Federica Montseny

Federica Montseny Mañé (Madrid, February 12, 1905-Toulouse, January 14, 1994) was a politician, anarchist trade unionist and Spanish writer, Minister of Health during the Second Republic, being the first woman to hold a ministerial position in Spain and one of the first in Western Europe. She published almost fifty short novels with a romantic-social background specifically aimed at women of the working class, as well as political, ethical, biographical and autobiographical writings.

She was the daughter of fellow anarchists Juan Montseny Carret —who used the pseudonym Federico Urales— and Teresa Mañé Miravet —also known by the pseudonym Soledad Gustavo—, who edited La Revista Blanca, a publication prominent within Spanish libertarian thought during the first third of the XX century, in which she herself published works.

She used the pseudonym Fanny Germain, with which she continued to publish articles during the years of the Franco dictatorship in which she lived in exile in France.

Early Years

Federica Montseny Mañé was born on February 12, 1905 in Madrid, the only daughter of anarchists and publishers Juan Montseny Carret (alias Federico Urales) and Teresa Mañé Miravet (alias Soledad Gustavo).

He began writing and in 1921, when he was only fifteen years old, he published his first short novel, entitled Trágic Hours. In 1923, he began to collaborate with Worker Solidarity and in La Revista Blanca until 1936. His first long novel, La Victoria, was published in 1925.

In 1930, he joined Germinal Esgleas, also an anarcho-syndicalist, being the parents of three children: Vida (1933), Germinal (1938) and Blanca (1942).

Anarcho-syndicalist activism

In 1931, he joined the CNT '"`UNIQ--nowiki-00000018-QINU`"' 2 '"` UNIQ--nowiki-00000019-QINU`"' in which she soon achieved prominent prominence thanks, among other reasons, to her speaking skills. In 1932, she carried out a propaganda tour of Andalusia that later continued throughout Spain and the following year she participated in Paris in a protest meeting against the repression in Casas Viejas.

However, his greatest prominence was reached in 1936, when he intervened in the Zaragoza Congress of the CNT, collaborating in the paper on libertarian communism and being part of the speakers at the closing rally. With the outbreak of the war, he passed to form part of the peninsular committee of the FAI and in the national committee of the CNT. He was in Barcelona on July 20, 1936 and wrote later “...the day was gloriously extinguished, in the midst of the glow of the fires, in the revolutionary intoxication of a day of popular triumph...soon the city was the theater of the unleashed revolution. The women and men, dedicated to the assault on the convents, burned everything inside them, including money...". In November of that same year, she was appointed Minister of Health and Social Assistance of the government of the Republic, a position he accepted despite his declared anti-governmentism and initial doubts. Thus, she became the first female minister in Spain and one of the first in Western Europe, as Aleksandra Kolontái (Soviet Union), Nina Bang (Denmark), Miina Sillanpää (Finland) and Margaret Bondfield had already been so in other parts of Europe. (United Kingdom). Her other co-religionists in the Largo Caballero government were Juan García Oliver (Justice), Juan Peiró (Industry) and Juan López (Commerce).

Government Work

Her effective work in the government was limited by the short duration of her mandate as Minister of Health and Social Assistance in the government of Francisco Largo Caballero, which did not reach a semester (November 1936 - mid-May 1937).. But in that short space of time she planned shelters for children, soup kitchens for pregnant women, prostitution releases, a list of professions to be practiced by disabled people and the first bill on abortion in Spain. Of the places for children, in no way similar to the depressing orphanages existing at that time, only one could be opened near Valencia. Nor was there time for more than one of the canteens for pregnant women to come into operation, in which a complete diet was ensured.

Portrait of Federica Montseny as minister of health and social assistance of the Second Spanish Republic.

