Catalan anarchist educator who co-founded Mujeres Libres
In April 1936 she founded Mujeres Libres with Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Amparo Poch y Gascón and led its magazine.
An educator, lawyer and anarchist feminist born to a socialist shoemaker in Barcelona. Working young as a film editor, she joined the CNT’s public-entertainment union and later studied law and pedagogy in Madrid. Teaching CNT courses for workers with Lucía Sánchez Saornil, she concluded that women needed an organisation of their own, and in April 1936 the two founded Mujeres Libres with Amparo Poch y Gascón. After the war she went into exile in Paris with her partner, the sculptor Baltasar Lobo, worked as Picasso’s secretary and died in Paris in 1994.
Also known as: Mercè Comaposada i Guillén
Activities and affiliations
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1936–
Social movements and organizing
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–1939
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT)Main
Social movements and organizing
Related historical events
Mujeres Libres and exile in Paris
She was born in Barcelona, the daughter of Josep Comaposada, a socialist shoemaker, grew up in a militant, cultivated milieu and learned to type at twelve. Leaving school young, she worked as an editor for a film production company and joined Barcelona’s public-entertainment union, part of the CNT. Later she went to Madrid to study law under Antonio Machado and José Castillejo and also trained as a pedagogue in order to teach other women.
Teaching with Lucía Sánchez Saornil in the elementary courses for workers run by the Madrid CNT in the 1930s, she concluded that misogyny and prejudice in the movement made separate courses and an organisation for women necessary. In April 1936 the two founded Mujeres Libres with Amparo Poch y Gascón. Alongside the CNT, the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth and the FAI, Mujeres Libres became one of the main organisations of the Spanish libertarian movement, gathering more than 20,000 working and peasant women. In the magazine Mujeres Libres she ran a section on subjects from medicine to sexuality; Federica Montseny and Emma Goldman also wrote for it, and her partner, the sculptor Baltasar Lobo, whom she had met in 1933, illustrated it.
After the defeat she went into exile in Paris with Lobo under Pablo Picasso’s protection and worked as his secretary, translating Spanish authors, above all Lope de Vega, and representing Lobo’s work. She remained involved with the exiled libertarian movement from Paris in the 1960s and 1970s and died there on 11 February 1994.