Women who come from middle class and working class families do not have the advantages of those who come from the high bourgeois class. Feminist activism, for the last ones, could be just considered an eccentricity, but not so for those other women, since their feminism and ideological thinking surely implied for them many more difficulties, on top of the usual ones for all women at that time.
1. Teresa Claramunt i Creus (1862-1931) was a leader of the working-class movement due to her pro-union activism. She was also a notorious feminist. From an early age she worked in a textile factory in Sabadell. In 1883 she played an active role in the seven-week strike that took place in Sabadell in order to demand better salary and working conditions. She also took part in Monti Tognetti’s anticlerical league. In 1887, as a representative of the textile workers, she attended the Regional Catalan Congress, held in Barcelona, that was organized by the Spanish Workers Federation. She was arrested and placed in isolation confinement several times between 1893 and 1911.
She wrote for several working-class outlets (Els desheretats, El productor, Bandera social, among others) and also wrote La dona (The Woman, 1905) in which she reflected on the situation of women due to prerogatives held by men, besides the vindication for women to have an active participation in economic, social, and political affairs. In 1884 she had already organized a union branch for anarchist and collectivist working women. In 1889 she contributed to the foundation of the Autonomous Society of Women and two years later (1891) she tried to set up in Barcelona a union of women workers.
2. Teresa Mañe Miravet –Miravé- (1865-1939) and 3. Frederica Montseny i Mañe (1905-1994). They were mother and daughter. The first one was an
anarchist teacher. From a middle-class family, she was known by the pseudonym of Soledad Gustavo. As a teacher she belonged to the Escola nova movement and became member of the Secular Teachers’ Confederation of Catalonia. Her writings were published in several anarchist outlets (Tramuntana, El productor). She founded, together with her husband Joan Montseny (known as Federico Urales), the outlets La Revista Blanca and Terra i Llibertat. She took part in the Second Socialist Competition, 1889, held in Barcelona. She was forced into exile in 1897, and she moved to London with her husband.
 |
| Teresa Mañé i Miravet |
Her daughter, Frederica Montseny i Mañe, was an anarchist leader and writer. She was homeschooled by her mother, and she never went to school. She was a contributor to La Revista Blanca. During the dictatorship of general Primo de Rivera she wrote three novels: La Victòria, El fill de Clara, and La Indomable. To some extent autobiographical, they are also relevant books on the matter of women’s emancipation and social equality between the genders.
 |
| Frederica Montseny |
As an anarchist, she joined first the Union of Free Professionals and later on became top leader of the large Confederació Nacional del Treball (National Workers Confederation). In 1936 they joined forces with Federació Anarquista Ibèrica (Anarchist Iberian Federation). She was committed to libertarian communism. After civil war broke up in Spain she backed the Committee of Antifascist Militias. She was Minister of Health under the presidency of Largo Caballero (leader of PSOE, Spanish Socialist Party) since November 1936 until May 1937. Finally, due to the victory of the military uprising against the Second Spanish Republic and Franco’s ensuing dictatorship, she went into exile in France.
0 comentaris:
Publica un comentari a l'entrada