The research analyze the contributions done to the area of education by the women involved in the athenaeums of the libertarian movement and the organization of Free Women of Barcelona over the 2nd Republic and the Spanish Civil War (1931-1939), to identify the elements that can be an International reference for the educational and social movements in Europe that work for the overcoming of the social inequalities and the coexistence problems in urban contexts. Free Women was one of the movements with greatest impact upon the lives of the female workers. They were more than 20.000 women, almost all of them young women and without academic education. Free Women set a precedent not only in Europe but internationally for being the first organisation of working women that did not belong to any political party who got organised to overcome what they called the triple slavery of the female worker, slavery for being a woman, slavery for being a worker and slavery for the ignorance for not having had the opportunity to access to education.

Barcelona experimented a great urban growth due to the industrialization that attracted immigrants from around of Spain, making up around neighbourhoods with great social and cultural identity, as spaces of response from the working movement (Ealham, 2005). One of the main strategies of this movement was the pedagogy, of integral and rational character (Tiana, 1987), which objective was to empower culturally the working class (Flecha, et al. 1988). In the athenaeums of the libertarian movement over the years of the 2nd Republic they were able to educate 5400 people, between children and adults, in activities of reading, theatre, literary gatherings, literacy and cultural education (Gonzàlez, et al. 2002).  These centres were in the neighbourhoods, uniting the community (Ackelsberg, 2005) and were the immigrant and illiterate population went to receive Basic education to be able to move around the city (Oyón, 2008). Women also attended, acquiring cultural education, and exchanging ideas and experiences that transformed their mentalities (Ackelsberg, 2005).

 Working women participating in the athenaeums and in Free Women collected the tradition of the rationalist pedagogy that got consolidated in Barcelona over the first decade of the 20th century. Among them the project of the Modern School of Francesc Ferrer i Guardia. In 1901, Ferrer Guardia in Barcelona created the Modern School, in which he gathered the main liberal educational trends of Europe, from authors such as Robin, Faure and Reclus (Suissa, 2010). Its impact was noticeable around Europe and America where many schools were created inspired in this one and movements for its defence such as the International League for the Children Rationalist Education.

All this rationalist and libertarian pedagogy was embedded in the educational initiatives that were developed in the athenaeums and the organisation Free Women . These educational initiatives are a reference for the social and educational movements nowadays that have as an objective to overcome the social inequalities and to promote the coexistence in urban spaces that are more and more diverse.

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