Amparo Poch y Gascón

Who is Amparo Poch y Gascón?

Amparo Poch y Gascón 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.

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.

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.