Isabel [host]: Hello everyone, I’m Isabel Cadenas Cañón and this is De eso no se habla. And today we start in my town.

[Soundscape Basauri]

My town is called Basauri and is in the Basque Country, two metro stops from Bilbao. It takes 7 minutes. If you walk, you can reach the old town of Bilbao in less than an hour. The first shopping center in the region, Bizkaia (Biscay), was built in Basauri. The prison of Bizkaia is in Basauri. Basauri sounds like this.

[Soundscape Basauri]

Basauri grew in the shadow of Bilbao because of the number of factories that were and still are there: Firestone, Sidenor, La Basconia. Most of our parents worked in these or similar factories. Most of our mothers were housewives who took us to school. In my class, most of us were named Garcia, or Lopez. We were sons and daughters of immigrants from other parts of Spain, who are called “maketos,” the charnegos (immigrants from other parts of Spain) of the Basque Country.

I was never particularly proud to be from there. Basauri seemed to me to be a town without much to do, without much history. I left as soon as I could.

And it was then, living somewhere else, that my town began to sound different to me.

Haizea: Hey, I would love to be from your town. I would be proud of Basauri.

Many of my feminist friends, like these ones I’m talking to now, Haizea Miguela and Justa Montero, told me that they’d be very proud of being from Basauri, because a historical event had occurred there that had changed the lives of women in this country. And I had no idea.

Justa: Yes, it was without a doubt the most important thing that happened. It meant putting before the whole of society the right of women to decide about their lives and their bodies.

This was the case of the Basauri 11: 11 people arrested for abortion in 1976, one year after Franco’s death, and who had to face almost 10 years of trials. During that time, feminists from all over the state took to the streets to demand their acquittal and to demand the right to abortion. The mobilizations were so large that this case is considered the precursor to the law that decriminalized abortion in 1985.

Haizea: I’m going to say this and it’s a little bit bad, but like the fathers of the Constitution, hell, these are the… The Basauri 11, along with many other women, would be the mothers of sexual and reproductive rights.

In the center of my town there’s even a plaque commemorating the Basauri 11. So I went there to see if I was the only one who didn’t know this story.

Isabel: Have you ever seen that plaque that’s there?

Well, I haven’t noticed it.

Look, I don’t remember that, huh? No. No, no, no.

Eleven women?

Eleven women.

No, I don’t remember that.

Isabel: Nothing, right? You don’t remember anything.

I have no fucking idea.

Ah, the trial of the eleven women. We lived through that.

Ah. Yeah, yeah.

I don’t either, I have no idea about that.

I don’t. No. No idea. I don’t…

I’ve heard something about it, but no…

Yes, I think so.

What happens is that you didn’t know who they were, because it was all kept… Very… Very quiet.

You know what happens? I think it was kept very quiet and that many women…

It had been kept so quiet that, until I started working on this story, I hadn’t even seen that plaque, and it’s just a minute from my father’s house, the house where I grew up, and where I still go very often.

And someone else had never seen the plaque, either – her:

Her: Trial… Wow… I had never seen it before and I’ve come here… I’m stunned.

And it’s quite surprising, because she was one of the Basauri 11.

I had a hard time finding her: everyone told me it was impossible. That the Basauri 11 hadn’t spoken since their case ended 35 years ago. And that they didn’t want to talk again.

Welcome to De eso no se habla.

Today we ask ourselves how silence is built.

[Theme]

Let’s go back to the mid-70s. Franco has just died and in Spain the process known as The Transition begins.

Begoña: It was an explosion on all levels, wasn’t it? Cultural, political…

Clara: There was the voting of the Constitution, the first general elections, municipal elections, everything was bubbling.

Begoña: Suddenly, it’s as if the country breathed, isn’t it? After 40 years of silence, of pain…

Clara: And there was already a lot of political activism.

And feminism was a fundamental part of that activism: groups, assemblies and collectives began to be created throughout the State. Clara Murgialday and Begoña Mendía were part of one of those groups: the assembly of women of Bizkaia. And there, in one of their meetings, a colleague who was a lawyer spoke to them about a case. It was 1979.

