Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 March, 6.00 – 8.30 pm. Floor 0
Free entrance. Limited places
Activity from Worker's and Anarchist Grafics' project

In April 1936 Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch Gascón founded Mujeres Libres – Free Women – within the anarchist trade union CNT. Their organisation pioneered women’s liberation from the perspective of the working class struggle. This proletarian feminist movement came to have around 20,000 members.

Mujeres Libres was also the title of a magazine on “culture and social documentation”, thirteen issues of which were published between 1936 and 1938. Created as a newsletter to spread the ideology and activities of the association with a view to attracting women to libertarian ideology, as of the fourth issue the publication became revolutionary and war press for women. This material – slumbering for decades at the bottom of the oblivion of the press archive – is now reactivated as a starting point to get to know and re-read the women’s anarchism of the CNT of the 1930s from the viewpoint of the ferment and plurality of the feminist movement today.

This is why we have invited women from different backgrounds over two days to address the contribution of the magazine Mujeres Libres. The only premise is freedom of thought and the intention to vindicate women as an agent of social change in the past and the present.

We will talk to Elena Carreras and Irantzu Varela, and body and voice will be provided by Iniciativa Sexual Femenina, Mireia Redondo Prat, Núria Martínez-Vernis and Anna Pantinat.

We will be reactivating the exhibition and the iconography that Mujeres Libres organised on the magazine in Barcelona, as this activity is a new materialisation of the project “Workers’ and anarchist graphics”, carried out by the Observatory of Everyday Life under the auspices of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge.

http://www.graficaanarquista.com/

Elena Carreras. Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, specialist in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She is currently head of Obstetrics and Reproductive Gynaecology at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, president of the Catalan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, an adjunct lecturer at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and principal investigator of the Maternal and Foetal Medicine Research Group at the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute.

Iniciativa Sexual Femenina. An art collective formed by Elisa Keisanen, Cristina Morales and Élise Moreau, founded in 2017 at the Can Vies self-managed social centre in Barcelona. Their shared desire is to approach contemporary dance from a feminist, libertarian and anti-capitalist perspective. Catalina, their first show, premièred in January 2019 at the Antic Teatre in Barcelona.

Mireia Redondo Prat. Worker, anarcho-syndicalist and feminist. Workshop facilitator and self-taught washerwoman, always fighting against any form of power or authority. Precarious to the core and anarcho-feminist in practice. She has just published Tal com raja (2018).

Irantzu Varela is a journalist and militant feminist. Coordinator of Faktoria Lila (http://www.faktorialila.com/index.php/es/), a feminist action and training space. Creator and presenter of “El Tornillo”, a feminist micro-programme on Público TV. Presenter of “Aló Irantzu” in Pikara Magazine (https://www.pikaramagazine.com/) and collaborator in audiovisual and written media. Director of the documentary short El nunca me pegó.

Anna Pantinat is a performing artist and the author of Construcció de la nit (Editorial Fonoll), De sobte, un estiu (LaBreu Edicions) and Qui no s’anomena (Món de Llibres). She sings, plays the keyboard and the theremin, composes for the band Pentina’t Lula and, alongside Daniel Ardura, coordinates the Repetidor Disc record label.

Núria Martínez Vernis. Poet. For her first book of poems, L’acròbata tampoc no en sortirà il·lès (2000), she won the Amadeu Oller Prize and the Memorial Anna Dodas i Noguer Prize for Literature. For her second book, Quantes mentides fan una sola veritat (2003), she won the Josep Maria Lopez-Picó Prize. Her latest published work is Deix on dir (2013).