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Nabarralde | Nabarra Papers
Women
of Nabarre | Some Facts
(Like
women's rights this page is a work in progress )
The
Feminist League of Baiona was formed in the early 1940s in the
Basque city of Baiona, Lapurdi, one of Nabarra's truncated Basque
territories under French jurisdiction. The league's first
magazine Aana was created in 1944.
Katalina
Elizegi was the first female playwright to write in Eskuara, the Basque
language. In 1916 Katalina was awarded by the Town Hall of Donostia
for her first work in Eskuara, Garbiñe.
A
Basque institution, the Andere or déaconess, was a woman who
looked after the work of a parish in early Christianism.
Basque women wore a black wedding
dress at their wedding.
During
the "Great Hunt" in France groups like the Basques faced bouts of persecutions
and mass executions that showed all the signs of the witch hunts, except
that these were readily identifyable people. Basque women were said
to practise "strange rituals" and to speak a "strange language." They
were victims of interrogation, torture, imprisonment, and cruel murder.
Many were forced to leave their homes or expelled. In 1609, the witch
hunting French official Pierre Lancre tried to execute all 30,000 Basque-speaking
inhabitants of Lapurdi. A popular revolt stopped him from doing it.
The exact number of people burned or killed in Lapurdi (1576), in Zuberoa
(1599), and in Miarritze (1605) as a result of the "witch hunt" is not
known, but Lancre alone is credited with having tortured and burned
around 700 Basque women, and some men.
Basque
women were already working the iron in the 15th-century.
Near
100 female Basque political prisoners are scattered throughout jails
in Spain and France.
Only
a handful of women are currently writing works in the Basque language
(Eskuara). Itxaro Borda, Arantxa Iturbe, Mariasun Landa, Amaia Lasa,
and Laura Mintegi are some of them.
During
the Spanish Republic in the 1930s, Maria de Maeztu from Araba advocated
for the right of women and men to education.
The
Spanish Inquisition was implanted throughout the Basque territories
in Spain after the military occupation of Nabarra by Castile. Both women
and men were victims of the Inquisition.
Many
women participated in the labor strikes held during the Franquoist dictatorship.
In
1825, 45 percent of the active women population in Bilbo were married
or widows; 15 percent in 1935.
Anne
Marie Vergez from the town of Donibane-Lohitzune (under French jurisdiction)
is the only fisherwoman in Nabarra. She has her own boat, the Nahikari,
and has been in the fishing industry since 1988.
Alamanda
(1130 post 1200), most likely a Basque-speaking Gascon, is one of the
twenty known female court poets or troubadours. Although court poets
wrote about love (in lenga d'oc, from which it took the name of Occitania),
the women poets prefered a more straight-foward speech of conversation
than their male counterparts. They did not idealized the relationships
they wrote about, nor they worshiped men or seem to want to be adored
themselves.
Nuns
in the 13th century Monastery of Saint Engracia in Nabarra, had only
one meal (bread and water) a day for a period of six months every year
and were bled four times a year. These nuns belonged to the predominantly
Gascon, aristocratic class of Iruña (Pamplone), who did not use
the Basque language but Occitan. This does not imply that the leaders
of that society were unable to speak Basque, but Basque was not regarded
as appropriate for administrative or literary purposes, for which Occitan
was available. However, the popular classes did use the Basque language
or Euskera.
Carmen
Iza from Eibar (Gipuzkoa) was the first female hiker in Nabarra to finish
scaling 100 mountains in 1927. She joined an elite of male professional
hikers in Nabarra that included Andres Espinosa and Antxon Bandres.
The
participation of women in farm labor suffered a substantive change in
the transition from the baserri (farm) life-style to the cooperative
organization. Women traditionally cooperated as co-managers sharing
the work with the men. With the division of labor deriving from an structured
cooperative, women's role in the decision-making process and work participation
diminished drastically.
The
average age of matrimony in Bilbo (Bizkaia) in 1825 was 27.6 for women
and 27 for men; in 1887 was 24.8 percent for women but remained 27 for
men.
