Abstract

Despite the existence of distinctive female personalities and individual interventions on behalf of women, feminism – understood as a mass movement – remained a rarity in Spain until April 14, 1931; that is, until the proclamation of the Second Republic. For feminism to triumph, two things were necessary: first, the popularization of the ideas represented by the French Revolution, and second, the Industrial Revolution. Neither of these two prerequisites existed in Spain until the Second Republic and the country remained in the grip of conservative Catholicism, without anything resembling the Industrial Revolution that was happening in the rest of Europe.