The first Catalan Women's Conference, half a century later

Now that it is the fiftieth anniversary of the historic First Catalan Women's Conferences, there are three ways to remember them: watch the documentary Feminism 76: When our lives changed, produced by RTVE Catalunya; read Feminist Catalonia. May 27-30, 1976, by Isabel Segura; or attend some of the activities that will be held during this month of June at Fabra i Coats under the title Feminisms in revolt. 1976-1926.

After the conquests achieved during the Second Republic – long missed during Francoism – in our country, it was those Conferences held in 1976 in the auditorium of the University of Barcelona that inaugurated feminism as we understand it today, in all its complexity. In an article published in Triunfo a few days later, which can be found in the anthology We are a bargain, Montserrat Roig praised its good organization and highlighted the passionate atmosphere that reigned there. “When women get together to talk about their liberation, it is a whole world, complex and marked by centuries and centuries of mistaken civilization, that is called into question”, said Roig. And certainly, in those three days, a total amendment was made to the situation of women, which the dictatorship had enormously aggravated.

Even at the time, Teresa Pàmies, who was present, summarized the conferences in the form of a chronicle in the volume May of the Women, a volume that, incidentally, did not please everyone. The historian Isabel Segura (Barcelona, 1954) did not experience the Conferences, but explains in her book what those significant and multitudinous meetings, attended by between three and four thousand people, almost all women, consisted of. While Pàmies incorporated some of the communications presented into her volume, Segura summarizes the various sessions – on family, education, work, politics, neighborhoods, the rural world... – which took place under the supervision of Juliana Morell, the only woman portrayed who hung on those venerable walls.

Decriminalize adultery and abortion

The greatest value of this volume is that Segura incorporates the Conferences within a much broader framework that helps to understand them much better, glossing the before and after. On the one hand, the steps forward that were taken during the republican period and, on the other, the legal and social consequences that the Conferences ultimately had, such as the decriminalization of adultery and abortion. Because the demands made there served to put pressure on political parties, which in the following years brought about significant legal changes.

We are faced with a narrative with a retrospective, clear and well-articulated view, with a clearly informative intention, which joins other titles by the author such as Barcelona feminista 1975-1988. Those First Catalan Women's Conferences, which had arisen from the International Women's Year declared by the United Nations in 1975, achieved their goal: to give voice to women. To all those who made them possible, sincere thanks!

That same year, 1976, the first authorized feminist demonstration was held in the country. And since then there has been no stopping protests and demands in order to build a better world. Now that there is so much talk about the division of feminism, this book serves to remind us that feminism has always been plural and, also, that different sensitivities are destined to understand each other. Because there is still a lot of ground to gain and no one with two brains wants Vox or Aliança Catalana to trample on us.