Julia Becerra Malvar

Julia grew up in an atmosphere which encouraged her political interests and her adoration for her home village. When she was little she had a lot of influences which drove her to her interest in politics. On her father' side she had relatives who were ministers of the nation during the first and the second republic. However, her father, who was the mayor of Pontevedra, was a monarchic man. She was educated by particular teachers, as in that time very few women received some type of education. Later, she liked music but her parents thought that she could have a more important occupation. When she became an adult and a married woman, she was a woman anticipated to her time, she was very liberal, independent and very interested in politics and her home village, Barrantes. Consequently, when she was married her parents gave her "El Pazo de Barrantes" where she spent all the summers. She was very interested in the people from Barrantes, the farmers, the poverty, the insolation and so on. Her friends had a political ideology which helped her to define her own ideology; that is, a mixture of pro-Galician feeling, pro-land reform movement and conservative ideas. Due to all these ideas she met Ramón Cabanillas, Cambó and José Sánchez Guerra. On 25 September 1930, several important galician intellectuals and Julia met in Pazo de Barrantes to write a document which demanded the rights of Galicia. This is known as the Barrantes agreement (Pacto de Barrantes). This contract was signed by Ramón Cabanillas, Paz Andrade, Basilio Álvarez and others..... except Julia because she was a woman. This caused her to have problems with her family and some of her politician friends. During the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, Julia Becerra, a woman with strong democratic convictions, was as dissatisfied with the dictatorship as her friend José Sánchez Guerra. Otherwise she had a good relationship with the general Primo de Rivera. As a consequence we can tell she was an open-minded woman, because she was friends with very different people. Julia, countess of Creixel, was always between the devil and the deep blue sea because although she was in favour of the Republic, she was a friend of the king Alfonso XIII too. Besides the people who met in Barrantes were not in favour of the republican regime because the contract was judged in a very different way outside Barrantes. After the republic reclamation Julia participated more in politics, for instance she ran as a deputy in the province of Pontevedra, although she was not elected. During the Spanish Civil war she had a lot of contacts in the republican party, so she helped a lot of people who had their lives in danger.She contributed to saving a considerable number of lives thanks to her links to the organization "Socorro Blanco" The Spanish Civil war was a hard time for everybody. Her granddaughter Cristina Cebrián explains that thanks to the Barrantes Palace's house keepers, Julia and her family never lacked food or money because they kept all her shares despite the war. Some years later, she renounced to give up politics when the Civil war finished with the democracy in Spain.

Julia spent the final years of her life in Spain, in Barrantes to be precise, after performing humanitarian works around Europe during W.W.II. She liked talking with her neighbours, in particular she was very interested in town problems. Although she liked singing and playing the piano for her family, Julia also loved working in the fields, specially during the grape harvest. She used to work elbow to elbow with the country people. Julia spoke Galician with them, even though she usually spoke Spanish and French with her family. Something very special for her was to visit the Mosteiro Fair (A Feira de Mosteiro) where people traded with cattle. Besides she also liked discussing prices with the traders. During 1962, Julia lived through a hard time, when her son-in-law Jaime Cebrián died. However, in 1965 the situation was made worse when her second husband, Arbenz, died. Although the hardest was in 1967, when her two daughters and two of her grandchildren died in a car accident. She was sad in her later life because she had painful losses in her family. People who remember her talk about her strength and about her bravery despite her disgrace. She gave a lot of courage to her grandchildren so that they could get over their mothers' death. It should be mentioned that she donated a great part of her land so that the local school was built, just because she loved Barrantes and its inhabitants very much. The school is called nowadays CPI Julia Becerra Malvar in her honour. In her last years, she went blind, which changed her life considerably. Julia died on 27 April 1974 in Madrid, when she was 82. She had a very interesting although hard life, in particular when her daughters died. In spite of her many achievements, she is not a well-known character of the 20th century in Galicia. In May 2009, her ashes were moved to the Barrantes cemetery.

• Álvarez, Patricia: "El pacto de Barrantes y su musa: Julia Becerra Malvar". Historia de las Rias, Faro de Vigo.
• Vila Fariña, Xosé Lois: El valor de una mujer: Julia Becerra Malvar. Ediciciones Cardeñoso. Vigo 2011.