ez dut ahorik.

Xabi Otero
1980

These are some of the women leaders and fighters in the history of the Basque Country. This is not a comprehensive document but rather an attempt to demonstrate that in almost every age and virtually every territory of the Basque Country, women engaged in different kinds of struggle.

Middle Ages through the 19th Century

Queen Oneca, the wife of the King of Iruña (Pamplone) Eneko Aritza (824-858), founded the monastery of San Salvador de Leire in the ninth century. While nothing is known of the earlier status of the family of Eneko Aritza, Oneca and her family possesed several monasteries which are considered to be the basis of the royal wealth and line of the kingdom of Iruña. Leire, the likely pantheon of the Navarrese monarchs, possesed considerable literary treasures. Among those who found refuge in Leire was the Cordoban priest Eulogious who visited the monastery when prevented from continuing his journey across the Pyrenees. Note: the kingdom of Iruña (Pamplone) developed into the kingdom of Navarre - the first and only Basque state that ever existed.

Lady Galga founded San Salvador de Ippuzka, the first monastery recorded in Gipuzkoa. At the request of Galga, the King of Navarre Santxo the Great appointed certain monk Santxo to Ippuzka. Later Galga and the king engaged in a dispute over control of a church in Aragon Santxo had built and put under the control ofthe Aragonese monastery San Juan de la Peña. They finally reached an agreement in 1049 by which Galga and her daughter would retain control over the church in Aragon for the rest of their lives but on their deaths it would revert back to San Juan. As well as providing the first documentary reference to Gipuzkoa, the text makes clear the property-owning rights of women. Galga possessed other monasteries which had been given to her by her parents and brothers. The document is also noteworthy that in this and other instances recorded in charters from the Basque region, inheritance by nephew was very common - a sympton of a society following matrilineal inheritance customs. Property was passed not from mother to son but rather from mother to the son of her eldest brother, thus retaining property within the family.

Lady Maria, Senior of Bizkaia, is said to have been an effective ruler in the province during the process that finally merged the seniory of Bizkaia into the Crown of Castile in 1379. Maria was responsible for a number of new urban foundations and for the granting of various sets of charters.

Queen Catherine de Navarre (1483-1517) was expelled from Navarre along with her husband King Jean d'Albret. A dubious papal edict backing the Castilian invasion of Navarre, ex-communicated the Navarrese monarchs who sought refuge in northern Navarre. During a civil war in Navarre between the Beaumonts (pro-Castile) and the Gramonts (pro-France) bands, Catherine's said to have pressured for more royal protection to the Gramont band which was finally defeated.

Jeanne d'Albret (1528-1572) was the only child of Henry d'Albret and Marguerite of Navarre. Her father held the kingdom of (northern) Navarre. Although the family called themselves "kings" of Navarre, only the rump of that kingdom remained in their hands since Castile had conquered by force the larger portion to the south in 1512. Her father always seeking to restore Navarre, sought a marriage between his daughter and the King of Spain's son, Philip. The King of France, however, used Jeanne in his own foreign policy. After years of negotiations, a marriage contact was drawn up between Jeanne and Germany's Duke of Cleaves. Jeanne strongly protested the marriage. She complained bitterly to all, even writing a formal letter of protest to the King, but to no avail. Finally in June of 1541 at the age of twelve, she was wed. "The Princess wore a golden crown, a cloak of crimson satin trimmed with ermine, and a gold and silver skirt trimmmed with precious stones" and had to be taken by the collar and carried forcibly to the altar. Their union lasted only three and a half years. Three years later Jeanne was again the pawn in a political alliance. Her father was again seeking a compact between her and the Spanish Prince Philip, but again, the King of France, now Henry II, had other plans. To help consolidate the territories in the north and south of France, Jeanne was wed in 1549 to Antoine de Bourbon, Duc de Vendome.

Jeanne's father died and her husband Antoine took over. Afther her husband's death Jeanne was put in sole control of Navarre. She reorganized the economic and judicial system which remained in force well into the 18th-century. Jeanne devoted herself primarily to local administration and to foster the Reformed faith in northern Navarre. Throughout the XVI century the idea to re-conquer Navarre from Castile was at the center of humanist thought in the northern Basque territories. This idea was developed by the Navarrese refugee families who had found asylum in northern Navarre. Joannes de Leizarraga, encouraged by Jeanne d'Albret and inspired by the centers of reading and discussion at the courts and castles (Gramont, Belzunce...) rationalised the defence of Basque identity around the project of re-establishing the sovereignty and unity of Navarre. The development of this movement promoted by the Calvinists, was halted by the Counter-Reformation. Notwithstanding the failure to re-unite Navarre, the first linguistic awareness in the Basque Country developed during this period that favoured Basque language and culture.

