Pilar Careaga Basabe

Pilar Careaga (1908-1993), shown here in a photograph from 1969, is one of the one of the figures who epitomizes the nature of municipal government under the Francoist regime. Local government was subservient to the central government, which appointed mayors with no reference to the population, or even to the city councillors. 

Careaga came from a well-off family. Her father was a career diplomat who married a wealthy heiress. Both her parents were connected to the Basque upper bourgeoisie, which played a key role in business in many sectors of the economy as well as had significant political influence in Spain. She trained as an engineer, becoming the first female industrial engineer in the country. In addition to such an unusual education for a woman of the time, she was also an excellent linguist, speaking French, English, and German. She began her political activism in the 1930s, as a member of the far right monarchist party Renovación Española, and she stood as a candidate for the party in the elections of 1933. 

On the outbreak of the Civil War, she was imprisoned in Bilbao, but in September 1936 she was sent to the rebel zone in a prisoner exchange. She joined the Hospitals Front organization of the Francoist official party and attended to rebel soldiers on the Madrid front. In 1939, she was awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit “for the elevated spirit, enthusiasm and disregard of all danger and fatigue she demonstrated throughout the  campaign, having come under enemy artillery fire”, something highly unusual for a woman.   

When the war ended, she returned to Bilbao and devoted herself to various philanthropic organizations. Then, after 1964, she began to work within the new Francoist institutions. She reached the zenith of her political career was she was named mayor of Bilbao in 1969, a position she held for six years. During that time she was also a member of the Francoist parliament. She retired from politics after leaving the mayor’s office, although she continued to support far-right political organizations. ETA attempted to assassinate her in 1979 and although she survived, she had health problems for the rest of her life. 

Pilar Careaga embodied the ideal of the new Francoist municipal governments. As she put it in 1975, “my resignation is beyond public opinion. I belong to something superior, and if it requests my position, I accept gladly. Mayors would be fine if we depended on such things. It will be very different if in the future the pretension that mayors should be elected by the people becomes a reality”.  

Careaga was also a woman of contradictions. She held to an ideology that limited women to the domestic sphere while she lived a life that was completely different: an engineer in 1929, serving on the front lines in 1937, and mayor of a major city in 1969.