La Casa de Bernarda Alba is a Spanish play written by Federico García Lorca in the 1940s. Bernarda Alba, a recent widow and mother of five fully-grown daughters, keeps a tight household, prohibiting any of her daughters to date or leave the house. Only the eldest has the chance to leave her mother’s nest due to her large inheritance that can assure her a husband. The play represents Bernarda Alba’s house as a hopeless prison for the restless young girls.
Thursday, February 5, was Day of the Women in Salamanca. Traditionally, as I understand it, each woman of the household demands money from her man or husband and goes out all day with girlfriends, taking advantage of one day of freedom from the house. The restaurants supposedly fill with women in traditional dress celebrating their freedom.
My host mom, who lives alone, assures me that it is an antiquated holiday, leftover from the days of suffocating machismo, that really has no place today except as a fun tradition. While it may have been necessary in Bernarda Alba’s times, things are much different today. She joked that her son-in-law is probably more deserving of the holiday considering her daughter is the one who “wears the pants” in the relationship.
I am not surprised to find this holiday archaic and unnecessary in Spanish society today. When coming to Spain to study abroad, I generalized a bit and assumed that all of Europe was much further ahead in terms of women’s roles in society. I certainly did not expect a society that prevented women from leaving the home.
However, a few things surprised me about women’s roles in the country. My host mom, in an effort to get to know me better, asked something that threw me off guard. “Do you play football [soccer]? In the United States, girls play football [soccer], right?” Of course they do. Obviously soccer as a sport is not nearly as big of a deal in the United States as in Spain, but Mia Hamm was on plenty of “Got Milk?” posters in my elementary school cafeteria. Of course women can play. The idea that this is simply not done in Spanish society shocked me.
Furthermore, while discussing my host mom’s grandson, she expressed her wish to have more grandchildren. Unfortunately, the reality is that Spanish women who continue to have more children face more judgment and unfair treatment at work. She implied that her daughter would be forced out of her job to care for her children if she were to have another.
I’ve learned that all of Europe is not a magical land of paternity leave and equal pay, but a society similar—if not less equal—to that of the United States. In fact, the United States has a higher employment rate of women at 62.2 percent compared to Spain’s 51.3 percent (OECD iLibrary 2013).
Although women are no longer prohibited from leaving the house or in desperate need of a “day of freedom,” there are still some small but important inequalities that limit the freedom of women in Spain today.
Samantha Gilmore graduated from Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2016 with a major in science, technology, and international affairs. From Austin, Texas, she spent the spring 2015 semester in Salamanca, Spain, where she studied Spanish literature and blogged for the Berkley Center's Junior Year Abroad Network.