Clara: We had heard that they were going to prosecute eleven women for having abortions, and that one of them had done abortions, and that they were requesting a ton of years in prison.

The women Clara is talking about had been arrested three years earlier, but no one knew about it until then. It happened in the middle of the festivities in Basauri, in October 1976.

[Fanfare music]

On the 8th, a woman was arrested for performing abortions. They asked her which women she had helped to abort. She gave some names and the next day several plainclothes policemen showed up at the women’s homes. They took them to the police station for a brief statement – or so they were told.

These women were between 19 and 38 years old. Almost all were married, almost all had children, almost all had emigrated from other parts of Spain, and all were working class. There were two exceptions: one was unmarried when she became pregnant, and she actually had the child. The other ran away and instead a man was tried: a married man who had relations with her and was accused of “inducing her to have an abortion.”

They spent four days in jail. They were then released on probation, awaiting trial. And since some of their husbands worked in factories in the town and were members of trade unions, a labour office in Bilbao took up their case. Then they waited, but they didn’t imagine that they would have to wait so long: the trial took three years to arrive.

It was then, three years after their arrest, that one of the lawyers took the case to the women’s assembly of Bizkaia. The right to abortion was one of the great demands of the feminist movement, and this case comes at the right time to embody that demand. It is the perfect opportunity to bring abortion out of the private sphere and into the public debate.

And that’s why the feminists in the assembly know that the first thing to do is to find a name:

Clara: We had to, like, find a slogan, a phrase, a headline, something that would not raise the issue of abortion in the abstract like that…

That is, a name that would show that abortion was about real women. And after much thought, they found it.

Clara: That slogan, right? The Basauri 11… It took us many meetings.

And so, those ten women and one man stopped being that, ten women and one man, to become something else.

Clara: I think this was part of the success of the campaign.

In a sense, they had become a metaphor.

Clara: Women from popular sectors, super poor, with children. It was, like, so easy to connect with them, you know?

With only a few months to go before the trial, the feminists throw themselves into the campaign of the newly baptized Basauri 11: they hand out leaflets, stickers, posters, and create new forms of protest after so many years of dictatorship.

They chain themselves up in public places.

Clara: 60, 70, 80, as many as we could fit in…

They have demonstrations.

Clara: Well, they beat us up.

They lock themselves up.

Clara: We locked ourselves up for a whole day and night in the Arab Hall in Bilbao’s City Hall.

They create slogans.

Begoña: From “if bishops gave birth, to abort would be law.”

And more slogans.

Begoña: To “we give birth, we decide.”

And more slogans.

Begoña: (singing) We demand the right to abortion. We demand the right to abort and that it’s free for anyone who wants to do it. Something like that.

And they even dare to say that they, too, have had an abortion: in 1979, 1,300 artists, journalists and politicians publicly accuse themselves of having had an abortion. Clara showed me the cover of the magazine Cambio 16 dedicated to them:

Clara: There’s Ana Belén, here’s Massiel. Pilar Miró. Lola Gaos, Nuria Espert, Mercedes Milá. This one looks familiar too, but I don’t know who it is.

These actions don’t only happen in Bilbao: pro-abortion rights commissions have been created throughout the country, perfectly coordinated with each other. The actions, the demonstrations, are repeated in Oviedo, in Madrid, in Almeria, and also in Paris, in Lisbon, in Lausanne.

Justa: We had been defending the right to abortion since 1974, 1975… But suddenly the 11 women of Basauri put a face, put a voice, put their body to all that and gave it, of course, a dimension that goes beyond all our speeches, right?

By the time the trial comes around, on October 26, 1979, abortion has already become a state issue.

That day, Bilbao dawns full of press wanting to cover the trial. But they won’t be able to enter the courtroom: at the request of the defendants, the trial will be held behind closed doors. They don’t want anyone to see them.

We know this because days before the trial, six of these women participated in a press conference in the office of one of the lawyers and the newspapers from then tell us that some of them don’t want to take the stand so that no one will recognize them. An article in El País writes: “These women, who have suddenly become a cause to fight for throughout the state, have not really accepted the role of heroines they have to live with.”

Perhaps they understood this then, on the day of the trial, when they saw the thousands of people who demonstrated in front of the courthouse to ask for their acquittal.

