[21] The former advocated active public stance of women in the modern society; the latter, a Catholic friar, pursued the regenerationist path by focusing on social work of the Christians, also underlining the role of females.

[22] It is also not evident whether she has ever pursued the university path; herself she claimed having studied Filosofía y Letras, though neither the timing nor location are known; according to her later account, she followed the classes of Miguel de Unamuno and Julián Besteiro.

[23] Vivacious, straightforward and vibrant,[24] Urraca commenced her professional career by teaching at La Obra del Ave-María,[25] a network of Catholic schools founded by Andrés Manjón and focused on poverty-stricken children, at unspecified time in the 1920s acting as directora of the Bilbao branch.

A number of senior nationwide ACM militants – including her idol, Carmen Cuesta[36] - entered the primoderiverista quasi-parliament, Asamblea Nacional Consultiva; riding the wave of regime's modernizing attempts and its support for females activists, Urraca was appointed to the official labor administration.

[41] Urraca also started to gain recognition beyond Biscay: professional duties brought her to other regions[42] and ACM assignment enabled her to take part in 1929 Congreso Femenino Hispanoamericano, staged by the organization in Seville.

[47] She seemed politically disoriented; due to her earlier engagements she was considered sort of a socialist,[48] ACM record made her look towards Christian organizations, in the April 1931 elections Urraca worked as propagandist supporting Alfonsine candidates[49] and she neared José María Albiñana and his Legionarios.

[50] In late 1931 she co-organized Agrupación de Defensa Femenina, a conservative female organization grouping Alfonsine monarchists, Carlists and the Basque Emakumes,[51] and was later asked to write the program draft.

[54] When detained, active in joint right-wing women groupings or collecting funds to pay fines, Urraca started to meet and forged closer relations with female Carlists;[55] she was particularly impressed by María Ortega de Pradera.

[75] Female groupings, known as Margaritas, operated as affiliated with local circulos; apart from boosting membership and launching new activities, Urraca was entrusted with turning the organization from very loose federation into a nationwide structure; since the task has never been fully completed she did not assume formal presidency,[76] though some scholars name her de facto leader.

[83] In April 1936 she was detained for illegal possession of a pistol[84] but was smuggled out of custody and spent the last few months of peace hiding in a village of Arcos de la Llana near Burgos.

November 1936 back in Guadarrama[91] she spent Christmas among the soldiers,[92] but moved – still as a nurse - to the Northern front in early 1937, partially present during the Nationalist conquest of Vascongadas.

[98] In late April called to Salamanca and received by Franco,[99] she entered Sección Femenina of the newly created state party and along Pilar Primo de Rivera and Mercedes Sanz Bachiller became one of its leaders.

[109] Uneasy relationship developed into open conflict already in 1937,[110] going from bad to worse and culminating in showdown related to personal appointments of provincial Delegación leaders, badges designed for the service and creation of Cuerpo de Enfermeras.

When the civil war ended Urraca was only 39; her hectic activity of the past, abundant with a variety of initiatives and well portrayed in historiography, was to remain in sharp contrast with the next 45 years of her life, spent in privacy and ignored by historians: there is almost no scholarly information on her during that period.

[128] In 1940 Urraca published wartime memoirs Así empezamos;[129] the work contained homage references to Franco, but was designed as praise of males and especially females who contributed to the Nationalist war effort.

[139] Though initially she advertised also teaching castellano,[140] later she dropped this feature from her press ads, which were appearing regularly in the local newspapers until the late 1960s; the last identified was published when she was 70 years old.

Consejo Nacional of Falange in 1942 she has almost entirely disappeared from politics, be it either this related to official Falangist structures, unofficial Carlist movement or semi-political Catholic organizations.

[142] Her public activity – apart from organizing reunions, delivering charlas and editorial work, all intended mostly to sustain ailing family finances – was mostly about engagement in local parochial and municipal Christian initiatives.

She is noted as busy in apostolate of the lay,[143] sort of going on with her earlier teaching work when running cursillos organized by España Cristiana,[144] and maintaining interest in social issues by animating Catholic charity.

In 1942 she was among the distinguished guests present at the Montcada i Reixac cemetery, attending memorial service to the fallen requetés and led by the Catalan Carlist leader Maurici de Sivatte by the Mausoleum, erected 2 years earlier.

As at that time the movement was torn between the Traditionalists and the socialists from Partido Carlista, she sided with the former; in 1972 she co-signed a document issued by Junta Nacional del Requeté, which lambasted Carlos Hugo as the one who abandoned the Carlist standard.

[155] In the late 1970s she is known to have neared the post-Francoist búnker; in 1976 she lent her support to Blas Piñar and his Fuerza Nueva;[156] in 1977, shortly before official dissolution of Movimiento Nacional, she still used to frequent its Barcelona premises, recorded as affable, restrained, but energetic and committed to her ideals.

[158] In the 1930s hailed by the Right as electrifying orator and ridiculed by the Left as political troglodyte, after the Civil War Urraca has almost fallen into oblivion, save for three of her scarcely popular books.

In the tightly censored media of the late 1940s an ex-Republican soldier turned graphics artist, Miguel Bernet Toledano, was permitted to create and publicize her malicious alter-ego known as Doña Urraca, a comics figure to become iconic character in the Spanish print.

A direct reference has never been made;[159] some claim the cartoon figure had nothing to do with Urraca Pastor,[160] some maintain that there is little doubt the ugly black-dressed witch, keen to abuse the weak with a sole purpose to do evil[161] was aimed to mock her.

[165] Shortly before death she was mocked as a mustached nurse by the Nobel Prize winner José Cela in his Mazurca para dos muertos (1983); in literature she also appears - as bulky and ugly conspirator - in Inquietud en el Paraíso (2005) by Óscar Esquivias.

[166] Another scholar advances a competitive thesis, namely that she engaged in public life mostly as a result of modernizing primoderiverista attempts combined with rising social activity of the Catholics.

[171] Though in the Basque realm she is held responsible for executions of priests,[172] by many other scholars Urraca is viewed with cautious sympathy, as a person who was allegedly passionate about equality of the sexes,[173] social justice,[174] classless society and post-war reconciliation,[175] a victim rather than a culprit.