Isabel Oyarzabal-Smith, written by Carmen Magallon

Writer, translator, lecturer and journalist, she was also Inspector of Labour and became Ambassador. She collaborated with “El Sol” and “Blanco y Negro” and was correspondent of The Daily Herald, The Standard and Illustrated London, among other newspapers. She was the daughter of a Scottish lady and a well-off industrialist from Malaga and thanks to her knowledge of several foreign languages she was able to establish an important web of international relations.

She founded the Madrid Lyceum Club and was a candidate to the Spanish Parliament with the Labour Party, 1931. During the Second Spanish Republic she was an active member of the Spanish delegation in the League of Nations, 1932-1933, 1936, the first woman to sign an agreement and who officially represented a country. Member of the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 1933, she also took part in assemblies of the International Labour Organization, where her interest in working women and children as well as against child slavery was outstanding.

Feminist, suffragist and pacifist, she was the first president of the “Liga Femenina Española por la Paz”, organization linked to WILPF. She was Spain’s Ambassador to Stockholm where she met and befriended Alexandra Kollontai. Later she would write a biography of Kollontai.

She met Crystal Macmillan, Kathleen Courney, Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus and when Jane Addams died she attended the funeral in Chicago. After the Spanish Civil War she exiled herself in Mexico.

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On Isabel Oyarzábal or Isabel de Palencia, references in English

She was writer and journalist, Inspector of Labour, 1936. Substitute-delegate to the Assembly, 1932-1933; 1936.Member of the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, 1933.President of the LigaFemenina Española por la Paz, [which was part of the Spanish section of WILPF]. Republican’s Spain’s ambassador to Stockholm where she met and become close friend with Alexandra Kollontai. She went into exile in Mexico with the defeat of the Republic in Spain, in 1939.

“Years later Marie Ginsberg, former assistant librarian of the League, assessed the impact of women in policy formation at the League. She claimed that “[t]he only women who really participated in making policy at the League” were Isabel de Palencia of Spain and Alexandra Kollontai: They were able to play an important role because they had already proved their political competence at home and their positions with their own governments were such that their opinions were taken seriously. 45

During her years as Assembly delegate Kollantai was Soviet Minister to Sweden where she became close friends with de Palencia, appointed Spanish Ambassador to Sweden in 1936. 46

In contrast, according to Ginsberg, many women were sent to the League “to please (or silence) some woman’s organizations beseeching its government to appoint a woman”: few were politically qualified and therefore, had little if anything to do with policy-making. Her general assessment of the League women was that they failed to influence policy “not because they were women but because theywere not the right women”.

(Miller, 1992, pp.125-126)

Isabel Oyarzábal-Smith (Isabel de Palencia), by Carmen Magallon

Es nombrada a menudo como Isabel de Palencia, apellido del marido. Además de escritora, es corresponsal de los periódicos londinenses Daily Herald y  The Standard. De madre escocesa, su conocimiento del inglés y sus viajes le hacen tejer una importante red de relaciones. Escribe también en el diario El Sol y en la revista Blanco y Negro. Uno de sus libros, escrito ya en el exilio mexicano, lleva el sugestivo título de En mi hambre mando yo (1959).

En 1920, asiste al Congreso de la International Women’s Sufrage Asociation, que se celebra en Ginebra. Forma parte del grupo fundador del Lyceum Club en Madrid, y es la primera presidenta de la Liga Femenina Española por la Paz, 1929.

Inspectora de Trabajo, Oyarzábal fue la primera mujer que representó oficialmente a un país en la Sociedad de Naciones, donde defiende los derechos de la mujer trabajadora y de los menores de edad, enfrentándose a temas tan relevantes como las  prácticas de prostitución encubiertas y la esclavitud infantil en el trabajo que discute en la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (Ginebra).

“Luis Araquistain me dijo que quería que me encargase de todo lo relacionado con el trabajo de mujeres y niños. La República no podía haberme ofrecido un puesto que me procurase más placer aceptar. La Sociedad de Naciones constituía la esperanza todavía de todos los pacifistas”[1]

En 1928, en nombre del Consejo Supremo Feminista, del que en esos momentos era presidenta, Isabel Oyarzábal había hecho un llamamiento al Consejo de Ministros de España “para que adoptase las medidas necesarias de acuerdo con los demás gobiernos, para renunciar a las guerras e instituir los cánones que sean precisos, al objeto de conseguir un rápido desarme”.  Junto a Clara Campoamor,  formó parte de la delegación española que, en septiembre de 1931, asistió a la Asamblea General de la Sociedad de Naciones, en Ginebra. Ambas compartían la voluntad de intervenir en el marco internacional y explicitar en él ‘la necesidad de incorporar el punto de vista femenino en la conformación de un nuevo orden mundial’ (Paz, 2009, p. 241).

Fue también la primera mujer embajadora de nuestro país, cargo que desempeñó en Estocolmo por encargo de la República, desde octubre de 1936 hasta 1938.  Allí conoció y se hizo amiga de Alexandra Kollontay, con la que mantuvo correspondencia. Conoció a las líderes socialistas, Clara Zetkin y Rosa Luxemburgo.  Isabel Oyarzábal murió en el exilio, en México, en 1974, a los 96 años.

[1]Oyarzábal, Isabel. He de tener libertad. Horas y horas, Madrid, 2010. p. 224