Crowd: Abortion! Legalization! Abortion!

Women: I’ve had an abortion, too!

Cecilia and José Juan Bartolomé’s cameras recorded what happened that day in their documentary Después de… [After…]: A Square full of women and men, banners, megaphones.

Women: (singing) Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty…

A group of women lawyers come wearing their robes to hand in 25,000 signatures in favor of abortion.

Woman: No, the woman is simply rebelling much more now than before. We are rebelling now because we are much more aware of the oppression we are carrying throughout the years.

And a debate that has already taken hold in society, but which the parties in power are trying to ignore.

Crowd: Amnistia emakumeentzat! [Amnesty for the women (in Basque)]

Man: This trial was suspended while waiting for the protests to calm down, but abortion cases continue and abortion continues to be a crime.

The trial is suspended because of the uproar. This will not be the only time this happens: between 1979 and 1981 it is suspended once, twice, three times. All 11 return home. They’re having a difficult time. Abortion is a stigma and they are afraid of their neighbors. We know this because the magazine La calle manages to talk to all of them. One of the women says, “In the store they have come to call us animals and killers. You felt self-conscious on the street.” Another of the women asks that they not say they’re from Basauri, that they say they’re from Bilbao. The article says: “They don’t want photographs, although they know that anyone can take them. They don’t want to give their names, although they know that any journalist can know who they are.”

The anonymity of these women is guarded with such zeal that most of the feminists in the assembly don’t know them.

Clara: I don’t know, I… Either they were in jail or they were underground or…

Begoña: Well, they’ve always wanted to be anonymous or in some way…

Clara: But no, they were not accessible.

Begoña: Not that I remember, of course.

The new trial is set in 1982 and by then the attitude of some of these women had changed. Four of them, for example, sign an open letter and they say: “We are proud and want to thank all the women of Bizkaia and in all of Spain for the effort you made to help us in such a bitter moment that we didn’t have to endure because of your struggle.” Or five of them go to an event in their support that takes place in the Astoria theater, and when they get on stage, the public goes crazy and shouts for amnesty and one of them says: “There’s not much we can tell you after this phenomenal campaign. We thank you for your collaboration, and this is why we are showing our faces.” Another encourages the public to go to the trial: “We’ll be waiting for you at the Palace of Justice,” she says at the end.

Because, this time, yes, the defendants agree to have the trial held with open doors. This was part of the strategy of both the feminist movement and the defense: to take abortion out of the private sphere, to make it public.

Mertxe: We women have always demanded that doors and windows be opened, and that’s why this was very clear to the defense from the beginning: we had to have a public trial.

It was March 16, 1982. Mertxe Agúndez was one of the defense attorneys.

Mertxe: It was a beautiful spring day. The court had no ventilation system and the room was full.

It was very hot in the room and they had to open the windows. Then the courtroom filled up with pro-abortion cries, mottos, and slogans coming from the street: as had happened in 1979, thousands of people had gathered outside the courthouse to support them.

Mertxe: All day long there were people in the Albia Gardens…

Justa: There was a very large gathering of women from all the feminist assemblies in the Basque Country.

Mertxe: …chanting “no more abortion trials,” “amnesty,” “we give birth, we decide,” “support for women.” In other words, it was very exciting.

Begoña: (singing) Amnistia, amnistia, amnistia. Amnistia emakumeentzat. Amnistia, amnistia, amnistia. Amnistia emakumeentzat.

Begoña: Yes, yes, yes. Singing, many women, in the end we were almost going to lose our voice.

Meanwhile, in the courtroom, the defendants answered the court’s questions, one by one. Justa was there.

Justa: I went into the courtroom and it’s something that I won’t forget all my life, because to see the women sitting there explaining their circumstances and then all the judges in their robes, in black.

The defense relied on two arguments. On the one hand, they said that it had not been proven that these women were pregnant.

Mertxe: And we questioned whether, without that certainty, we could talk about a true abortion.

And if they weren’t pregnant, the defense said, it was impossible for them to have had an abortion. This is what in law is called an “impossible crime.”

On the other hand, they tried to prove the “state of necessity” of these women: the defense said that their personal, family, medical and social situation had led them to abort as a lesser evil.

