PODEROSAS

For centuries, power was off-limits to women, though the history of Spain preserves the names of women who, between the 10th and 20th centuries, managed to wield a measure of power in a world tailored to men. Figures such as Violante of Hungary, wife of James I the Conqueror; Teresa of Ávila, reformer of the Carmelite Order; the female printers of the Golden Age; shrewd businesswomen like the Widow Solano and her famous coffee-and-milk tablets; or the popular lottery seller Doña Manolita. Also Masseras, Aleu and Castells, the first Spanish women to attend university; Dolores Ibárruri and Pilar Primo de Rivera, two opposing visions of politics in 20th-century Spain's darkest days; and Mercedes Fórmica, the lawyer who restored legal dignity to separated women during the height of Franco's regime. Remembering their names is more than an exercise in historical memory: it is a duty.