November 19, 1933 is a reference 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 women's 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 - was ahead of this first major premiere of the women's vote and called them to a referendum. It was April 16, 1933, 90 years ago.
The significance and magnitude of these calls are not comparable, but they are of great significance. The population of Canet was called to a referendum to decide on the construction of the market (Plaça Mercat) in the town, an operation that required the request for a large enough loan - 250,000 pesetas - to carry out the urban planning operation. The historian Carles Sàiz i Xiqués explains in a conversation with this newspaper that that operation was the first indebtedness of the municipality, and was rejected by the opposition. The mayor of Canet, Josep Fors Vidal, who was committed to modernisation, was aware that to carry out the project he needed solid support. Calling the referendum, with the participation of women, was a good move, says Saiz. As the main users at that time of the future infrastructure of the market, it was looking for a double complicity. A support endorsed by this exercise of full democracy. He was, therefore, the first to use the article of the republican constitution.
La Vanguardia echoed it on Tuesday, April 18, during 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 and 572 against", explained this newspaper. Under the title The first electoral intervention of the Catalan women, the article also indicated that the construction was "sponsored by the majority of leftists in the City Council".
There were 645 women who attended the appointment with the ballot boxes in this first exercise of the female vote in Spain. That is why the involvement of two teachers, Emilia Domènech and Conxita Gibert, was important, who did pedagogy among the women of the village, even going from house to house to convince them of the importance of exercising the right to vote.
The magazine El Sot de l'Aubó, from the Canetencs Studies Centre, has reproduced the chronicle published that day by El Mundo Gráfico: "A splendid spring day (...) from the first hour the streets were extraordinarily animated . The women, who predominated there, had realized the solemnity and transcendence of the first act they would carry out, since they would make use of their political and citizenship rights, and they were ready to fulfill such an important duty".
In his chronicle, the journalist José Gaya Picón spoke with the two teachers. Domènech, with 50 years in the profession, explained the emotion and joy "seeing how justice was done to women in our country". He also considered that the majority would make "adequate and effective use of the rights granted". He was alluding to the doubts that groups opposed to women's suffrage had in relation to their supposed subordination to the opinion of men.
Gibert spoke in the same vein, who with 25 years of teaching experience 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 - you can see in the attached document - at the messas.
The law of the new Constitution was premiered in Canet de Mar. Antecedents of women's vote can be found in the canton of Cartagena in 1873 – federalist insurrection during the First Republic – but this is another story, different from the universalization of suffrage in 1931. Today, the Plaça Mercat building, built by Pere Domènech ( son of Lluís Domènech i Montaner) still hosts commercial activity there. Without the women's vote it would not have been approved.
The full return of the credit – an operation cut short by the Civil War – did not arrive until the 1970s.
