Lucía Sánchez Saornil

Lucía Sánchez Saornil (13 December 1895 – 2 June 1970), was a Spanish poet and anarcha-feminist activist, best known for co-founding the Mujeres Libres organisation together with Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón. Born into a working-class Madrilenian family, she taught herself from an early age and began writing poems for the burgeoning Futurist and Ultraist movements.

After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, she joined the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and became involved in the Spanish anarchist movement. She quickly became discouraged by the sexist attitude of men within the movement, deciding it necessary to form specific women's libertarian groups in order to organise for women's empowerment. She developed a program for such an organisation and, together with Comaposada and Poch y Gascón, established the Mujeres Libres, a nationwide organisation of anarchist feminists.

During the Spanish Civil War, she continued her work with the Mujeres Libres and also served as secretary of Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista (SIA), making frequent trips to the frontline and campaigning for international support for the Republicans. After the fall of Catalonia, she briefly fled into exile, before clandestinely returning to Francoist Spain and living out the rest of her life in hiding in Valencia.