 Casares was born María Victoria Casares y Pérez in A Coruña, Galicia, the daughter of Santiago Casares Quiroga, a minister in Manuel Azaña's government and Prime Minister of Spain, and of Gloria Pérez.She was a volunteer in Madrid hospitals already at age fourteen.Her father was a member of the Republican government so at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936), the family was forced to flee Spain.