Victoria Kent facts for kids
Victoria Kent Siano (born March 6, 1891 – died September 25, 1987) was an important Spanish lawyer and politician who supported the republic.
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Her Life Story
Victoria Kent was born in Málaga, Spain. She became famous in 1930 for defending a person named Álvaro de Albornoz in a military court. He later became a minister and even a president of the Spanish government in exile.
In 1931, Victoria became a member of the first Parliament of the Second Spanish Republic. That same year, the President of the Republic chose her to be the Director General of Prisons. She held this job until 1934 and worked hard to improve prisons, continuing reforms started by Concepción Arenal.
Victoria Kent had a strong opinion about women getting the right to vote. She believed that Spanish women at that time were not yet ready because they lacked enough social and political education. She thought they might be too influenced by priests, which could harm political parties on the left. She had a famous debate about this with another feminist in parliament, Clara Campoamor. This view made her less popular. As she had predicted, when women did get the right to vote, she lost her seat in parliament in the 1933 elections to a more conservative group.
After the Spanish Civil War, Victoria Kent had to leave Spain. She first went to Mexico and then moved to the United States. In New York City, she started a magazine called Ibérica. This magazine was published from 1954 to 1974 and shared news for Spaniards who were also living in exile in the United States. Victoria Kent passed away in New York in 1987.
Several places in Spain are named after her, including colleges in Málaga, Fuenlabrada, Marbella, and Torrejón de Ardoz. There is also a train station in her hometown of Málaga named in her honor.
Her Political Journey
When Victoria Kent moved to Madrid, she joined a women's rights group called Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas y la Juventud Universitaria Femenina. She represented this group at a conference in Prague in 1921.
She joined the Radical Socialist Republican Party. In 1931, she was elected as a member of the Parliament. Later, in the election on February 16, 1936, Victoria Kent was elected to Parliament again in Jaen. This time, she was part of the Republican Left, which was a group within the Popular Front. She also served as the Vice President of the Lyceum Club starting in 1926.
The Debate on Women's Right to Vote
One of the most talked-about moments in Victoria Kent's political life was her opposition to women's right to vote in the Spanish Parliament in 1931. She had a significant debate with another feminist, Clara Campoamor, on this very important issue for women's rights.
Victoria Kent argued that Spanish women were not yet socially and politically ready to vote. She believed they were too influenced by the Church, and their votes would likely be conservative, which could harm the Republic. On the other hand, Clara Campoamor strongly argued that women, like all human beings, had an equal right to vote.
After this debate, Victoria Kent became less popular. As a result, she did not win a seat in Parliament in the 1933 elections. Clara Campoamor's view eventually won the debate, and women in Spain gained the right to vote by universal suffrage. The 1933 elections were won by the right-wing parties, which were united.
During the Spanish Civil War
When the Spanish Civil War began, Victoria Kent, like many other supporters of the Republic, had to leave Spain. As she went into exile, she helped evacuate children whose fathers were soldiers. She found safety in Paris and was appointed First Secretary of the Spanish Embassy there. This role allowed her to continue helping refugee children. She was also responsible for setting up shelters and nurseries for these children.
During the Second World War
Victoria Kent stayed in Paris until the end of the Spanish Civil War, helping Spanish people in exile and arranging their travel to America. However, when the Second World War started, the German Army entered and occupied Paris on June 14, 1940. Victoria had to hide in the Mexican Embassy for a year.
Later, she was judged by Franco's courts in Spain and was sentenced to a long prison term in October 1943, even though she was still in Paris. She was also ordered to be expelled from Spain. Luckily, the Red Cross helped her by giving her an apartment in Boulogne, in northern France. She lived there until 1944, using a fake identity as "Madame Duval." During this time, she wrote a novel called Cuatro Años en París, which included parts of her own life story in the main character, Placido.
Her Time in Exile
Victoria Kent went into exile in Mexico in 1948. For two years, she taught criminal law at a university there. In 1950, she was hired by the United Nations (UN) and moved from Mexico to New York. At the UN, she worked on social defense and led a study about the poor conditions in prisons in Latin America.
Between 1951 and 1957, she became a minister, without a specific department, in the Second Spanish Republic's Government in exile. This made her the second woman to be a minister in Spain, after Federica Montseny. She also started a magazine called "Iberica," which was meant for all the Spanish people living in exile, far from their home country. This magazine was published for twenty years, from 1954 to 1974.
In 1977, forty years after she first went into exile in France, Victoria Kent returned to Spain. She was welcomed with much affection and admiration. However, she later went back to New York, where she spent her final years and passed away on September 26, 1987. In 1986, she received the medal of San Raimundo de Peñafort, but she was too old to accept it in person.
Her Writings
- Cuatros años en París (1940–1944) (1978)
See also
In Spanish: Victoria Kent para niños
