Teresa Torrelles
catalan trade unionist and feminist (1908-1991)
Teresa Torrelles Espina (27 May 1908 – 18 May 1991) was a Catalan trade unionist, anarcha-feminist activist and hospital administrator. Having worked in the textile industry from an early age, Torrelles joined the anarcho-syndicalist movement at the age of 16. She moved to Terrassa, where she organised a local women's group, which established a libertarian library and secular school. She successfully pushed for the adoption of working women's demands, such as equal pay for equal work and maternity leave, by the local branch of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). She also helped establish the Mujeres Libres, the women's organisation of the CNT. During the Spanish Civil War, she worked as a hospital administrator, overseeing the construction of a clinic with a functioning maternity ward in Terrassa. After the war, she fled to France, then Argentina and Venezuela, before moving back to France, where she died in 1991.
Biography
Early life and activism
Teresa Torrelles i Espina was born on 27 May 1908, in the Catalan village of Nalec, the daughter of Josep Torrelles and Teresa Espina. Her parents worked as landless farmers on a vineyard, but in 1914, they were forced to move after an outbreak of phylloxera. They settled in Esparreguera, where the whole family worked in the textile plant at Colònia Sedó. At the age of 16, in 1924, Torrelles joined an anarcho-syndicalist group.
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This entry incorporates text from “Teresa Torrelles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.