Maria Doménech

Maria Domènech i Escoté (Alcover, Alt Camp, 1877 — Barcelona, 1952) was a novelist, poet and social activist from the Catalonia region of Spain. While living in Tarragona, she wrote using the pseudonym Josep Miralles. She was later known by her married name, Maria Domènech de Cañellas.

Biography Maria's father died when she was eight months old. At the age of three, she and her mother moved to Tarragona and Maria took private lessons from her mother. Later, she wrote with the philosopher Tomàs Sucona, painted with the painter Hermenegildo Vallvé, and learned music with Father Joan Roca, because she refused to go to the Carmelite school.

In 1910, Doménech settled in Barcelona with her husband, a doctor from Tarragona, Francesc Cañellas, and their two children. There she started her social activism and collaborated with more magazines: Or i Grana, La Tralla, Feminal, El Poble Català, Renaixement, La Veu de Catalunya.

One of her first appearances in public as a social activist was on behalf of the Board of Ladies of the League Against Tuberculosis in Girona, in a distribution of awards to mothers who had breastfed their children longer. She took an active part in the Women's Charity Tomb, chaired by Dolors Monserdà. She was a member of the Public Instruction and Child Protection Boards of Tarragona, member of the Board of the "Liga del Bon Mot" (League of the Good Word), member of the "Junta de Primera Enseñanza de Tarragona" (Board of First Education of Tarragona) and member of the "Junta de Protección a Childhood" (Board to Protect Childhood). She was also the third vice-president of the Women's Federation against Tuberculosis, which was chaired by Leonor Canalejas de Farga.

Doménech participated in the women's philanthropic and educational movement, carried out by Francesca Bonnemaison, Dolors Monserdà and Carme Karr i Alfonsetti. She gave several conferences in favor of women and their status as workers throughout Catalonia and Madrid. In 1912, she founded and chaired the Workers' Federation, with the aim of providing women with access to culture and education, as well as defending their rights as workers.

Doménech collaborated with the Barcelona Institute of Social Reforms (1918) and gave speeches on the condition of women, work at home, and workers and women's professions at the Ateneu Barcelonès and other institutions such as the Agrupació Feminal and the Social Museum of Barcelona.

Mireia (1915) La santa mà (1916) Varena (1917) Alda i Roland (1920) Lliberació (1934) Pels voltans de la Seu (1934)

Novels

Snows (1914) Backlight (1917) The Golden Toads (1919) Inheritance (1925) He ... (1925)

Stories

Confidències (1946)

Theater

The Saint of La Mercè (1918) To Temptas (1922)

Awards

First prize in the Natural Flower category for her poem Mireia (1915) Silver Medal of Labor (1923)