Anna Maria Martínez Sagi

Anna Maria Martínez Sagi (16 February 1907 – 2 January 2000) was a Spanish poet, trade unionist, journalist, feminist and athlete. She was the national champion in the javelin and became the first female director of a Spanish football club. During the Spanish Civil War, she followed the Durruti Column as a journalist and was then exiled to France, living in different places. During World War II, she joined the French Resistance and evaded capture by the Gestapo. Afterwards, she worked for the Aga Khan and then moved to the United States, where she taught at the University of Illinois. After the death of Francisco Franco, she returned to Catalonia, where she lived in obscurity near Barcelona.

Early life Martínez Sagi was born into a genteel family in Barcelona, Catalonia, in 1907. Her father worked in textiles, and her mother encouraged her children to speak in Spanish and English, but not Catalan. Martínez Sagi learned Catalan, the language she would later write in, from her nanny.

Together with Josefina Carabias, Martínez Sagi became a key journalist in Republican Spain. She interviewed various people, including beggars, prostitutes, and Catalan politicians. Martínez Sagi's articles focused especially on women's suffrage, a controversial issue at the time. As a feminist, Martínez Sagi espoused ideas which came from France. She founded the first club of women workers of Barcelona, which worked to improve literacy among women.

In 1932, she fell in love with writer Elisabeth Mulder, but her feelings were not reciprocated, and Martínez Sagi's family separated them.

After the end of the civil war, Martínez Sagi was exiled to France, where she lived in Paris and then Chartres. When World War II broke out, she participated in the French Resistance and in 1942 was nearly captured by the Gestapo when they raided her apartment, and she left through a window.

She returned to Catalonia in 1975, after the death of Francisco Franco, moving to Moià near Barcelona. She retired to private life in which her neighbours knew nothing about her past and regarded her as a stern old lady. The novelist Juan Manuel de Prada tracked her down and interviewed her. Martínez Sagi's writings were posthumously published in La voz sola (2019).

She died in 2000.

Selected works Caminos Laberinto de presencias: antología poética Inquietud La voz sola