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Nabarralde | Nabarra Papers
The
Women of Nabarre | Leaders and Fighters
These are some
of the women leaders and fighters in the history of Nabarra
-- the Basque state. This is not a comprehensive document but
rather an attempt to show that in almost every age and virtually
every Nabarrese territory, women engaged in different kinds
of struggle.
Middle Ages through the 19th Century
Queen
Oneca,
the wife of the King of Iruñea (Pamplona) Eneko Aritza
(824-858), founded the monastery of San Salvador de Leire in
the ninth century. While nothing is known of the earlier status
of the family of Eneko Aritza, Oneca and her family possesed
several monasteries which are considered to be the foundation
of the royal wealth and line of the kingdom of Iruñea.
Leire, the likely pantheon of the Nabarrase monarchs, possesed
considerable literary treasures. Among those who found refuge
in Leire was the Cordoban priest Eulogious who visited the monastery
when he was unable to continue his journey across the Pyrenees.
Note: the kingdom of Iruña (Pamplona) developed into
the kingdom of Nabarra - the first and only Basque state that
has ever existed.
Lady
Galga
founded San Salvador de Ippuzka, the first monastery recorded in Gipuzkoa.
At the request of Galga, the King of Nabarra Santxo the Great appointed
certain monk Santxo to Ippuzka. Later Galga and the king engaged in
a dispute over control of a church in Aragon that Santxo had built and
placed under the control of the Aragonese monastery San Juan de la Peña.
They finally reached an agreement in 1049 by which Galga and her daughter
would retain control over the church in Aragon for the rest of their
lives but on their deaths it would revert back to San Juan. As well
as providing the first documentary reference to Gipuzkoa, the text makes
clear the property-owning rights of women. Galga possessed other monasteries
which had been given to her by her parents and brothers. The document
is also noteworthy that in this and other instances recorded in charters
from Nabarra, inheritance by nephew was very common - a sympton of a
society following matrilineal inheritance customs. Property was passed
not from mother to son but rather from mother to the son of her eldest
brother, thus retaining property within the family.
Lady
Maria,
Senior of Bizkaia, is said to have been an effective ruler in this Basque
territory during the process that finally merged the seniory of Bizkaia
into the Crown of Castile in 1379 --Bizkaia left Nabarra (the Basque
state) to join Castile. Maria was responsible for a number of new urban
foundations and for the granting of various sets of charters.
Queen
Catherine de Nabarra
(1483-1517) was expelled from Nabarra along with her husband
King Jean d'Albret. A dubious papal edict backing the Castilian
invasion of Nabarra, ex-communicated the Nabarrese monarchs
who then sought refuge in northern Nabarra. During a civil war
in Nabarra between the Beaumonts (pro-Castile) and the Gramonts
(pro-France) bands, Catherine's said to have pressured for more
royal protection to the Gramont band which was finally defeated.
Jeanne
d'Albret
(1528-1572) was the only child of Henry d'Albret and Marguerite of Nabarra.
Her father held the kingdom of (northern) Nabarra. Although the family
called themselves "kings" of Nabarra, only the rump of that kingdom
remained in their hands since Castile had conquered by force the larger
portion to the south in 1512. Her father always seeking to restore Nabarra,
sought a marriage between his daughter and the King of Spain's son,
Philip. The King of France, however, used Jeanne in his own foreign
policy. After years of negotiations, a marriage contact was drawn up
between Jeanne and Germany's Duke of Cleaves. Jeanne strongly protested
the marriage. She complained bitterly to all, even writing a formal
letter of protest to the King, but to no avail. Finally in June of 1541
at the age of twelve, she was wed. "The Princess wore a golden crown,
a cloak of crimson satin trimmed with ermine, and a gold and silver
skirt trimmmed with precious stones" and had to be taken by the collar
and carried forcibly to the altar. Their union lasted only three and
a half years. Three years later Jeanne was again the pawn in a political
alliance. Her father was again seeking a compact between her and the
Spanish Prince Philip, but again, the King of France, now Henry II,
had other plans. To help consolidate the territories in the north and
south of France, Jeanne was wed in 1549 to Antoine de Bourbon, Duc de
Vendome.
Jeanne's father died
and her husband Antoine took over. After her husband's death Jeanne
was put in sole control of Nabarra. She reorganized the economic and
judicial system which remained in force well into the 18th-century.
Jeanne devoted herself primarily to local administration and to foster
the Reformed faith in northern Nabarra. Throughout the XVI century the
idea to re-conquer Nabarra from Castile was at the center of humanist
thought in Nabarra's northern territories. This idea was developed by
the Nabarrase refugee families who had found asylum in northern Nabarra.
Joannes de Leizarraga, encouraged by Jeanne d'Albret and inspired by
the centers of reading and discussion at the courts and castles (Gramont,
Belzunce...) rationalised the defence of Basque identity around the
project of re-establishing the sovereignty and unity of Nabarra. The
development of this movement promoted by the Calvinists, was halted
by the Counter-Reformation. Notwithstanding the failure to re-unite
Nabarra, the first linguistic awareness in Nabarra developed during
this period that favoured Basque language and culture.
