Maria Doménech

Domènech contributed to several publications including La Pàtria and Camp de Tarragona using the pseudonym Josep Miralles (not to be confused with Bishop Josep Miralles i Sbert (1860–1947)). In 1910, Doménech settled in Barcelona with her husband, a doctor from Tarragona, Francesc Cañellas, and their two children. There she started her social activism and collaborated with more magazines: Or i Grana, La Tralla, Feminal, El Poble Català, Renaixement, La Veu de Catalunya. For Feminal (a feminist publication), she had become a local correspondent when she lived in Tarragona, and when the Cañellas family moved to Barcelona, she became a collaborator with the magazine, which disappeared in 1917. According to Cavallé, in those pages, "she published a number of short literary texts, which she would later include in her books." One of her first appearances in public as a social activist was on behalf of the Board of Ladies of the League Against Tuberculosis in Girona, in a distribution of awards to mothers who had breastfed their children longer. She took an active part in the Women's Charity Tomb, chaired by Dolors Monserdà. She was a member of the Public Instruction and Child Protection Boards of Tarragona, member of the Board of the "Liga del Bon Mot" (League of the Good Word), member of the "Junta de Primera Enseñanza de Tarragona" (Board of First Education of Tarragona) and member of the "Junta de Protección a Childhood" (Board to Protect Childhood). She was also the third vice-president of the Women's Federation against Tuberculosis, which was chaired by Leonor Canalejas de Farga. Doménech participated in the women's philanthropic and educational movement, carried out by Francesca Bonnemaison, Dolors Monserdà and Carme Karr i Alfonsetti. She gave several conferences in favor of women and their status as workers throughout Catalonia and Madrid. In 1912, she founded and chaired the Workers' Federation, with the aim of providing women with access to culture and education, as well as defending their rights as workers. Throughout the years, she was also an active writer. In 1915, Doménech published a collection of poems and narratives entitled Verso i prosa, as well as the novels Neus (1914), Contrallum (1917), Golden Toads (1919) and Inheritance (1925). Doménech collaborated with the Barcelona Institute of Social Reforms (1918) and gave speeches on the condition of women, work at home, and workers and women's professions at the Ateneu Barcelonès and other institutions such as the Agrupació Feminal and the Social Museum of Barcelona. In 1923 she attended commissions in Switzerland for the "study of institutions" aimed at the protection, moral progress and material well-being of all workers, not just women.

• First prize in the Natural Flower category for her poem Mireia (1915) • Silver Medal of Labor (1923)