#lgbspain

[lgbhistory]

Empar Pineda i Erdozia

• Empar is a Spanish feminist activist born in Hernani, Gipuzkoa in 1944.

• She was enrolled in a German nun's school, where she was required to learn English.

• As there was no public university in the Basque Country, she moved to Madrid, where her sister lived.

• She participated in the anti-Francoist student movement and was banned from enrolling at the Universities of Madrid and Barcelona. She ended up enrolling at the University of Salamanca in 1964, and a little later at the University of Oviedo, where she graduated in Romance philology.

• She returned to Madrid, where she began teaching Language and Literature while continuing her membership in left-wing organizations.

• An anti-Francoist militant, she was arrested by the authorities and spent some time in Martutene Prison.

•In the 1970s, during the transition to democracy, she moved to Barcelona. There she was the leader of the Communist Movement of Catalonia.

•In 1985 she was interviewed in the magazine Interviú with the headline "I am a lesbian just because ", to demand an end to the repression of homosexual women.

• In 1980 she was co-founder of the Lesbian Feminist Collective of Madrid and participated in the creation of the Right to Abortion Commission.

• In 2008 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi for "her dedication sustained for so many years in defense of women's rights, from the action – as an active member of various organizations – and reflection – as a co-author of several volumes, including 'El feminismo que existe'."

[lgbhistory]

Victoria Kent Siano

Born in 1891, in Málaga, Victoria was a Spanish lawyer and republican politician.

Kent was affiliated to the Radical Socialist Republican Party. She became a member of the first Parliament of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931. 

One of the most outstanding and controversial moments in Kent's personal and political life would be her opposition to women's suffrage.

Kent was against giving women the right to vote immediately, arguing that, as Spanish women lacked at that moment social and political education enough to vote responsibly, they would be very much influenced by the Catholic priests, damaging left wing parties.

She had a controversy about this subject with another feminist in the parliament, Clara Campoamor. This caused her certain unpopularity and, when women were given right to vote, she lost her seat – as she had predicted – to the conservative majority in 1933.

Her partner was Louise Crane, a prominent American philanthropist. She helped Victoria to publish Ibérica. Ibérica featured news for the expatriate Spanish community in the United States.Kent was a prominent member of the Spanish Republican party, opposed to Franco. Many prominent writers, including Salvador Madariaga, contributed to Ibérica.

After the Spanish Civil War, Kent went into exile in Mexico, but soon moved on to the United States. She died in New York in 1987, and is buried alongside her partner.

Colleges in Málaga, Fuenlabrada, Marbella, Torrejón de Ardoz (Instituto de Educación Secundaria Victoria Kent), and a railway station in her home town of Málaga, have been named after her. Historians have not adequately discussed her lesbianism.

In 1986 she was awarded the medal of San Raimundo de Peñafor, but because of her old age she was not able to receive it in person.

[lgbhistory]

What was it like being a lesbian in Spain in the 1920s?

• While in other countries like the United Kingdom, writers like Radclyffe Hall published works that were focused on women loving women, in Spain they used to be less visible.

• There are as many cases of lesbianism as there are women in history, however historical investigations only document two stereotypes: the first one is a mannish woman, "la mujer hombruna" who "tries to immitate a man". The second one comes directly from europe. "Flapper girls",those women who after the First World War worked as telephone operators,secretaries and saleswomen in department stores. "Flapper girls" or as they say it in spanish "Las Flappers" were a synonim of freedom. Freedom in the way they dressed as well as freedom in their habbits.

• One of a few well-known lesbians at the time was Lucía Sánchez Saornil, a poet and a worker of a telephone company from 1916 to 1931 when she was expelled for her trade union activities. She was also a founder of an anarchist women's organization "mujeres libres".

• Other visible women of the epoch were Marisa Roesset, an artist, Victoria Kent, a lawyer and a republican politician, journalists Carmen de Burgos and Irene Polo, a scenographer Victoria Durán and many others.

• What was the greatest enemy of women’s freedom of the time? The pathology of their behavior, the belief that they were "wrong" and that their lesbianism was a "disease".

"Lyceum club"

[lgbhistory]

Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre

Cristóbal Balenciaga was a Spanish fashion designer, and the founder of the Balenciaga fashion house. 

Born in January,21, 1895 Getaria, Spain

Died in March, 23, 1972 Xàbia,Spain

Balenciaga was born in Getaria, province of Gipuzkoa (Basque Country) on 21 January 1895.  His father was a simple fisherman who died when Cristobal was a boy, and his mother a seamstress. As a child Balenciaga often spent time with his mother as she worked.

At the age of twelve, he began work as the apprentice of a tailor. When he was a teenager, the Marchioness de Casa Torres, the foremost noblewoman in his town, became his customer and patron. She sent him to Madrid, where he was formally trained in tailoring.

Balenciaga was successful during his early career as a designer in Spain. He opened a boutique in San Sebastián  in 1919, which expanded to include branches in Madrid and Barcelona. The Spanish royal family and the aristocracy wore his designs, but when the Spanish Civil War forced him to close his stores, Balenciaga moved to Paris. He opened his Paris couture house on Avenue George V in August 1937.

He taught fashion design classes, inspiring other designers including Oscar de la Renta, Emanuel Ungaro, Mila Schön and Hubert de Givenchy.

Balenciaga closed his house in 1968 at the age of 74 after working in Paris for 30 years. He decided to retire and closed the rest of his fashion houses in Madrid,Barcelona and Paris.

Today the Balenciaga fashion house continues under the direction of Demna Gvasalia and under the ownership of the Kering.

Balenciaga was gay, although he kept his sexuality private throughout his life.

The love of his life and long time partner was Franco-Polish millionaire Władzio Jaworowski d’Attainville, who had helped fund setting him up.