Amparo Poch y Gascon

Amparo Poch y Gascon

Amparo Poch y Gascón (born October 15, 1902 in Saragossa , † April 15, 1968 in Toulouse ) was a Spanish doctor, author, anarchist and syndicalist . She was one of the founders of the feminist organization Mujeres Libres .

Life

Amparo Poch y Gascón grew up as the daughter of a military man in Saragossa. Between 1922 and 1929 she studied medicine, against her father's wishes. She was the second woman to graduate from Zaragoza Medical School. After practicing in Saragossa for a few years, Poch y Gascón opened a practice for treating women and children in Madrid in October 1935 . As an author, she has dealt with birth control, sexual hygiene and the containment of sexual diseases in specialist articles. Poch y Gascón was an active member of the health union of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).

In 1936, together with Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Mercedes Comaposada , she founded the Mujeres Libres Federation , which campaigned for the liberation of women workers. In her articles in the Federation's magazine, Amparo Poch y Gascón advocated extramarital relationships. She criticized the sexual double standards that she saw realized in the interaction between the institution of marriage and prostitution. In contrast, she set sexual freedom and the right to sexual satisfaction of women. She advocated free love and opposed the monogamy that linked her to capitalism and private property.

From the mid-1930s Poch y Gascón was a member of the Partido Sindicalista founded by Ángel Pestaña . She was also a leading member of the pacifist Liga Hispánica contra la Guerra (Spanish League Against the War), which tried in vain to prevent the Spanish Civil War . After the war began in the summer of 1936, Amparo Poch y Gascón joined the Ángel Pestaña militia , where she worked as a doctor. During Federica Montseny's tenure as Spanish Minister of Health (November 1936 to May 1937) she worked in the Ministry of Health of the Republic . There she organized, among other things, the medical infrastructure at the front and the departure of children from the war zone to Mexico, Russia and France. From autumn 1937 she headed the Casal de la Dona Treballadora (House of the Worker) in Barcelona , where free advanced training courses were offered for women. Under her leadership, the number of female students rose from 150 to 911. Among other things, reading and writing, foreign languages, history, sociology, economics and trade union organization were taught there. In addition, advanced training courses for various professions were offered. After the victory of Franquism in the civil war, she went into exile in France in February 1939.

In 1945 Poch y Gascón settled in Toulouse, where she worked as a general practitioner and gynecologist at the Hôpital Varsovie . Among other things, she took care of guerrillas there who fought against the Franco regime in Spain. Amparo Poch y Gascón died on April 15, 1968 after a long illness. Over two hundred Spanish exiles attended her funeral. In Zaragoza, a street and, since 2008, a health center bear her name.

publication

• Martin Baxmeyer (ed.): Amparo Poch y Gascón. Biography and short stories from the Spanish Revolution. Verlag Graswurzelrevolution, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-939045-33-5 .

literature

• Miguel Ìñiguez: Esbozo de una Enciclopedia histórica del anarquismo español . FAL, Madrid 2001, p. 487. ISBN 84-86864-45-3 .
• Lola Iturbe : La mujer en la lucha social y en la Guerra Civil de España (1974), most recently Tierra de Fuego - La Malatesta 2012, pp. 143–157, ISBN 9788493830632 .
• Silke Lohschelder (Ed.): AnarchaFeminismus. On the trail of a utopia . Unrast Verlag, Münster 2000, pp. 116-133, ISBN 3-89771-200-8 .

Web links

Commons : Amparo Poch y Gascón  - Collection of images, videos and audio files