“Destroyers of the family, unpatriotic and freemasons”: the ladies’s membership that ignited feminism in Spain | Culture | EUROtoday

Surname, lady’s first title and handle; beneath one other: surname, additionally lady’s title and handle; within the subsequent line, the identical. Sometimes the husband’s final title seems, different occasions an efe, a be or a te is included on the finish of the road, indicating whether or not she is a founder, descendant or transient respectively. And so, a listing of 323 names is preserved in a pocket book that belonged to the Biscayan mental Pilar de Zubiaurre (Garai, 1884-Mexico City, 1970). One of these bible paper diaries, very skinny and really delicate, handwritten with the everyday female calligraphy of the primary half of the twentieth century. This pocket book, whose cowl says “Lyceum Club associates”, is a milestone within the commemoration of the centenary of the founding of the Lyceum Club Femenino, whose celebration begins this Wednesday.

The ladies in that listing, particularly the promoters of this feminist affiliation, had been described as unpatriotic, freemasons and, in fact, destroyers of the household and morality by the traditionalist press. The Lyceum Club Femenino, which some known as an opium den, started its journey in November 1926. This is what María Teresa León, one among its members, informed in her memoirs revealed in 1970: “That unusual women’s independence was furiously attacked, the case was taken to the pulpits, political bells were rang to destroy the skirt uprising. The Lyceum Club was not a fan and dance meeting, they had proposed to advance the clock of Spain. It seemed clear that this organization bothered the conservative currents of the 1920s, in the midst of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, who feared that women would abandon their work as angels of the home and ridiculing them – they believed – was a way to deactivate them.

Nothing stopped the founders of this club, leading intellectuals of that time who wanted to breathe modernity and a future into Spain. As León said: wind the clock. María de Maeztu, its first director, defended that to fight for the emancipation of women it was necessary to create their own infrastructure to think, know and create without male tutelage: education and support networks as keys to being recognized as full citizens. Another of the pioneers, María Lejárraga, had already written in 1916: “Women need a corner with a little light, silence and many books to be able to learn on their own something of the much that neither the family nor the State has bothered to teach them.”

Said and done, in the first headquarters on Madrid’s Calle de las Infantas, in the House of the Seven Chimeneas, where the Ministry of Culture is today located, the figures already named and others such as Zenobia Camprubí, Ernestina de Champourncín, Victorina Durán, Victoria Kent, María Martos, Isabel Oyarzábal, Concha Méndez… as well as up to half a thousand members met during its 10 years of cultural ebullition. And this is where the importance of Zubiaurre’s notebook is explained. Tània Balló, curator of the centenary program, remembers the call she received from the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao in which they told her that the family of Pilar de Zubiaurre, who had run the literature section of the Lyceum Club Femenino, had something that might interest her: “It is one of the most exciting moments of my life as a researcher, and I have had quite a few.” The enthusiasm increases when he describes his meeting with Zubiaurre’s granddaughter, who not long ago arrived from Mexico, the country where her grandmother was exiled, to settle in her hometown. The agenda remained in exile with its owner who preserved it as part of who she was, founder of the Lyceum, as an anchor to her land and her ideals, and as part of the legacy of this writer and pianist and of all those women who appear in the notebook. This list came to complete those that were known, such as that of Camprubí, who was secretary of the association and kept a typed list of 341 names, and that of Concha Fagoaga, one of the first researchers of the Lyceum Club Femenino who published a census in 2002. Crossing the names of these lists, together with some that have appeared in other sources, there are about 500 members between 1926 and 1936. Balló is sure that “the number will continue to grow.”

Architects, translators, writers, playwrights, journalists, teachers, educators, lawyers… different profiles and sensibilities, with disparities in thoughts and ideologies but who fought, above all, for a common goal: the recognition of the full autonomy of women. In the intellectual atmosphere created within the walls of the Lyceum Club, issues such as women’s suffrage were debated, which culminated in the approval of the vote for women in 1931, the year in which the Second Republic was proclaimed. The change of political winds favored this private institution, which was financed from the members’ fees, the largest contribution from some of them and charity parties, and which with the new republican regime received some state subsidy. This is known thanks to the administrative documents, fundamental pieces to reconstruct and understand the history, activities and internal functioning of the club. Matters that still have large gaps, since the disappearance of this association after the Civil War, damaged the conservation of its minutes, reports and other purely bureaucratic papers. The search for this documentation in different Administration archives has been one of the two fundamental objectives in the preparation of the centenary commemoration. The other: the increase in the membership census and with it, the rescue of the memory and biographies of the members of the Lyceum Club Femenino. And here the importance of Zubiaurre’s notebook is once again confirmed, which will be one of the pieces that will be shown in the exhibition dedicated to this group of women that can be visited between September and January in Madrid. Afterwards, according to Balló, it will travel.

The anniversary will open this Wednesday in Madrid with a round table in which Fagoaga will participate; Balló; Carmen de la Guardia, scientific advisor of the project; and Ana López Cuadrado, deputy director general of State Archives. Who knows if it will be similar to that talk that Federico García Lorca gave in February 1929 at the Lyceum, or to that of Rafael Alberti who, in the midst of surrealism, appeared at the club with a dove and a tortoise to give his lecture Palomita and tortoiseshell. (No more arthritic). Miguel de Unamuno and many other intellectuals and authorities of the time were also invited; many maintained close relationships with their members, whether family, romantic or professional. However, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Jacinto Benavente, declined the invitation, stating that he did not like to talk “stupidly.”

They were not stupid and crazy, in fact, the opposite: they knew their reality and the reality that surrounded them. Hence, two of its fundamental projects were the Casa del Niño, a children’s school that served the children of working women who could not take care of them while they worked. In addition to ensuring the education of the little ones, she also looked after their health, hygiene and nutrition. And the other great mission was the Book Committee for the Blind, in which about 70 members participated who learned braille and created books for the blind.

The Civil War stopped these feminist and inclusive projects. When the conflict ended, in 1939, like the stopped hands of a clock that no one had wound up, the headquarters of the Lyceum Club Femenino – on San Marcos Street – had remained intact, according to Carmen Baroja, who was in charge of the artistic section, in her memoirs. Since then, not only has the history of this association and these women been ignored; Furthermore, he threw it into the ditch and buried it. The Falange seized the assets, the Women’s Section took the reins and only shared the ‘feminine’ of the name with the Lyceum ideology. The belongings of the club founded by María de Maeztu and company were not known until 2002, when the library of the Medina Club, the name that the Lyceum Club took during the dictatorship, was auctioned in the Durán bidding house in Madrid. The buyer of that set of 6,000 books is not known; half of them were possibly those that made up the Lyceum library, one of its most precious assets.

The centenary requires the vindication, recognition and reconstruction of the historical past of those ladies. The celebration places the highlight on the Lyceum Club’s previous and illuminates the long run: the story that is still to be informed; paperwork, notebooks and books to be situated, the latter marked with a double seal, that of the Lyceum and that of the Medina Club. Now sure, the arms of the clock are shifting.