Inessa
Gaxen,
perhaps the first Basque refugee, was a victim of the Great Witch Hunt
in France and of judge Lancre's deadly paranoia. She was arrested in
1611 when she was only 18 and accused of organizing an akelarre
(a meeting of witches) in Mount Jaizkibel and using her "magic powers"
to sink boats in Pasaia. She was tortured but released for lack of incriminating
evidence. As any freed suspect often had to move away for fear of being
lynched by their neighbors, Inessa Gaxen left her native Hendaia. She,
along with other women, fled to Logrono, in southern Nabarra for safety
but triggered a true witch hunt there. Hundreds of people were tried
and burned in the stake. Inessa Gaxen was among the women freed in Logroņo.
She returned to Hendaia but witch hunting prosecutors did not accept
the Logroño verdict and imprisoned her. She was held in prison
until expelled to Hondarribia in a barge.
Catalina
de Erasu from
Donostia (Gipuzkoa) is probably the only woman explorer/conquistador
from Nabarra. Although it is known that a few European women accompanied
their explorer/conquistador husbands to the Americas and rode into battle
with them, the case of Catalina de Erasu is a bit different. As a young
woman she fled a convent, dressed in men's clothing and made her way
to the the "New World." There she joined a Spanish expedition to Chile.
She killed more than a dozen men including her own brother. When she
returned to Europe she was given a pension by the Spanish king and a
dispensation by the Pope which allowed her to continue to wear male
clothing.
Women
against monarchy centralisation
in France led many of the popular revolts (1685-1784) in Mugerre, Irube,
Ainhoa, Donibane-Lohizune, and Baiona. In Hazparne thousands of women
dug a trench in a cemetery and refused to surrender challenging hundreds
of grenadiers and five units of the Brigades de la Maréechausée.
The intervention of the priest of Hasparne prevented a battle between
the women and the French soldiers who eventually were forced to retreat.
Women
who rebelled against
the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) to preserve the republic during the
French Revolutionary Wars were deported and imprisoned in churches which
served as concentration camps. Hundreds of women died from starvation
or epidermics. Those who survided returned to find their homes have
been plundered.
Women in the 20th Century
Haydee
Aguirre and Polixene de Trabudua
were the first members of the Basque Nationalist Party''s women organization
to be incarcerated for their political activities in the 1920s and 1930s.
Haydee and Polixene were active members of the Association of the Patriotic
Women (EAB, Emakume Abertzale Batza) created in Bizkaia in 1922. They
were jailed by the Spanish government in the 1930s.
Women
in Nabarra and its truncated territory of Gipuzkoa,
who were suspected of sympathising with the resistance during the Spanish
Civil War, endured beatings, rape, and detention by local allies of
Gen. Franco. Women were kidnapped, their heads shaved, and exhibited
during the submission of Nabarra in 1936 by Franco's allies.
Women
in the occupied Basque territories
in France worked with local resistance groups to sabotage the Germans
and build resistance networks. Some joined a resistance group in Auxerre
recruited by the SOE. The band was betrayed and captured. Two women
from Nabarra were among those interrogated, tortured and placed in solitary
confinement in the Fresnes prison in Paris and later transferred to
Ravensbruck concentration camp. During the German occupation (1940-1944)
of Nabarra's truncated territories under French jurisdition, more than
11,000 people were sent to concentration camps in Gurs and Argels and
other places, and used for slave labor.
Itziar
Aizpurua, Arantza Arruti, and Jone Dorronsoro
were among the 14 ETA activists brought before a Francoist military
tribunal in Burgos in 1970. The trial sparked off an avalanche of national
and international protest.
Christianne
Fando
from northern Nabarra was a lawyer who represented Basque refugees
in France for more than 20 years, and a main target of the GAL
death squads in the mid-1980s. Her investigation of
the GAL activities was instrumental in finding the the Spanish
government was running a dirty war againts Basque
activists in northen Nabarra under French jurisdiction. She
was a legal advisor to ETA during talks between the Spanish
government and ETA in Algiers in 1989.
Maria
Dolores Gonzalez Catarin
was in the leadership of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the 1980s. Maria
Dolores was killed by ETA in 1986 after she quit ETA and returned from
exile in Mexico.
Sources: Roger Collins, The Basques (Basil
Blackwell, 1986); Jean-Louis Davant, Ebauche d'une histoire du peuple
Basque (Euskadi en guerre, Ekin, 1982); William A. Douglass, For
the Bookshelf (Basque Studies Program newsletter, October 1996);
Marilyn B. Manzer, The Strength of Queen Jeanne Albret; Altaffaylla
Kultur Taldea, Navarra 1936 (1986); Egin archives.
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