Victoria Kent

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Memorial plaque in Madrid (2017)

Victoria Kent Siano (born March 6, 1891 in Málaga ; died September 25, 1987 in New York City ) was a Spanish lawyer in the Spanish Republic and a politician in exile during the Franco dictatorship between 1936 and 1977.

Life

Victoria Kent Siano's parents were the shoe retailer José Kent Román and the housewife María Siano González. There are various details about your year of birth. Kent attended a girls' school in Malaga in 1906. From 1920 she studied law at the University of Madrid and took the exam in 1924. She was active in the Association of Spanish Female Students and attended an international female student congress in Prague in 1921. Kent became a member of the Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas ANME (International Federation of Spanish Women) in Madrid.

After further legal training, Kent became the first woman to be admitted to the Malaga Bar Association. She opened a law practice and handled labor law cases. She advised a railway workers 'union and a seafarers' union. In 1927 she took part in a trade union congress.

In 1930 she defended the politician Álvaro de Albornoz before a military court . In 1931 she became a member of the Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación (Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation), a body that has a special position in the Spanish legal system. In 1933 she was accepted into the Association Internationale de Droit Pénal AIDP (International Association for Criminal Law) in Geneva .

Kent was elected to the Constituent Assembly of the Provisional Republic in 1931 as a member of the Partido Republicano Radical Socialista (PRRS). This made her one of the first three women in the Spanish parliament, along with her party mate Margarita Nelken and Clara Campoamor from the Partido Republicano Radical . In 1931 she was appointed General Director of the Spanish Prison Administration by the first President of the Second Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora . In this capacity, she campaigned for prison reform and the rehabilitation of prisoners, which ultimately contributed to her release.

Kent had a sharp argument with Clara Campoamor in parliament over the introduction of women's suffrage . In Kent's view, women in Spain are in the tradition of patriarchy and under the influence of the Catholic Church and are not yet in a position to freely choose. Campoamor, on the other hand, wanted equal suffrage immediately, and so it was enshrined in the Constitution of the Spanish Republic .

Allegedly, Kent lost public sympathy because of this dispute and was not re-elected in 1933, but her party had lost 49 of the 54 previously won seats, among other things because of split-offs. In 1936 she ran on the list of the party Izquierda Republicana (Republican Left, IR) of Manuel Azaña as part of the Frente Popular for the Parliament of the Spanish Republic and was elected.

When the Civil War broke out , Kent went to Paris in 1937. She was employed at the Embassy of the Spanish Republic and worked in childcare for Spanish refugees.

After the German conquest of France in 1940 , she stayed in the country, initially under the protection of the Mexican embassy. Her name appeared on a blacklist of the Vichy regime . She survived the persecution under a false identity with the help of the Red Cross. During this time she wrote the autobiographical novel Cuatro años en París under the pseudonym Madame Duval , the book was published in Buenos Aires in 1948 and in Spain in 1978.

Parque Victoria Kent in Camas near Seville

In 1948, Kent emigrated to Mexico , where she taught criminal law and founded the Escuela de Capacitación para el Personal de Prisiones (German: training center for prison staff ). In 1950 she went to New York City to take part in a study by the United Nations , in which the prison system in Latin America should be examined. She stayed in the USA and worked from 1952 to 1957 as a minister without portfolio in the Spanish government in exile . In New York she was with the financial support of the millionaire Louise Crane (1913-1997) from 1954 to 1974 the exile magazine Ibérica review out. In 1977 she visited Spain for the first time in forty years, but stayed in the USA. In 1986 she received the Spanish Order of San Raimundo de Peñafort, which she was unable to accept in person.

Victoria Kent is buried in Umpawaug Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut , with Louise Crane, who died in 1997, at her side.

In the re-democratically constituted Kingdom of Spain , several biographies about Kent have been published. Schools in Málaga , Fuenlabrada , Marbella and Torrejón de Ardoz were named after Kent , as was a railway station at her birthplace, Málaga. The Seminario de Estudios Interdisciplinarios de la Mujer at the University of Málaga has awarded the Premio Victoria Kent research prize annually since 1991 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Cuatro años en París (1940-1944) . Málaga: Servicio de Publ. E Intercambio Científico de la UMA, 1997 ISBN 84-7496-661-2
  • Salvador de Madariaga : Mi respuesta: artículos publicados en la revista "Ibérica" ​​(1954–1974) . Editor and preface Victoria Kent. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1982 ISBN 84-239-4942-7

literature

  • Carmen de la Guardia: Victoria Kent y Louise Crane en Nueva York. Un exilio compartido . Madrid: Sílex, 2015 ISBN 978-84-7737-618-7
  • María Luisa Balaguer Callejón : Victoria Kent: vida y obra , in: Anuario de derecho parlamentario, ISSN 1136-3339, No. 21, 2009, pp. 17–34
  • Miguel Ángel Villena: Victoria Kent: una pasión republicana . Madrid: Debate, 2007 ISBN 978-84-8306-693-5
  • Lesley Twomey: Four Years in Paris: Victoria Kent, a Spanish Politician in Exile . In: Angela Kimyongür, Angela Kershaw (Eds.): Women in Europe between the Wars: Politics, Culture and Society . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007 ISBN 978-0-7546-8416-9 , pp. 73-91
  • María Telo Núñez: Concepción Arenal y Victoria Kent: la prisiones. vida y obra . Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer, 1995 ISBN 84-7799-117-0
  • 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
  • Manuel Aznar Soler (Ed.): El exilio literario español de 1939 . Barcelona: Cop d'Idees, 1998, pp. 301-308
Fiction
  • Xerardo Agrafoxo: A maleta de Victoria Kent . Vigo: Galaxia, 2014 ISBN 978-84-9865-537-7 (Galician)
  • 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. ^ María Luisa Balaguer: Victoria Kent , 2006, p. 23
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g María Luisa Balaguer: Victoria Kent , 2006, p. 24
  3. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 306.
  4. ↑ Article 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.
  5. ^ María Luisa Balaguer: Victoria Kent , 2006, pp. 25-29
  6. ↑ 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
  7. ↑ a b c d e María Luisa Balaguer: Victoria Kent , 2006, p. 25
  8. ↑ Guide to the Louise Crane and Victoria Kent Papers YCAL MSS 473 , at Yale University
  9. ^ Premio Victoria Kent , list of UMA winners
personal data
SURNAME Kent, Victoria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kent Siano, Victoria (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish lawyer and politician in exile during the Franco dictatorship (1936–1977)
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Málaga
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1987
Place of death New York City