Isabel Oyarzábal
Isabel Oyarzábal Smith
First woman labour inspector and first woman Ambassador of Spain
Màlaga, 1878 - Ciutat de Mèxic, 1974
With a highly diverse and heterogeneous facet as a feminist and republican activist, Isabel Oyarzábal developed to her utmost potential in a men’s world. She educated herself in humanism and was part of the bourgeois and feminist cultural circle in Madrid in the early decades of the twentieth century as a prominent member of the Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas (National Association of Spanish Women) and the Lyceum Club.
Both are spaces which promoted new social gender relations, the dignification of women’s work and comprehensive education from a bourgeois vantage point which translated into a kind of acknowledgement of female authority in public and private spaces, albeit not without reservations. The education of working-class women was a particular focus of her international lectures and essays (1920-1929).
With her multifaceted education and her strong political connections, she was a member of the UGT trade union and the PSOE political party since 1931, and earned the personal trust of politicians the likes of Francisco Largo Caballero, Luis Araquistáin and Julio Álvarez del Vayo. She focused on criticism of the overall lack of social assistance with a combative discourse in which she exposed the shortcomings of social laws, the miserable living conditions of the working class and their repercussions on woman and children.
She was the first Spanish woman to secure a position as a Provincial Labour Inspector (1933) and the first woman ambassador of Spain who occupied the post of envoy and ambassador of the Second Republic in the Spanish legation in Sweden and Finland (1936-1939). She also participated as an expert in international laws on child and female labour at the International Labour Organisation (1931) and the Society of Nations’ Committee of Experts on Slavery (1934-1938). Her contributions were aimed at dealing with issues related to child slavery, forced labour and the condemnation of slavery practices which some ventured to call undercover prostitution.
She was the author of autobiographical novels and evoked her inner life with some anguish in three major publications written in exile, I Must Have Liberty (1940), Smouldering Freedom (1945) and Alexandra Kollontay (1947), which are a perfect synthesis of an exile’s experience. Her status as an exiled republican intellectual took root in Mexico, where she was a member of and spokesperson for the Junta de Cultura Española (Spanish Board of Culture). Her life history is a paradigmatic example of a republican who was left without a republic.
Olga Paz Torres
Associate Professor (Profesora Agregada) of History of Law and Institutions
Researcher in the ‘Antígona’ Group in the Faculty of Law
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
References:
- Paz Torres, Olga (2010). Isabel Oyarzábal Smith (1878-1974). Una intelectual en la Segunda República española. Del reto del discurso a los surcos del exilio. Sevilla: CES Premio de Investigación 2010.
- Paz Torres, Olga (2018). Aspiraciones y oportunidades de las mujeres en la Segunda República española. El caso de Isabel Oyarzábal Smith. In: Rosa Monlleó Peris; Inmaculada Badenes-Gasset Ramos; Eva Alcón Sornichero (eds. lit.), Mujeres públicas, ciudadanas conscientes. Una experiencia cívica en la Segunda República. Castelló de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I, Servei de Comunicació i Publicacions, 99-116.
- Paz Torres, Olga (2019). Foros internacionales de participación femenina (1931-1939): Isabel Oyarzábal Smith en la Organización Internacional del Trabajo y en la Sociedad de Naciones. In: Miguel Ángel Chamocho Cantudo; Isabel Ramos Vázquez (coords.), La Organización Internacional del Trabajo: Cien años de protección jurídica internacional de la clase obrera (1919-2019) (293-328). València: Tirant lo Blanch.
- Vídeos:
-- Centro Andaluz de las Letras: Jornadas Isabel Oyarzábal. Málaga, 24, 25, 26.11.2020. In:
https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/caletras/content/jornadas-sobre-isabel-oyarzabal (accessed: 19.09.2022).
-- EMARTV (Asociación de Emisoras Municipales de Andalucía de Radio y Televisión). Mujeres en la Historia. Isabel Oyarzábal, 24.11.2021. In: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhNPus4SjV8 (accessed 19.09.2022).
Suggested citation:
Paz Torres, Olga (2022). Isabel Oyarzábal Smith. Pioneering Female Jurists: Remembrance and Memory [Electronic resource], Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, November 2022. In: https://ddd.uab.cat/record/268723
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
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