Ana Sigüenza

Sigüenza joined the CNT in 1977 and initially worked in the chemical industry before switching to being a teacher.^[1] She worked as a secondary school teacher in Madrid, before retiring around 2018.^[2] During the Spanish transition to democracy, as the Spanish labour movement debated participation in union elections [es] for works councils, she sided with the opposition. Sigüenza believed that participation in works councils would be "the end of Spanish trade unionism", a position she continued to hold over 40 years later.^[2]

From October 2000 to March 2003, Sigüenza served as the General Secretary of the CNT.^[3] She has been credited as the first woman to hold the position of general secretary of a national trade union centre in Spain.^[4] As general secretary, she oversaw the organisation of self-employed workers and workers in small and medium-sized enterprises; she criticised major trade unions such as the UGT and CCOO for focusing on an outdated model of industrial organisation, which focused on older men at the expense of younger people and women. She also oversaw an increase in participation in social movements, supporting anti-eviction campaigns and leading the 2018 Spanish women's strike.^[2] She has also worked with the International Confederation of Labour (ICL), which split from the International Workers' Association (IWA) in 2016.^[1] In the case of "the Suiza Six", six Asturian CNT members who had been sentenced to seven years' imprisonment on charges of coercion and obstruction of justice, Sigüenza supported their defense campaign and appeal to the Supreme Court, believing there was "no legal basis" for their prosecution.^[5]

In the 2010s, Sigüenza began researching progressive education and developing a libertarian theory of pedagogy. Her pedagogical ideas were explicitly utopian, as she wrote that "from a pedagogical point of view, utopia is necessary because no project should be considered finished, nor should it be considered absolutely perfect; it is a never-ending process that people and future generations will continue to build or create in order to better respond to their needs and life circumstances."^[6] In 2018, Sigüenza published a book on libertarian pedagogy, in which she outlined that anarchist educational methods should neither claim neutrality nor practice indoctrination.^[7] She proposed that, while the roles of teacher and student constituted a form of "admissible authority", the two roles ought to be temporary and open to alternation.^[8]

As author

• Taller de música y danza en la escuela, co-authored with Agustina Hernández Martín (1986) OCLC 1354426768
• Era que no era, co-authored with Nacho Moliné (2000) OCLC 807771599
• Pedagogia Libertária (2018) ISBN 9788409054336; OCLC 1079399355

As contributor

• La prensa en la escuela by M.J. Casas Ruiz-Medrano (1991) OCLC 1354429561
• Talleres de centro by F. Jiménez Jiménez (1991) OCLC 1354429799

• Anarchism in Spain
• Federica Montseny – Anarcho-syndicalist who was the first woman to be a cabinet minister in Spanish history

• CNT column
• A Las Barricadas column