Clara Campoamor (politician)

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Clara Campoamor (Plaza de Guardias de Corps, Madrid, 2006)
Clara Campoamor in San Sebastian

Clara Campoamor Rodríguez (born February 12, 1888 in Madrid ; died April 30, 1972 in Lausanne ) was a Spanish politician in the Second Spanish Republic and a suffragette . She was the leading figure of the women's suffrage movement and sat for the Partido Republicano Radical from 1931 to 1933 in the Spanish parliament.

Life

Clara Campoamor came from a simple background and grew up in a liberal family. Her father died when she was twelve years old and she was sent to wage labor when she was thirteen. At first she worked as a seamstress like her mother, but continued her education and in 1915 switched to a position as a secretary at the La Tribuna newspaper . There she was able to develop her interests in socialist and radical politics. She also worked as a shorthand teacher .

In 1922 she graduated from high school in the evening class. She studied law at the University of Madrid and passed her state examination in 1924. This made her one of the very few Spanish women with a university degree. She was admitted to the bar in Madrid, became a member of the Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación and was active in legal and political associations. She was an active member of the Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas ANME (International Association of Spanish Women) in Madrid since 1922 . In 1928 she became a lecturer at the Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación.

After the resignation of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera and the proclamation of the Spanish Republic, women did not have the right to vote in the parliamentary elections in 1931, but they could be elected. Campoamor, who ran for the Radical Party, Victoria Kent and Margarita Nelken received seats. Parliament gave women the same legal status as men, decriminalized abortion and adultery, and guaranteed women unhindered access to the labor market.

Campoamor was elected deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee for labor and social affairs and became a member of the constitutional committee, which was supposed to draft a new constitution.

The question of the right to vote for women was politically controversial. Clara Campoamor became the leading figure in women's suffrage. In an emphatic speech, she announced that women could only be free if they exercised their political rights. The socialists and Campoamor demanded that women should be given equal suffrage immediately for reasons of equality. The Catholic and Conservative MPs advocated the right to vote for women because they believed that the votes of women were safe. They argued that women are inherently hysterical and unsuitable for political debate. The liberals rejected women's suffrage, as women were still politically uneducated and with their voting, influenced by the clergy, would consolidate and increase the influence of the Catholic Church. The socialist MP Victoria Kent, who had a fierce parliamentary exchange of blows with Campoamor, was also among those concerned. Victoria Kent and Margarita Nelken argued that women are not ready to take on political responsibility. Campoamor drew a section of the liberal parliamentarians to her side when she supported the liberal issues of civil marriage and divorce law. A compromise in the form of a legislative proposal that only wanted women over 45 to vote was not given a majority. In the end, the voting lines ran through all parties. In the draft constitution passed in October 1931 by a large majority, Article 36 provided the right to vote for women. Kent subsequently tried to make room for her concerns by requiring women to participate twice in regional elections as a precondition for participation in national elections. Since the Catholic parties boycotted parliamentary work in the meantime, the rejection of this amendment to the electoral law was only very narrowly in favor of Campoamor. On December 8, 1931, the Constitución de la República Española (Constitution of the Spanish Republic) was passed and all women over 23 years of age were given the right to vote.

Campoamor was blamed for the outcome of the electoral debate in her party, and she was no longer nominated as a candidate by the radicals in the 1933 primaries for the next general election. The political right won the first elections under the new constitution. Campoamor was accused of the fact that women's suffrage was responsible for the creation of organizations like the Catholic Action , which pushed back the progressive elements in Spain. In response to these allegations, Clara Campoamor wrote the book El voto femenino y yo: mi pecado mortal ( The right to vote and I: my mortal sin. ) Campoamor found a job as a director in the social administration. In the elections in 1935 she tried to be placed on the list of the Izquierda Republicana (Republican Left, IR), which she failed. The attempt to be included on the common list of the Frente Popular with a women's group also failed. In the 1936 elections, the left won, proving that the introduction of women's suffrage did not necessarily mean a shift to the right.

