It was starting to smell like democracy, and then it was all gone
Stáhnout obrázek
Miroslava Válová was born on 25 September 1948 in the village of Horní Ostrovec near Písek to her parents Jiřina, née Krajícová, and Miroslav Vála. The older brother Jiří was born in 1945, the younger sister Magdaléna in 1955. Her maternal grandfather was a landowner, her paternal grandparents owned a fashion salon in Příbram. It was met with great incomprehension in the family when Miroslava Válová‘s parents joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1949 at a very young age. Her father then became chairman of the local cooperative farm (JZD) in Ostrovec and participated in the collectivisation of the village. In 1968 he was expelled from the Communist Party, lost his job and it was very difficult for him to find new employment. After primary school, Miroslava Válová graduated from the grammar school in Písek and after graduation in 1965 she started working at the Vakus computer centre in Prague and after two years at the computer centre in Písek. In the 1970s she worked as a teacher in a kindergarten in Milenovice, after moving to Prague she taught from 1978 in a kindergarten in Žižkov. She graduated from the secondary pedagogical school in a distance study. On 21 August 1969, she took part in demonstrations in Prague, during one of which Bohumil Siřínek, who was standing next to her, was shot and died shortly afterwards. Miroslava Válová was close to the underground and especially to hiking friends. It was also there that she met her husband Josef Soukup, who took the surname Vála after their marriage. After 15 years of living in Prague, she and her husband decided to move to the countryside because of problems with the police. In 1983 they moved to Olbramov in western Bohemia. She found it difficult to find work in the education sector due to her cadre problems, so she devoted herself mainly to extracurricular activities with children in art and theatre groups. She experienced the revolutionary events of 1989 mainly in Prague, from where she brought information to Olbramov and the immediate surroundings in western Bohemia. In 1990, she co-founded the local Civic Forum and subsequently became mayor of Olbramov, where she alternated between the positions of deputy mayor and councillor. In 2000, she co-founded the civic association Let´s Help Ourselves, which is involved in the preservation of monuments. In the same year, the Konstantinolázeňsko micro-region was founded with her help. She works as an expert consultant for the Local Action Group Czech West. At the time of recording in 2024, she was living in Olbramov, where she participated in a number of cultural and social events.
