We should know our history, it is our inspiration, and a tool-kit for tomorrow, it also allows us to pay homage to those who pushed our struggle forward.
On this day January 1st. 1919, poet, anarchist and life long activist Sara Berenquer Laosa was born, she died 8th. June 2010.
Sara Berenguer Laosa (Barcelona, 1919 – Montady, Francia, 2010), the daughter of an anarchist militant (Francisco Berenguer, her father, was killed on the Aragon front fighting with ‘Los Aguiluchos’) was a leading figure in the Spanish anarchist ‘Free Women’ movement ‘Mujeres Libres’. After the ‘Events of May 1937’, in which she played a part, she was involved in various industrial committees of the CNT and in the Combatant Section of Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista (SIA), regularly visiting the front lines. At the end of 1938 she was elected secretary of the regional committee of ‘Mujeres Libres’. After the Francoist victory Sara escaped to France where she was interned for a time by the French. During WWII she and her partner, Jesús Guillén, moved to Bram, near Carcassone, where they were members of the clandestine Resistance groups operating in the ‘Black Mountain’ region. After the Liberation, Sara (who was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur for her role in the Resistance) continued to provide logistical support for the anti-Francoist resistance groups until Franco’s death in 1975, as well as editing ‘Mujeres Libres’. A documentary, by ‘Zer Ikusi A’, made a few months before Sara’s death, includes her last interview, in which she retraces what she considered to be the key events in her life as an anarchist, anti-fascist — and as a ‘free woman’.