Mertxe: We said that they did know this was punishable, but that they considered they shouldn’t be judged, because women who had sufficient economic means didn’t have to go to an abortion provider where they were risking their life, health and also a criminal sentence.

The defense brought in doctors and sociologists to prove that these women had been accused because they didn’t have economic means: if they had, the defense said, they would have gone to London to have an abortion, like the 19,000 Spanish women who did it every year.

In fact, that is the phrase that is repeated the most in the sentence: “facing a very difficult economic situation.” They all had low incomes, some had hereditary diseases, they were all denied contraceptives when they asked for them. The cases are repeated practically the same.

“That the defendant, a housewife, with a primary school education, married at the time with two children, 1 and 2 years old, respectively, fearing she might be pregnant, despite the couple having used all remedies known to them, which she considered to be the worst of all misfortunes that could befall her in the face of the family’s dire economic situation, submitted to manipulation from her neighbor.”

“That the defendant, a housewife, with a primary school education, with two children, 6 and 4 years old, respectively, fearing she might be pregnant, despite the couple having used all remedies, which she considered to be the worst of all misfortunes that could befall her in the face of the family’s dire economic situation, submitted to manipulation from her neighbor.”

At 11 p.m., after more than 12 hours, the trial was ready for sentencing.

Host: Absolution, as we had anticipated, for nine of the eleven people accused of having practiced abortions. María Jesús Cañellas.

María Jesús: The second sentence, the one that has absolved nine of the eleven people accused of having practiced abortions, made public yesterday morning by the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Bilbao, has set an important legal precedent in crimes of abortion because the Court of Bilbao has applied, for the first time, the extenuating circumstance of state of necessity to absolve two of the accused and has done so, according to the judicial text, in light of constitutional precepts.

It was a historic sentence: not only had a long six-year process been won; this victory was also a sign for the political class, who could no longer look the other way. The decriminalization of abortion could not wait.

Mari Luz: It was very important at the state level so that later, in 1985, the law would be passed.

Clara: Abortion would not have been legalized so soon if it had not been for the impact of this trial of the women of Basauri.

[Music]

Perhaps if everything had ended here, the story of these women would have been different. Perhaps if everything had ended here, these women would have had squares with their names and the date of the trial would be marked on our calendars as a holiday. March 16, Sexual and Reproductive Rights Day.

But that was not the case. After the trial, the prosecutor appealed the sentence to the Supreme Court. And a year later, the Supreme Court agreed with the prosecutor: for that court, the simple fact of trying to have an abortion, even if not pregnant, was indeed a crime. And the “extremely difficult economic situation” of those women did not seem to be a reason not to condemn them, either.

Mertxe: They didn’t go to prison, because they were pardoned in 1975 and 1977. But it was really disappointing.

It was May 1985. While the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court invalidated the historic sentence of the Basauri 11, a new law was being processed in parliament that would decriminalize abortion. That law was passed only one month later, in July 1985.

So the Basauri 11, the forerunners of that law, arrived a month too late to take advantage of it. But in reality, they wouldn’t have been able to do so: the new law only decriminalized abortion in three cases: rape, fetal malformation, or risk to the woman’s health.

As if the state were saying: rights, yes, but not too many. As if the State were saying: I have some good news, and some bad news…

Maybe that explains, too, why I didn’t know this story.

This story wasn’t silenced when it happened: the press at the time followed the process in detail during the six years of the trials. Afterwards, there was silence. Or rather, the story was relegated to feminist circles.

It was the feminists who tried to bring it back. In 2011, the Department of Equality in the City Hall of Basauri conducted an investigation into the case. It was also the Department of Equality that put up that plaque I had never seen before. The author of that investigation, Oihane Lopez, is my age, she’s also from Basauri and, until she started investigating, she had never heard of this issue either.

Oihane: Neither had I, not at all. What’s more, at first I was embarrassed because for me it was something new.

[Applause]

This is Oihane on the day she presented her research at an event in Basauri.

Oihane: Well, just to conclude with three feelings: on the one hand anger, anger about what happened and personal anger for not having known this before; admiration for the women and for feminists; and pride, pride in being from Basauri and a feminist.