In
1995 a group of women challenged the organizers of a massive all-men
parade in Irun (Gipuzkoa), Saint Marcial military parade, by participating
dressed as soldiers. In the past women were allowed in the parade only
as "cantineras"
(canteen holders). The parade has thousands of uniformed men to
fire their rifles on the order of a General. This parade, as well as
the Hondarribia military parade also in Gipuzkoa, commemorates local
victory over a third attempt in 1522 by the Nabarrase monarchs to re-conquer
Nabarra from Castile. Gipuzkoa fought on the side of Castile.
A
young woman carrying a box on her head heads a parade in the Day of
Santiago parade in the town of Hondarribia in Gipuzkoa. The box contains
documents and books of the local association of fishermen known as the
kofradia. She heads a street parade of mainly men including the mayor
and other elected officials of several municipalities.
In
1988 a feminist movement emerged in Nabarra's truncated territories
of Araba. Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa under Spanish jurisdiction.
Eulalia
Abaitua (1853-1943) from Bilbo was a pioneer in photography. She studied
photography while residing in Liverpool with her husband. Eulalia began
her work as a photographer in 1873 when she returned to Bilbo. She photographed
mainly women in her daily activities.
In
1998 several female members of the grassroots group Solidar@as
con Itoiz (activists who oppose the construction of a dam in
Itoiz) damaged the construction equipment being used to build
a road to access the dam and reservoir in Nabarra's Itoiz
valley which has three Nature Reserves and important archeological
remains. A court had suspended the dam project but works continued
in full swing.
Divorce
and contraception was legalized in Spain in 1983.
Basque
nationalist women in Bizkaia formed their first association in 1922.
The Association of the Patriotic Women (EAB, Emakume Abertzale Batza)
borrowed inspiration from the role of Irish women and the women's organization
Cumann namBan in the Easter Rebellion of 1916. The EAB women functioned
as transmission belts for the nationalist ideology inside the domestic
sphere. EAB was dissolved during Spain's dictatorship of Primo de Rivera
but quickly reorganized in 1931. By 1936 EAB had 28,000 active militants.
An EAB document of 1922 expressed "Now the [male] patriots are not alone
in their struggle; their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters walk
by their side and with them suffer and with them rejoice."
Nathalie
Tauziat (from the city of Baiona in Nabarra's truncated territories
under French jurisdiction) is the first Basque woman to win Wimblendon's
women semi-finals in 1998.
The
work of Basque women writers who write in the Basque language (Euskera)
is considered pedagogical while men's is considered literature.
In
1995 a group of women in the twon of Ibarra rallied in front of the
work place of a rape suspect, Francisco Ibañez (identified by
one of the victims) and convinced him to march through the streets of
the town in front of a banner denouncing the rapes. The march ended
at the local court house where Sanchez confessed he had raped several
women. His victims had reported the attacks to the police which failed
to conduct an investigation.
Abortion
was partially legalized in Spain in 1985. The 1985 law was more restrictive
than the one proposed by the right in France in 1975. It denied the
right to abortion to working women who cannot afford the procedure in
private clinics.
Sources: Roger Collins, The Basques (Basil Blackwell,
1986); Jean-Louis Davant, Ebauche d'une histoire du peuple Basque (Euskadi
en guerre, Ekin, 1982); Ricardo Cierbide y Emiliana Ramos, Monjas Occitanas
(Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1997); Egin archives; Iñaki Gil de San Vicente,
Evolución y enmarque de la liberación sexual en el proceso
de liberación nacional y social de Euska Herria (Ezpala Abertzaleko
Aldizkaria, No. 7, 1998); Sybille Harksen, La Femme au moyen-áge
(Leipzig, 1974); Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation (Cambridge
University Press, 1987); Linda White, More women than you think! (Basque
Studies Program newsletter, October 1996); Joseba Zulaika, Basque Violence
Metaphor and Sacrament (University of Nevada Press, 1988)
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