November 19, 1933 is a referential date in the history of feminism in Spain. For the first time, women voted and they did so in the second round of the general elections of the Second Republic. The female vote had been approved in Congress on October 1, 1931, in the debate led by Clara Campoamor. Between that day and the legislative vote two years later, a Catalan municipality –Canet de Mar- advanced to this first great premiere of the vote for women and called for a referendum. It was April 16, 1933, now 90 years ago.
The importance or magnitude of these calls is not comparable, but the meaning is. The population of Canet was summoned to pronounce itself in a referendum to decide on the construction of the market (Plaça Mercat) in the town, an operation that required the request of a not inconsiderable loan -250,000 pesetas- to carry out the urban operation. The historian Carles Sàiz i Xiqués explains that this operation was going to mean the first indebtedness of the municipality, for which reason it was rejected by the opposition. The mayor of Canet, Josep Fors Vidal, with a desire to modernize, was aware that in order to carry out the project he needed solid support. The call for the referendum, and with it the participation of women, were the assets of his support. As main users at that time of the future infrastructure of the market, says Sàiz i Xiqués, he was looking for a double complicity. A endorsement endorsed with this exercise of full democracy. He was therefore the first to use the article of the new republican constitution in Catalonia and in Spain.
La Vanguardia echoed on Tuesday, April 18, the vote in the municipality of Maresme. “On Sunday, for the first time in the history of Catalonia, women took part in a public vote. In Canet de Mar, a referendum was held to build a market square, and the result was 1,133 votes in favor to 572 against,” this newspaper explained. Under the title The first electoral intervention of Catalan women, the article also indicated that the construction was "sponsored by the leftist majority of the City Council."
There were 645 women who went to the polls in this first exercise of the female vote in Spain. For this, the involvement of two teachers, Emilia Domènech and Conxita Gibert, who did pedagogy among the women of the town, even going to their homes to convince them of the importance of exercising the right to vote, was important.
The magazine El Sot de l'Aubó, from the Center d'Estudis Canetencs, has reproduced the chronicle that El Mundo Gráfico produced that day: “A splendid spring day (…) from early morning the streets had an extraordinary animation. The women, who predominated, had realized the solemnity and importance of the first act they were going to carry out, making use of their political and citizenship rights, and they were preparing to fulfill such an important duty”.
In his chronicle, the journalist José Gaya Picón spoke with the two teachers. Domènech, with 50 years of profession, recounted the emotion and joy “at seeing that justice was done for women in our country”. He also considered that the majority would make an "adequate and effective use of the rights granted." He alluded to the doubts that the groups opposed to the vote for women were raising with respect to their supposed subservience to the opinion of men.
In the same vein was pronounced Gibert, who with 25 years of profession as a teacher indicated that "it is not easy" to coerce women and pointed out that the vote of "women and men will go in parallel."
The Canet referendum, in which women voted for the first time, was organized with a balance between defenders and supporters of the construction of the market and with the presence of women -it can be seen in the attached document- at the tables.
The right enshrined in the new Constitution was released in Canet de Mar. Antecedents of women's suffrage can be found in the Canton of Cartagena in 1873 -federalist insurrection in the First Republic- but this is a different story from the universalization of suffrage from 1931 and its impact on the advancement of equality between men and women .
Today, the Plaça Mercat building, built by Pere Domènech (son of Lluís Domènech i Montaner) continues to house the commercial activity of the municipality. Without the vote of women, it would not have been approved. The repayment of the credit, cut short in the Civil War, was delayed until the 1970s.
