Ana María Martínez Sagi

Ana María Martínez Sagi (16 February 1907 – 2 January 2000) was a Catalan poet, trade unionist, journalist, feminist and athlete of Republican Spain.

This article uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Martínez and the second or maternal family name is Sagi.
Anna Maria Martínez Sagi

Biography

Martínez Sagi was born into a gentried family of Barcelona, Catalonia. She loved the writer Elisabeth Mulder, but Martínez Sagi's family separated them.[1]

Together with Josefina Carabias, Martínez Sagi was a key journalist of the Republic. She interviewed various people, including beggars, prostitutes, and Catalan politicians. Martínez Sagi's articles focused especially on women's suffrage, a controversial issue at the time. She joined Durruti Column as a journalist during the war.[1] In addition to his journalistic work, she also published several books of poetry. Her desperate and distressed style was similar to that of the Latin American poets Juana de Ibarbourou, Alfonsina Storni, and Gabriela Mistral. After her first book of poetry, Caminos, was published in 1930, Alberto Insúa compared Martínez Sagi to Rosalía de Castro.[2] As a feminist, Martínez Sagi espoused ideas which came from France. She founded the first club of women workers of Barcelona, which worked to improve literacy among women.

A sports enthusiast, Martinez Sagi was a national champion in javelin.[1] Her brother, Armand Martínez Sagi (1919–1923), and cousin, Emilio Sagi Liñán, played for FC Barcelona, and in 1934, she became a Director of FC Barcelona, the first woman to do so in Spanish football's history.[3]

After the end of the Spanish Civil War, Martínez Sagi was exiled to France, where she participated in the Resistance. In 1950, she moved to the US, and, having a degree in French Language and Literature, she was able to teach at the University of Illinois.[4] She returned to Spain in 1975, after the death of Francisco Franco, retiring to private life.

Selected works
  • Caminos
  • Laberinto de presencias: antología poética
  • Inquietud

References
  1. Obiols, Isabel (18 March 2000). "De Prada novela la vida de la escritora y deportista catalana Ana M. Martínez Sagi". El Pais. Retrieved 9 April 2014.
  2. Escritoras españolas en los medios de prensa. 1868–1936. Editorial Renacimiento. 28 March 2014. p. 139. ISBN 978-84-8472-880-1.
  3. Warren, Patricia Nell (30 November 2006). The lavender locker room: 3000 years of great athletes whose sexual orientation was different. Wildcat Press. ISBN 978-1-889135-07-6.
  4. Lopez-Egea, Sergi (4 March 2011). "Atleta, escritora y antinazi Anna Maria Martínez Sagi fue en 1934 la primera mujer que se incorporó a la junta directiva del Barça El Camp Nou recordará mañana a una intelectual que defendió su condición de lesbiana". El Periódico (in Spanish). Retrieved 9 April 2014.
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