Frederica Montseny

About the author

Frederica Montseny - The Anarchist Minister

Frederica Montseny Mañé was born on February 12, 1905, in Madrid, Spain. She was a prominent anarchist, novelist, and the Minister of Health during the Spanish Revolution. She was a member of the anarcho-syndicalist labor union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), and was one of the leading intellectual and passionate speakers of the Spanish anarchist movement. As part of her political activities, Montseny traveled extensively, delivering lectures, and speaking on behalf of the CNT.

During the Spanish Civil War, despite her initial reluctance, she accepted the position of Minister of Health, becoming the first woman in Spanish history to hold a cabinet position. As a minister, she sought to revolutionize healthcare delivery and placed strong emphasis on social services. Her works as a writer often dealt with subjects such as anarchism, feminism, and free love, establishing her as a notable voice of the anarchist literary tradition. Montseny's ideas and actions significantly contributed to advancing the anarchist and feminist movements.

Date of Birth: 1905-02-12

Date of Death: 1994-01-14

Country of Birth: Spain

Political Ideas: Anarcho-syndicalism, Feminism

Quotes Available: 10

Quotes by Frederica Montseny

If all our comrades of Europe, America and other countries, who do not understand what we are doing to Spanish anarchism, would come to Spain, we could then see how they would react.

The love of liberty and the sense of human dignity are the basic elements of the anarchist creed.

We need no messiah and no sterile conception of a god menacing us with hell and purgatory.

In order to fully realise our aspirations, we must create in the masses of the people the sense of sacrifice and responsibility that has been the characteristic of the anarchist movement throughout its historic development in Spain.

Men are as we have always known them, neither better nor worse from the hearts of rogues there springs a latent honesty, from the depths of honest men there emerges a brutish appetite -- a thirst for extermination, a desire for blood.

There is, therefore, no solution possible other than an economy directed by the workers through their organizations of control -- through the workers' syndicates.

Never will the anarchists in Spain be made to suffer as they have been and are in Russia.

I wish to say that we anarchists have never changed our position. We are anarchists as of old and still pursue the same ideals.

We have confirmed something we only knew in theory, namely that revolution, in which uncontrolled and uncontrollable forces operate imperiously, is blind and destructive, grandiose and cruel.

But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights.

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