexico and France. ==Legacy==