Women in the Basque Nationalist Party in Francoist Spain
Women in the Basque Nationalist Party in Francoist Spain were involved in leadership positions from an early period.
The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) was founded prior to the Second Spanish Republic in Bilbao, as a conservative Roman Catholic organization.
Emakume Abertzale Batza, PNV's women political section, was operated in exile in this early period.
Spain's crippled economy of the 1940s made it difficult for men and women to be involved in PNV's nationalist struggles.
Women, disavowing extremists like ETA, supported centrists parties like PNV at the ballot box, helping them to win 11 of 21 seats in the first regional elections in the post-Franco era.
[5] During the Spanish Civil War, the autonomous government avoided chaos in Biscay and western Gipuzkoa, and took the reins of the coordination and provision of military resistance.
On occupation of the territories loyal to the Republic, the Francoist repression was focused on leftists, but Basque nationalists were also targeted, facing prison, humiliation, and death.
As the rebel troops approached Biscay, the Carlist press in Pamplona even called for the extermination of Basque nationalists.
Jose Antonio de Aguirre stated that "the German planes bombed us with a brutality that had never been seen before for two and a half hours."
[3] Historically, the Basque country family structure has required men leave the home for long periods of time for work.
They were subject to scrutiny because people accused them of being involved with or having sympathies for groups like PCE, UGT, Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), and Emakume Abertzaleen Batzak.
[19] PNV's women section, Emakume Abertzale Batza, was created in April 1922 in Bilbao and closed in September of the following year.
[20][21] Following the war, most of its members were forced into exile France, Belgium, England and Catalonia, where the organization was reconstituted and would never return to Spain.
[20] Basque PNV women in exile in Argentina created a branch of the organization on 16 August 1938 called Acción Nacionalista Vasca.
[21] Emakume Abertzale Batza member Catalina Alastuey was able to continue teaching classes a few years after the end of the Spanish Civil War thanks to a decree by the Provincial Council.
[31][27] Miren Gezala was raised in a PNV militant family during her formative years during the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Second Spanish Republic.
During the war, she went to France where she became involved with the Francophone Basque Resistance Information Service, helping to clandestinely send messages to people in prison.
[37] Until the mid-1950s, Spain was crippled by an economic crisis coupled with a government imposed repressive society and culture that demanded uniformity and compliance.
[15] Husbands being involved with political resistance could prove difficult for wives and children as PNV could only pay a small stipend when they were out on assignment.
This work often required husbands to be away from their lives for long periods of time, leaving their wives to manage everything on the home front.
PNV invited ETA to merge with them, and negotiations for this took place between 1954 and 1957, with the original group finally agreeing to dissolve and become a youth branch called Euzko Gaztedi.
The next two years would be filled with tension as PNV leadership and Ekin battled it out over ideological differences in their approach to nationalist goals.
This both protected the organization from discovery and reinforced the movement's ideology by largely only allowing it to dominate in the home as other voices were not heard.
As they grew older, they were continually exposed to stories of nationalist activities by their family members who were held up as role models.
She returned to writing Basque and Spanish language children books, publishing a number of stories in the next sixteen years.
[38][21] Garbiñe Urresti returned from exile in Venezuela and ran a clandestine Basque language radio station.
[38] In the democratic transition period, PNV and Convergència i Unió (CiU) were both considered moderate regional parties.
Women voters in general favored centrist parties during the 1982 elections, like PNV, CiU and Centro Democrático y Social (CDS).
Women disavowed more the extremist elements like ETA, Herri Batasuna (HB), Catalan nationalists ERC, and Galician radicals.
As a result of their actions, all but one Basque nationalist political parties signed an agreement stating their goal to end ETA's violence in January 1988.