Inessa Gaxen, perhaps the first Basque refugee, was a victim of the Great Witch Hunt in France and of judge Lancre's deadly paranoia. She was arrested in 1611 when she was only 18 and accused of organizing an akelarre (a meeting of witches) in Mount Jaizkibel and using her "magic powers" to sink boats in Pasaia. She was tortured but released for lack of incriminating evidence. As any freed suspect often had to move away for fear of being lynched by their neighbors, Inessa Gaxen left her native Hendaia. She, along with other women, fled to Logrono, in southern Navarre in Spain, for safety but triggered a true witch hunt there. Hundreds of people were tried and burned in the stake. Inessa Gaxen was among the women freed in Logroņo. She returned to Hendaia but witch hunting prosecutors did not accept the Logroño verdict and imprisoned her. She was held in prison until expelled to Hondarribia in a barge.

Catalina de Erasu from Donostia (Gipuzkoa) is probably the only woman explorer/conquistador from the Basque Country. Although it is known that a few European women accompanied their explorer/conquistador husbands to the Americas and rode into battle with them, the case of Catalina de Erasu is a bit different. As a young woman she fled a convent, dressed in men's clothing and made her way to the the "New World." There she joined a Spanish expedition to Chile. She killed more than a dozen men including her own brother. When she returned to Europe she was given a pension by the Spanish king and a dispensation by the Pope which allowed her to continue to wear male clothing.

Women against monarchical centralisation in France led many of the popular revolts (1685-1784) in Mugerre, Irube, Ainhoa, Donibane-Lohizune, and Baiona. In Hazparne thousands of women dug a trench in a cemetery and refused to surrender challenging hundreds of grenadiers and five units of the Brigades de la Maréechausée. The intervention of the priest of Hasparne prevented a battle between the women and the French soldiers who eventually were forced to retreat.

Women who rebelled against the Reign of Terror (1793-1794) to preserve the republic during the French Revolutionary Wars were deported and imprisoned in churches which served as concentration camps. Hundreds of women died from starvation or epidermics. Those who survided returned to find their homes have been plundered.

Women in the 20th Century

Haydee Aguirre and Polixene de Trabudua were the first members of the Basque Nationalist Party''s women organization incarcerated for their political activities in the 1920s and 1930s. Haydee and Polixene were active members of the Association of the Patriotic Women (EAB, Emakume Abertzale Batza) created in Bizkaia in 1922. They were imprisoned by the Spanish government in the 1930s.

Women in Navarre and Gipuzkoa suspects of sympathising with the resistance during the Spanish Civil War endured beatings, rape, and detention by local allies of Gen. Franco. Women were kidnapped, their heads shaved, and exhibited during the submission of Gipuzkoa and Navarre in 1936 by Franco's allies.

Women in occupied Basque Country in France worked with local resistance groups to sabotage the Germans and build resistance networks. Some joined a resistance group in Auxerre recruited by the SOE. The band was betrayed and captured. Two women from the Basque Country were among those interrogated, tortured and placed in solitary confinement at the Fresnes prison in Paris and later transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp. During the German occupation of the Basque Country (1940-1944) in France, more than 11,000 people were sent to concentration camps in Gurs and Argels and other places, and used for slave labor.

Itziar Aizpurua, Arantza Arruti, and Jone Dorronsoro were among the 14 ETA activists brought before a Francoist military tribunal in Burgos in 1970. Their trial sparked off an avalanche of national and international protest.

Christianne Fando from northern Basque Country for more than 10 years was the lawyer of Basque refugees in France, and a main target of the GAL death squads in the mid-1980s. Her investigation of the GAL activities was instrumental in finding the Spanish government was running a dirty war againts Basque activists in northen Basque Country in France. She also was a legal advisor to ETA during talks in Algiers between the Spanish government and ETA in 1989.

Maria Dolores Gonzalez Catarin was in the leadership of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the 1980s. Maria Dolores was killed by ETA in 1986 after she quit ETA and returned from exile in Mexico.


Sources:Roger Collins, The Basques (Basil Blackwell, 1986); Jean-Louis Davant, Ebauche d'une histoire du peuple Basque (Euskadi en guerre, Ekin, 1982); William A. Douglass, For the Bookshelf (Basque Studies Program newsletter, October 1996); Marilyn B. Manzer, The Strength of Queen Jeanne Albret; Altaffaylla Kultur Taldea, Navarra 1936 (1986); Egin archives.

Graphic: ehj