A spectacular case about supersicalípticas and armed, furious women, including giant fold-outs, facsimiles, and essays.

More than a century ago, while sicalipsis—the counterculture of cupletistas, "frivolous" artists, and defenders of the wildest feminism—spread like an epidemic, the ¡supersicalípticas! emerged, our first and boldest modern women. They appeared in 1902 through Las Mujeres en la Intimidad, an erotic magazine whose editors called them "Supersicalíptico Portfolios." Two of those prodigious issues, "Cómo se arman las mujeres" and "El manejo del arma," were tremendous and marked the beginning of a social transformation process. Gradually, women would abandon their role as the "angel of the home," and those who did not turn the other cheek would be described as defeminized and, of course, crazy.

In the following three decades, women would show strength, wear pins in their hats and knives in their garters for self-defense, engage in Greco-Roman wrestling—feminist style!—or learn jiu jitsu to face harassers, bullies, and even police officers, like the formidable English suffragettes. Our supersicalípticas, such as Bella Chelito, undisputed queens of the night and cabarets, toured the country demonstrating against Japanese martial arts masters, scandalizing the most conservative Spanish society with their joy and freedom, preparing for the fateful year of 1936, when many of those furies created Women’s Battalions, linking the mythical image of the miliciana with the 19th-century guerrilla fighter, the streetwise and Goya-inspired dagger woman with the blue work overalls.

Nosotras, que queríamos ser libres, among other materials, collects in facsimile format a spectacular case with a giant fold-out over a meter long featuring the facsimile of those legendary two issues and accounts for this revolution around physical strength, aggressiveness, sports, martial arts, and weapons—all ancient matters of power, masculinity, and hegemony.