None of his other projects came to fruition, and thus his abortion bill, which was opposed by other government ministers, was left behind after his departure from government due to the events of May 1937. After his departure of this, he opined that through the government no deep social change can be made, the only possible path being the libertarian revolution. He voted against, in the Council of Ministers on November 19, 1936, the commutation of the death sentence of José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

Exile and transition

Federica Montseny at the CNT rally in Barcelona in 1977

Like thousands of other Spaniards, at the end of the Civil War, she had to go into exile in France, where she was persecuted by the Nazi and Francoist police, who requested her extradition, which was denied by the French authorities, living on probation until her death. liberation of France in 1944 from German occupation. In 1940, when she was already in exile and before the Nazis advanced to the Spanish border, Montseny destroyed all her documentation. The one she was able to keep, the one she gave herself, while imprisoned in Limoges, and they became part of the funds kept by the UGT in Toulouse, which since 1982 have been in the archives of the Francisco Largo Caballero Foundation, located in Alcalá de Henares..

She adopted the French name of Fanny Germain, under which she continued to publish articles. Installed in Toulouse, she continued to work for her ideas, publishing and directing anarchist newspapers such as CNT and Espoir and traveling through Sweden, Mexico, Canada, England and Italy.

With the arrival of democracy in Spain in 1977, he returned and continued his activism in favor of the CNT and anarchism, where he enjoyed enormous prestige until his death. In his last years, he demanded from the State the return of the union patrimony seized from the CNT after the end of the Civil War, he firmly opposed the Moncloa Pacts and the recently established Spanish constitutional political system.

Legacy

One of the entrances of the park dedicated to the memory of Federica Montseny in Paris, on Jeanne d'Arc Street of the 13th District.

There is a street that bears his name in cities such as Madrid, Albacete, San Fernando de Henares, La Coruña, Jerez de la Frontera, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Bonrepós and Mirambell, Andújar, Salou, Santa Oliva, Puzol, Fuenlabrada, Leganés, Getafe, Picassent, Talavera de la Reina, Gijón, San Feliu de Llobregat, Armilla, La Puebla de Cazalla, Miranda de Ebro or El Prat de Llobregat. The Federica Montseny garden is named after her in the city of Paris (France). There is an institute named after her in Burjasot, in Fuenlabrada and Badía del Vallés. A specialty health center in the Madrid district of Puente de Vallecas (Madrid) also bears her name and inside it is a plaque in her name that remembers her, although only as the first female health minister. There is also a library in Canovelles and a social health center in Viladecans. In 2014, in view of the new Abortion Law promoted by the Popular Party, some members of the 15M Berlin social group founded the Federica Montseny solidarity network to welcome women abroad who wish to abort without being judged or punished by law, in places out of Spain. Today this network has members in several countries around the world.

Acknowledgments

In July 2018, the Association “Herstóricas. History, Women and Gender” and the “Comic Authors” Collective created a project of a cultural and educational nature to make visible the historical contribution of women in society and reflect on their consistent absence in a card game. One of these letters is dedicated to Montseny.

References and notes

Bibliography

• Mayor, C. (1983). Federica Montseny. Barcelona: Ed. Vergara.
• García Guirao, Pedro (1988). "Poor but honored: bourgeois lust and proletarian honorability in the brief novels of Federica Montseny." International Journal of Iberian Studies (intellect) 24 (3). ISSN 1364-971X. doi:10.1386/ijis.24.3.155_1. Archived from the original on April 9, 2016. Consultation on 21 September 2014.
• Lozano, Irene (2004). Federica Montseny. An anarchist in power. Madrid: Espasa.
• Soriano Jiménez, Ignacio C. (2016). Semblanza de Federica Montseny Mañé (1905-1994) (pdf). Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes - Portal Editores y Editoriales Iberoamericanos (siglos XIX-XXI) - EDI-RED.
• Palma, María José. Female exile: Federica Montseny or the weight of love so hurt. Revista de estudios libertarios, ISSN 1886-3019, N. 2, 2006, p. 93-106
• Moro Carrera, Sara (2020). Federica Montseny: an anarchist in the Ministry of Health. University of Cantabria.