Mercedes Machado

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: 1896-1970

Santa Cruz has, in the Ifara area, a street in honour of the first woman to graduate in Law from the University of La Laguna: Mercedes Machado (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1896-1970).

Born at the end of the 19th century into a well-off island family, Mercedes spent part of her childhood and adolescence in France. When she returned in 1912 to Tenerife with her family (parents and five sisters), her father enrolled her at the Instituto de Canarias in La Laguna, where she studied for her baccalaureate, and after finishing it, she took a teaching degree. That was the highest academic aspiration a "young lady" could have at that time. But it did not end there.

Her family always encouraged her to continue her studies. She enrolled at the University of La Laguna, where she graduated in Philosophy and Letters, specialising in Classical Languages. Later, and after many difficulties due to her condition as a woman, although she always had a top academic record, in 1929 she obtained the degree of Licenciada en Derecho (Law Degree). She was the first woman in the Canary Islands to achieve this.

Mercedes Machado is considered the first female lawyer in the Canary Islands. She could not submit her application to join the Tenerife Bar Association until 1936, as the statutes of that association prevented women from practising law. Three years earlier, Josefina Perdomo Benítez had achieved this, having graduated after Mercedes and accepted into the Las Palmas Bar Association. Mercedes had to wait until 1949 to be definitively admitted to the profession.

Perhaps her problems, apart from being a woman, came from her fighting spirit and commitment to republican ideals, which were defeated in the Civil War. Be that as it may, Machado began teaching at the Instituto de Canarias as a professor of Latin and Greek. Later she worked at the Teaching School of the University of La Laguna and even obtained a position as adjunct professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters.

Mercedes Machado was a very cultured woman. She was polyglot; besides Latin and Greek, she spoke English, French, German and Italian, and could manage in Russian. She was a liberal and reformist woman; a friend of Clara Campoamor, with whom she corresponded. Despite the difficulties, she always remained firm in her convictions about equality of merit, love of culture and teaching, a field in which she was awarded the Alfonso X El Sabio Medal in the 1960s.

Today admired and recognised, the name of this pioneer is found in Santa Cruz both in its street names and in a women's association.

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