This Tuesday, November 5, is a working day like any other. The Basque Government, for example, will meet and then hold a press conference. It was also March 8th. So, 2024 ends and says goodbye to any possibility of establishing a first feminist festival day, as was discussed at length in 2023. Nothing special is planned in 2025 in this regard either.
The debate began with the then vice-president, Idoia Mendia, visible leader of the PES-EE in the Executive of Iñigo Urkullu and competent in matters of Labor and Employment and, therefore, in the definition of the work schedule. As a sounding board, Mendia embraced the possibility of coloring the 2024 calendar red on March 8 in a nod to feminism. However, part of the movement rejected it, understanding that it was a day of protest and not a public holiday, even if other voices recalled that May 1 is also a day of mobilization for the defense of workers’ rights but that it is not a work day. .
However, to this was added a political storm because the PNV part of the government, which led the equality policy, did not support Mendia’s initiative either. The Women’s Institute (Emakunde) in fact launched a participatory process to create a feminist festival in which up to fourteen possible dates were discussed… but none of them was the one proposed by Mendia.
From this forum, the November 5 holiday appeared as an alternative. Because? It was the day women voted for the first time in Spain. Universal suffrage made its debut during the referendum on the failure of the status of autonomy under the Second Republic, in 1933. The Eibar archives preserve an emblematic image taken by the camera of Indalecio Ojanguren with a row of women in front a ballot box with another woman as presiding officer. board of directors and who made history. In the rest of Spain, women were not able to vote until a few days later, on November 19.
History professor Antonio Rivera, former vice-adviser of Patxi López, warned that glorifying November 5 was a very “bad idea”, because this vote was “one of the most notable frauds in the electoral count” of the 20th century. He criticized the fact that Emakunde did not validate the proposal with historians before launching it. What other dates were processed? Some took place on February 18 (the Equality Law was approved in 2005) or September 4 (in 1995 the IV World Conference on Women was held in Beijing). The date of November 25, the day to combat violence against women, was also set aside.
Vice-President Lehendakari Mendia responded ironically that the lack of agreement would lead to the fact that instead of putting on the calendar an anniversary that values equality, in 2024 we would put an end to some joker to fill the calendar of ‘Euskadi and that the only possibilities were either Father’s Day (Saint Joseph, March 19) or the patron saint of Spain (Santiago, July 25). Finally, the second option was chosen, an already festive day in Vitoria since it coincides with the day of the blouse and the neskak.
The Basque Parliament even approved a generic resolution for Euskadi to have a wink in its work calendar, but this vote also remained a dead letter. This newspaper has requested the replacement of Mendia, also socialist Mikel Torres, and this file seems far from being a priority again. “It’s one of the things we haven’t talked about in the current government. I think the one Idoia Mendia had at the time was a very good idea. But now we haven’t talked about it. This is not included in the government agreement,” he explained in an interview. So, by 2025, the debate is not even open.
