November 5, the feminist holiday that never was in Euskadi and that looked to the anniversary of universal suffrage

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 on March 8. Thus, 2024 is ending and with it says goodbye to any possibility of establishing a first feminist festival day, as was discussed at length in 2023. Nothing special has been planned in 2025 in this regard either.

The debate started from the then vice president Idoia Mendia, visible head of the PSE-EE in the Executive of Iñigo Urkullu and competent in matters of Work and Employment and, therefore, in the definition of the work calendar. As a probe balloon, Mendia embraced the possibility of coloring the 2024 calendar red on March 8 as a nod to feminism. Part of the movement, however, rejected it, understanding that it was a day of protest and not a holiday, although other voices recalled that May 1 is also a day of mobilizations in defense of workers’ rights but that it is not a working day.

However, a political storm was added to this because the PNV part of the Government, which directed the Equality policies, did not support Mendia’s initiative either. The Women’s Institute (Emakunde), in fact, opened a participatory process to create a feminist festival in which up to fourteen possible dates were discussed… but none of them were the one proposed by Mendia.

From that forum, the November 5 holiday emerged as an alternative. Because? It is the day when women voted for the first time in Spain. Universal suffrage debuted in the referendum on a failed Statute of Autonomy during the Second Republic, in 1933. The Eibar archive preserves an iconic image made by Indalecio Ojanguren’s camera with a row of women in front of an urn with another woman as president of the electoral board and who has gone down in history. In the rest of Spain, women were not able to vote until a few days later, until November 19.

History professor Antonio Rivera, former vice-counselor with Patxi López, warned that it was a very “bad idea” to glorify November 5 because that vote was “one of the most notable frauds in the electoral count” of the 20th century. He criticized that Emakunde had not validated the proposal with historians before launching it. What were the other dates that were handled? Some were 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). November 25, the day to highlight the fight against violence against women, was also ruled out.

Vice Lehendakari Mendia replied ironically that the lack of agreement was going to lead to the fact that, instead of putting on the calendar an anniversary that valued equality, in 2024 there would be an end to some wild card to fill the calendar in 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, a day that is already festive in itself in Vitoria as it coincides with blouse and ‘neskak’ day.

The Basque Parliament even approved a generic resolution so that Euskadi would have a wink in its work calendar, but that vote has also remained a dead letter. This newspaper asked Mendia’s replacement, also a socialist Mikel Torres, and the matter seems far from being a priority again. “It is one of the things that we have not 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. It is not included in the Government agreement,” he explained in an interview. Thus, by 2025 the debate has not even been opened.