Spanish activist and journalist Lucía Sánchez Saornil was BOTD in 1895. Born in Madrid to a poor working-class family, she taught herself to read and write. In her teens, she worked as a switchboard operator, writing and publishing poetry in Futurist magazines. After the formation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, she took part in strike action against a telecommunications company in Barcelona, and joined the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, an anarchist trade union movement. She began advocating for women’s empowerment through education, though her ideas were rebuffed by her male comrades, who insisted that women’s liberation be set aside until workers had won the class struggle. She returned to Madrid, working for a railway union, and met law student Mercedes Composada, with whom she formed Mujeres Libres, an anarchist feminist organisation to promote women’s liberation. A proficient organiser and powerful orator, she became the public voice of Spain’s feminist movement, encouraging each organisation within the federation to retain their individual identity and governance. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she worked as a journalist and propagandist for the anarchist movement, corresponding with American celebrity activist Emma Goldman, and led fundraising efforts to help the Republican effort. In 1937, she led the first national conference of Mujeres Libres, restructuring the organisation into a national federation in an unsuccessful attempt to gain government recognition. Following the Nationalists’ victory in 1939, she fled to exile in France, helping provide aid for Spanish Republican refugees, leading to her arrest by Nazi-led Vichy France forces. She escaped deporation to a concentration camp, returning to Francoist Spain and living in hiding. She spent the rest of her life living quietly with her girlfriend América Barroso and caring for her chronically ill sister, publishing feminist, anarchist and anti-fascist tracts under the male pseudonym Luciano de San Saor. She died in 1970, months after the death of her sister, aged 74.