The Conquest of Suffrage and Women's Political

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The Conquest of Suffrage and Women's Political CONSTRUCTING WOMEN’S CITIZENSHIP: THE CONQUEST OF SUFFRAGE AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL RIGHTS IN SPAIN1 Ana Aguado Historical Context: The Second Spanish Republic Women were granted sufffrage on equal terms with men in 1931 in Spain. This came about in the context of democratizing measures introduced after the Second Republic (1931–1936) was established on April 14, 1931. Men over the age of 23 had been granted sufffrage rights by a decree issued on September 9, 1868, following the 1868 revolution and the overthrow of Isabel II. The constitution of Spain’s First Republic (1869) ratifijied such misnamed ‘universal sufffrage’. More than 60 years later, in 1931, Spain began its second republican experience. During the Restoration of the reign of Alfonso XIII, following the military dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1923–1930), the king’s supporters failed to transform the monar- chy into a constitutional regime. Opposition parties won the municipal elections held on April 12, 1931, in 41 of the 50 provincial capitals amidst scenes of ‘popular celebration’, thus revealing the monarchy’s lack of sup- port and leading to the abdication of Alfonso XIII and the peaceful estab- lishment of the Second Republic. Republican groups symbolized the new intellectual, reformist vitality of the urban middle classes. The short-lived Second Republic brought about political modernity for the fijirst time in Spain, through democrati- zation, secularism, and codifijication, against a predominantly traditional backdrop. It also took decisive steps towards women’s equality, including the recognition of civil, social, and political rights (that is, sufffrage).2 Spain’s Second Republic was challenged by a military uprising on July 18, 1936, followed by the Civil War, which ended with the victory of the conservative forces under General Francisco Franco in 1939. Franco’s 1 This paper is part of the R+D+i Project HAR 2008–03970/HIST. Translated by Paul Edgar. 2 Aguado A., “Identidades de género y culturas políticas en la España del siglo XX”, elec- tronic publication for the website of the Spanish Institute for Women, Ministry for Equality, 2009, www.migualdad.es/mujer/mujeres/estud_inves/index.htm. 290 ana aguado dictatorial regime introduced an extremely patriarchal system and repre- sented a full step backwards for women’s rights. Freedoms and rights, including women’s rights, were only re-established after Franco’s death in 1975, with the transition to democracy and the 1978 constitution currently in force. The Long Road Towards Political Equality: Feminism, Sufffragism, and Political Cultures Although women had been involved in freethinking, laicist, Masonic, and republican movements, their political proposals did not include women’s sufffrage until the second decade of the 20th century. The initial forma- tive period of Spanish feminism, which began at the turn of the cen- tury, witnessed the development of so-called ‘social feminism’, whose demands centred on civil rights, the development of personal freedom, and social (labor and educational) reforms, the main priority being non-denominational education. Rooted in the previous generation of pro-secularization and freethink- ing women, from the beginning of World War I and during the inter-war period, Spain saw the initial organization of sufffragist feminism, which was linked to the increasing presence of women in republican and socialist political culture.3 The Spanish League for the Progress of Women (Liga Española para el Progreso de la Mujer) was set up in 1918 and was presented to the public through the manifesto ‘To Spanish women’. The league comprised previous groups such as the General Women’s Association (Asociación General Femenina) set up by Belén Sárraga and Ana and Amalia Carvia in Valencia in 1897, the Progressive Women’s Society of Barcelona (Sociedad Progresiva Femenina de Barcelona) created in 1898 together with its newspaper The Gladiator (El Gladiador), and the Concepción Arenal Society (Sociedad Concepción Arenal). The league clearly supported sufffragism, as did the Catholic, centrist National Association of Spanish Women (Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas [ANME]), also founded in 1918. It worked together with other groups in the Supreme Feminist Council (Consejo Supremo Feminista), founded in 1919, and which that same year sent a request for women’s sufffrage to 3 Aguado A., “Los feminismos: Movimientos sociales y teorías críticas en la construc- ción de la ciudadanía femenina en España”, in De la Calle Velasco, M.D. (ed.), Mov- imientos sociales en la España del siglo XX (Salamanca: 2008) 215–227..
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