María Cambrils Sendra

María Cambrils Sendra (1878 – 22 December 1939) was a Spanish writer and feminist. She was self-taught and became part of the working class intellectual elite as a writer and lecturer. She published numerous articles in the workers' press, especially El Socialista. She is the author of the 1925 book Feminismo socialista, a reference on women's rights and feminist and socialist action.

Biography María Cambrils was the daughter of a laborer and an illiterate mother who emigrated from Pego, Alicante to Valencia, where she lived most of her life. She probably married very young, to José Martínez Dols. Upon his death, the investigation into her life indicated that she lived in an unidentified convent and may even have been a nun for a time after becoming a widow. In her writings she recalls her "conventual life" and demonstrates the handling of religious texts with solvency, however precise data have not been located. No details are known of how the change in her life occurred when, in the 1910s, she met her companion José Alarcón Herrero, a former anarchist leader born in Jumilla and, like her, a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

In her writings, Cambrils explains that it was readings and talks with a neighbor in Valencia that opened her eyes to the doctrine of "proletarian redemption" and the role women should play in it. It was a modest edition, paid for by Cambrils herself, dedicated to Pablo Iglesias, whom she referred to as "venerable teacher", and whose proceeds went to the press of El Socialista. At the end of the Civil War, and despite the fact that it was recognized that no crimes of blood had been attributed to him, Alarcón was shot in Alicante along with and other socialists of Pego on 11 April 1940. María Cambrils, attended by her nieces during an illness while Alarcón was in jail, died on 22 December 1939. She was buried in a grave without a name or a tombstone.

In April 2015, the University of Valencia published a monograph entitled María Cambrils, el despertar del feminismo socialista (María Cambrils: The Awaking of Socialist Feminism), which includes her biography, her book Feminismo Socialista, and more than 100 articles published between 1924 and 1933 in El Socialista, El Obrero Balear, El Pueblo, and Revista Popular. The work was carried out by journalist Rosa Solbes, historian Ana Aguado, and archivist Joan Manuel Almela, with a prologue by Carmen Alborch.

Socialist feminism

María Cambrils represented a key turning point in the formulation of egalitarian and feminist approaches within the socialism of the first third of the 20th century in Spain, according to researchers from the University of Valencia, who in 2015 released the book María Cambrils, el despertar del feminismo socialista.

Inspired by August Bebel, Cambrils wrote: "Women workers cannot forget that the only political force of moral solvency frankly defending feminism is socialism," and defined her work as "a plea against injustice, oppression, indissoluble marriage, and violence with the affections of the heart."

Tributes At the beginning of the Spanish transition in 1976, a group of socialist economists in Valencia, which included Ernest Lluch and Dolors Bramon, adopted the name María Cambrils. They wrote several articles in the weekly Dos y Dos about women in the economic context of the time and the necessary simultaneity of feminism and socialism.

In Bilbao, the Euskadi Information, Children's, Youth, and Women's Center is named after her.

The exhibition 100 mujeres españolas que abrieron el camino a la igualdad (100 Spanish Women Who Opened the Way to Equality) organized by the Women's Institute of Spain dedicated a reference to her, though it contained very little information beyond the cover of her book.

Works Feminismo Socialista (1925), Valencia, Tipografía Las Artes El Socialista Colaboraciones y artículos (1925–26)