Clara Campoamor
Clara Campoamor Rodríguez
Much more than the female vote
Madrid, 1888 - Lausana, 1972
On 1 October 1933, Spanish women voted for the first time, later than women in Finland (1906), Great Britain or Germany (1918) but earlier than those in France (1944), Italy (1947) or Switzerland (1971). Clara Campoamor has gone down in history as the mastermind behind the female vote in Spain.
So who was Campoamor? Her father was an accountant and her mother was a seamstress. Her father’s death forced her to work at an early age as a dressmaker, a shop clerk, a civil servant as an assistant at Telégrafos and later a teacher at the Escuelas de Adultas.
She finished her Law degree at the age of 36. She was the third woman to join the Bar Association in Spain, in Madrid and would later be the second women to join the Bar Association in San Sebastián and the first in Seville, Alcalá de Henares and Vitoria.
A multifaceted jurist, she participated in creating the International Federation of Women in Legal Careers and showed a particular predilection for civil law, where she fought against women’s ‘impersonalidad’ (lack of legal standing) in the laws of the period, especially married women, as they lost their rights and were treated as minors upon marriage. She was the first woman lawyer to appear before the Supreme Court on matters related to women’s legal status.
Politics led her to be one of the three female MPs in the 1931 Constituent Courts (along with Victoria Kent and Margarita Nelken), when women did not yet have the right to vote, although they could be elected. There, she promoted reforms for legal equality which transformed the lives of women, such as her passionate, solo defence in favour of the female vote. Her party, the Partido Radical (Radical Party), abandoned her. One famous historical episode is her vibrant parliamentary clash with another woman, Victoria Kent, who was against introducing women’s suffrage at the time because, Kent maintained, they would not vote for the Republic because they were influenced by the Catholic Church. Two clashing women… the press nicknamed ‘la Clara y la Yema’ (a play of words on ‘clara’, meaning egg white, and ‘yema’, meaning egg yolk).
The female vote won: 161 votes in favour and 121 against. And the 1931 Constitution called for equal electoral rights for men and women. Campoamor also participated in the Divorce Law, the Civil Marriage Law and the Law on Legitimacy of Children Born out of Wedlock.
Women voted in 1933, but Clara Campoamor did not earn enough and lost her seat in parliament. A prolific writer, two of her emblematic books are El voto femenino y yo: mi pecado mortal (1936) and La revolución española vista por una republicana (1937, initially published in French). When the Civil War broke out, when went into exile in France, Buenos Aires and Switzerland, where she died after a life devoted to fighting for women’s rights. The Franco regime never allowed her to return to Spain.
María Jesús García Morales
Associate Professor (Profesora Titular) of Constitutional Law
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
References:
- Campoamor, Clara (2022). Clara Campoamor: su vida, su época. Conmemoración del cincuentenario de su muerte (1972-202). Madrid: Ministerio de la Presidencia, CEPC, Agencia Estatal BOE. In: https://www.cepc.gob.es/sites/default/files/2022-06/a-955-2022-0138claracampoamorcincuentenarioaccfinal.pdf (accessed: 19.09.2022).
- Congreso de los Diputados. La diputada Campoamor y los derechos civiles y políticos de las mujeres. In: https://www.congreso.es/cem/vidparl1931-5 (accessed: 18.09.2022).
- Lafuente, Isaías (2021). Clara Victoria. Barcelona: Planeta.
- Lizarraga Vizcarra, Isabel; Aguilera Sastre, Juan (2021). Clara Campoamor, de viva voz. Sevilla: Renacimiento.
- Samblancat Miranda, Neus. Clara Campoamor. Diccionario biográfico de la Real Academia de la Historia. In: https://dbe.rah.es/ (consulta 18.09.2022).
- Podcast: SERPodcast Clara conquista. XI Premio Internacional de Periodismo "Colombine". In:
https://www.podiumpodcast.com/podcasts/clara-conquista-playser-em/ (accessed 18.09.2022).
- Video: Clara Campoamor. Una mujer adelantada a su tiempo. Congreso de los Diputados. Canal Parlamento, 30.09.2021. In: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRC7r4jH9Jw (consulta: 18.09.2022).
Suggested citation:
García Morales, María Jesús (2022). Clara Campoamor Rodríguez. Pioneering Female Jurists: Remembrance and Memory [Electronic resource], Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, November 2022. In: https://ddd.uab.cat/record/268724
This web Pioneering Female Jurists: Remembrance and Memory was created as part of the teaching innovation and quality improvement project of the UAB 2021 (GI515402). Main researcher: María Jesús García Morales