After the outbreak of civil war , Campoamor fled to France in 1937 and from there to Argentina in 1938 . There she lived more poorly from translation, from lectures and from three biographies ( Concepción Arenal , Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , Quevedo ). In 1955 she moved from Argentina to Switzerland , where she died in 1972. She was not allowed to return to Franco Spain because she was a Freemason .

In the re-democratically constituted Kingdom of Spain , several biographies about Campoamor were published after 1978. Monuments were erected for Campoamor and public buildings, squares and a naval rescue ship named after her. The PSOE in Andalusia offered a Premio Clara Campoamo for civil society engagement. Laura Mañá shot the film Clara Campoamor about the "forgotten Clara Campoamor" with Elvira Mínguez in the title role . La mujer olvidada , broadcast by Spanish television RTVE 2011.

Fonts (selection)

  • María Cambrils : Feminismo socialista . Preface by Clara Campoamor. Valencia: Las Artes, 1925
  • Texto íntegro del discurso de Clara Campoamor en las Cortes , October 1, 1931, printed in El País , October 1, 2015
  • El derecho de la mujer en España . 1931
  • El voto femenino y yo: mi pecado mortal . Buenos Aires, 1935
    • El voto femenino y yo: mi pecado mortal . Preface by Blanca Estrella Ruiz Ungo. Madrid: Editorial Horas y Horas, 2006
  • La révolution espagnole vue par une républicaine . Translation from the Spanish Antoinette Quinche . Paris: Plon, 1937
  • with Federico Fernández Castillej : Heroísmo criollo: la marina argentina en el drama español . 1939
  • El pensamiento vivo de Concepción Arenal . 1939
  • Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz . Madrid: Júcar, 1984, first in 1944
  • Vida y obra de Quevedo . Buenos Aires, Ediciones Gay-Saber, 1945
  • Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz . Madrid: Júcar, 1984
  • España: the condición de la mujer en la sociedad contemporánea . Oviedo: Gobierno del Principado de Asturias, Consejería de la Presidencia, Instituto Asturiano de la Mujer, 2006
  • El derecho de la mujer: recopilación de tres de las conferencias iniciadas en 1922 by Clara Campoamor . Madrid: Dirección General de la Mujer, 2007
  • La mujer en la diplomacia, y otros artículos . Seville: Renacimiento, 2017

literature

  • Concha Fagoaga de Bartolomé, Paloma Saavedra: Clara Campoamor, la sufragista española . Madrid: Dirección General de Juventud y Promoción Socio-Cultural, Subdirección General de la Mujer, 1981
  • Rosa María Capel Martínez: El trabajo y la educación de la mujer en España: 1900–1930 . Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, Inst. De la Mujer, 1986, pp. 525-529
  • Campoamor Rodríguez, Clara , in: June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International encyclopedia of women's suffrage . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , pp. 47f.
  • Isaías Lafuente: La mujer olvidada: Clara Campoamor y su lucha por el voto femenino . Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy, 2006
  • Josebe Martínez: Las santas rojas: exceso y pasión de Clara Campoamor, Victoria Kent y Margarita Carnations . Barcelona: Flor del viento, 2008
  • María Luisa Balaguer Callejón : Victoria Kent: vida y obra , in: Anuario de derecho parlamentario, ISSN 1136-3339, No. 21, 2009, pp. 17–34
Fiction
  • Elena Moya: La candidata: una mujer, un ideal político y unas elecciones generales que la cambiarán para siempre . Barcelona: Suma de Letras, 2015 ISBN 978-84-8365-814-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The original of the bust was stolen in 2016 and the bust was renewed
  2. ↑ a b c d Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 305.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 306.
  4. ^ María Luisa Balaguer: Victoria Kent , 2006, pp. 25-29
  5. ↑ Article Spain , in: June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International encyclopedia of women's suffrage . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , pp. 277-280
  6. ^ Premio Clara Campoamo , at PSOE
  7. ↑ Clara Campoamor. La mujer olvidada in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  8. ↑ Mi pecado mortal. El voto femenino y yo , review in: El Cultural , 23 March 2018
personal data
SURNAME Campoamor, Clara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Campoamor Rodríguez, Clara (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish politician and suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1972
Place of death Lausanne