Victoria Kent

Victoria Kent grew up in Málaga and studied law in Madrid. In 1925 she became one of the first women admitted to the Madrid bar, and in 1930 the first woman in Spain to plead before a military court, successfully defending a republican politician.

In 1931, after the proclamation of the Second Republic, she was elected to parliament. In the debate on women’s suffrage she argued, against Clara Campoamor, that women should only get the vote later because she feared the influence of the Church – a position for which she was long criticised. As Director General of Prisons she carried out far-reaching reforms: she closed unhealthy prisons, abolished chains and built a modern women’s prison.

After Franco’s victory she fled to France, where she spent the German occupation hiding in Paris under a false identity. She later lived in Mexico and from 1950 in New York. There she met the wealthy American Louise Crane, who became her partner for almost forty years. Together they published the anti-Franco magazine “Ibérica”.

She returned to Spain briefly in 1977, after Franco’s death, and died in New York in 1987, aged 90.