Nurses from the the Association of Nationalist Women

Among many other things, the military uprising of 18 July brought the mobilization of Basque women for the war effort. While it is true that very few women actually had a fighting role, the tasks they took on in the rearguard were crucial to the war effort.  In the Basque Country, the women’s associations created during the Second Republic played a very important role.  

The nurses from the Association of Nationalist Women, the women’s organization affiliated to the PNV, shown in the photograph, are one example. In the last years of the Republic, concerned about a potential armed conflict, the PNV had strengthened some of its organizations. This included the women, who received nursinfgtraining between 1934 and 1936 that left them prepared to serve in both front line andrear guard hospitals. The women were also involved in assisting the thousands of refugees who arrived from bordering provinces and in the evacuation of children. 

Women’s organizations that carried out similar wartime activities also emerged on the the political left. The Republican Women’s Union (Unión Republicana Femenina) and the Torre Urizar Women’s Organization (Asociación de Mujeres de Torre Urizar), created in 1932, both of which focussed on civic activities in the neighbourhoods of Bilabo, soon became active in all three Basque provinces. Communist women joined Women Against War and Fascism (Mujeres Contra la Guerra y el Fascismo) founded by Dolores Uribarri in 1933. And during the war, left-wing women’s groups came together in the Antifascist Women’s Group (Agrupación de Mujeres Antifascistas). Its magazine, Mujeres, spread antifascist propaganda in territory not under Francoist control. Left-wing women also performed social assistance tasks at the front and in the rear guard.  

Finally, the anarchist association Free Women (Mujeres Libres), created in 1936, also had a presence in the Basque Country. The anarchist Casilda Hernáez, born in Zizurkil (Gipuzkoa) took part in the defence of San Sebastián in the summer of 1936. She is one of the few Basque women who is known to have fought on the front lines. 

MJV / UB