Amparo Poch y Gascón

A street in Zaragoza is named after Poch (2013 photo).

Amparo Poch y Gascón (1902-1968) ^[1] was a Spanish anarchist, pacifist, doctor, and activist in the years leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War. Poch y Gascón was born in Zaragoza.^[2]

She was one of the founding members of the Mujeres Libres and was appointed director of social assistance at the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance by Federica Montseny.

She was responsible for organizing the Mujeres Libres in Barcelona and used her government position to promote the establishment of liberatorios de prostitución (liberation homes for prostitutes, where prostitutes could receive health care, psychotherapy and professional training to enable them to acquire economic independence through socially acceptable means).

She worked to promote awareness about women's sexuality and advocated for sexual freedom and against monogamy and the sexual double standard. Unlike her co-founders in the Mujeres Libres, Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Mercedes Comaposada, she had been a member of the reformist treintista CNT before the war. She held a more essentialist view of women's nature, appealing to women as mothers and embracing motherhood as a natural, feminine state. She wrote extensively on the topic of motherhood, promoting an anarchist approach to child rearing.

Dra. Amparo Poch is also a name well known in pacifist circles. Poch y Gascón was the co-leader of the Liga Española de Refractarios a la Guerra, a group of absolutist war resisters,^[3] along with her colleague, fellow pacifist José Brocca.^[3] During the Spanish Civil War she was active in Orden del Olivo (the order of the olive branch), the Spanish arm of War Resisters' International, helping to give aid to the war's victims.^[3]

Poch y Gascón died in exile in Toulouse, 1968.^[2]

A Spanish-language biography of Amparo Poch has been written by Antonina Rodrigo (see References below).

See also

• Anarcha-feminism
• Spanish Civil War
• Anarchism in Spain
• Spanish Revolution
• Mujeres Libres

References

1. Francisco Fernández de Mendiola, Isaac Puente: El médico anarquista Txalaparta, 2007 ISBN 8481364894. (p.124)
2. Lola Campos, Mujeres aragonesas, Ibercaja, 2001 (p.167).
3. Peter Brock and Nigel Young, Pacifism in the Twentieth Century, Syracuse University Press, New York, 1999 ISBN 0-8156-8125-9 (p.96-97)

• Ackelsberg, Martha A. Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
• Nash, Mary. Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War. Denver, CO.: Arden Press, 1995.
• Spanish text: Antonina Rodrigo: Una Mujer Libre: Amparo Poch y Gascón: Médica Anarquista, Flor del Viento Ediciones, 2002, 300 pages.