On this day, 20 May 1936, the first issue of Mujeres Libres (Free Women) was published, a Spanish anarchist feminist magazine by the group of the same name aimed at ending the “triple enslavement of women to ignorance, to capital and to men.”
One of its cofounders, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, a writer, poet and lesbian who was active in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union, described the majority of her male comrades as follows:
“Even as they rail against property, they are rabidly proprietorial. Even as they rant against slavery, they are the cruellest of “masters.”… The lowliest slave, once he steps across his threshold, becomes lord and master. His merest whim becomes a binding order for the women in his household. He who, just ten minutes earlier, had to swallow the bitter pill of bourgeois humiliation, looms like a tyrant and makes these unhappy creatures swallow the bitter pill of their supposed inferiority.”
The group went on to play an important role in the Spanish revolution which broke out later that year. In particular, they initiated a huge education campaign to address high illiteracy rates among women and girls, established collective childcare in factories and communities, worked with the CNT to train women for roles in the salaried workforce, and fought for equal pay. A number of members of Mujeres Libres were also among the women who volunteered to fight at the front against nationalist forces in the civil war.
We have reproduction artwork by the Mujeres Libres, along with books and more about the CNT in our online store: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/spanish-civil-war https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1430543030464176/?type=3