 In November 1936, the Popular Front government appointed the prominent anarcha-feminist Federica Montseny as Minister of Health.In doing so, she became the first woman in Spanish history to be a cabinet minister.When the republican forces lost the Spanish Civil War, the city of Madrid was turned over to the Francoist forces in 1939 by the last non-Francoist mayor of the city, the anarchist Melchor Rodríguez García.