Miquelina Maria Possante Sardinha Quintal

Miquelina Maria Possante Sardinha Quintal (1902–1966) was a Portuguese anarchist.

Early life Quintal was born as Miquelina Maria Possante Sardinha in the municipality of Avis in the Portalegre District of Portugal, on 11 November 1902. She was the daughter of Manuel dos Santos Sardinha, a carpenter, who had Republican sympathies. When she was a child, her parents moved to Ponte de Sôr in the same district, where her father joined a group of anarchists who shared his secular and libertarian views. The family home served as the headquarters of the Sindicato Único da Construção Civil (Civil Construction Union) of Ponte de Sôr. From an early age, Quintal met influential anarchist figures that the family received during conferences held in the region. She also collaborated in the task of selling the Anarcho-syndicalist newspaper A Batalha (The Battle) and the anarchist magazine A Comuna (The Commune), as well as with the distribution of manifestos to disseminate anarchist thought. Later, she would become secretary of the anarchists' union in the town, and a public speaker on its behalf.

Quintal joined the anarcho-syndicalist Federação dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Portugal (Federation of Rural Workers of Portugal). Under the influence of Vitória Pais Freire de Andrade, a teacher in Ponte de Sôr, who was known as a libertarian and a campaigner against bullfighting, she embarked on a career as a primary teacher at a free school for children and adults. These schools, which followed the approach to education developed by the Spanish anarchist, Francisco Ferrer, were linked to the trade unions and were intended primarily for the education of poor children, who also received food and clothing and, sometimes, accommodation. With the school being accused of using a teaching method contrary to that supported by the Catholic Church and the State, the municipality of Ponte de Sôr ordered its closure in 1924. It was only reopened as a result of the intervention of the poet João de Barros, then secretary general of the Ministry of Education.

Death Quintal died on 27 October 1966. She remained anticlerical and an atheist throughout her life.