[Applause]

As I kept asking myself how we could not know this story, another question began to seem much more important: did they know it, those 11 women? Did they know they are a landmark for the feminist movement, that they are quoted in books, that there is a plaque in their honor in the center of town?

There was no way of knowing: since the trials ended, those women had never spoken again.

Oihane tried to talk to them.

Oihane: I was told that those women hadn’t spoken since the end of the trials.

Maite Ibañez also tried. Following Oihane’s research, she made a documentary about the case. That documentary was broadcast last year on ETB, the Basque public television station, and thanks to it many people heard about the case for the first time. But the voices of those women were not in her documentary, either. I spoke to Maite on the phone.

Maite: We’ve really tried. We’ve tried, but the people we’ve asked, let’s say, have always told us: “They don’t want to talk, they don’t want to talk, you have to make it without talking to them, they don’t want to talk, they don’t want to talk.”

Why didn’t they want to talk again? All the people I interviewed told me that the 11 had not wanted to expose themselves at the time and that, therefore, they had never tried to seek them out afterwards. And I wondered how long silence lasts. What if now they wanted to? Had anyone asked them, directly, in the last 35 years?

I talked a lot about this with Mari Luz Esteban and Paz Díaz, two feminists from the Basauri women’s group who lived through the process of the 11. And who also didn’t know who these women were.

Mari Luz: So today younger women, who also have a different culture, different journalistic training and so on, see it differently. And maybe you can treat it differently… I’m not saying it was the best way. But we did it ideologically, that is, we had it thought out, we didn’t improvise, right? We didn’t investigate, we didn’t search.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m from another generation, but while I was looking for them I was creating my own theories: that maybe nobody had called them; that maybe they had never told their daughters and sons; that maybe they just didn’t want to remember.

And all these maybes didn’t talk so much about the past, but about the present. They showed two things above all: one is that abortion is still a stigma.

Paz: I’m convinced that the same mechanisms that influenced that moment are still at play today. It’s social criminalization. And social criminalization is not so much what exists, but what they believe exists, because they carry that burden, because they are “the women who had an abortion”.

It seems to me that… Although it was hardly a secret, but of course, they’re “the ones who had an abortion”, right? They’re not known for anything else, right? As far as I know.

The other is that women’s stories have always been considered minor. In dividing up the world, ours is the private sphere and that’s where most of our stories have remained. While the Basauri 11 went from trial to trial, in Spain there was The Transition, with capital letters: a new Constitution, new elections, a new country – or so they said. But women’s rights and their demands remained in the background. When feminists tried to include issues such as co-responsibility and abortion in the Constitution of 1978 they always received the same response: it’s not the time. And that “it’s not the time” was also extended to the construction of our memory. And so on, up to today.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but the mixture of these reasons – the lack of recognition, the stigma of having had an abortion – can create a silence that not only affects them, but also extends to the next generation. I hope I’m wrong.

But I don’t think so. Systematically, the children and family members I managed to locate were closing doors on me, blocking me on social networks.

Isabel: I just want to ask you one thing.

People who told me they would respond the next day would mysteriously disappear, I never heard from them again.

Isabel: No, no, it has nothing to do with…

Paz: Many of them will deny that this happened to their mothers. I’m sure there are children who’ll say “no, way, this must’ve been invented by the feminists”, “how would my mother have an abortion?”

Someone should study the repression that children exert on their mothers because we talk often about the repression exerted by husbands and fathers, and whatnot, but other issues remain understudied.

Until finally there was a son who did want to talk to me:

[Music]

Isabel: Hello.

Son: Hello.

Isabel: Hello, how are you?

Son: Very well.

Isabel: It started in ‘77 and lasted until about ‘85. I don’t know if you’ve heard this story. Or something like this, because one of those…

Son: My mother, I think.

Isabel: Is it your mother?

Son: I think so. And well, I’ve never spoken to my mother about this. I haven’t thought about it, no… And I would prefer if you want, if she agrees, to meet and…

The next day, she and her son open the door for me as if I were the upstairs neighbor dropping in for coffee. They smile at me. They were waiting for me. The son takes me into the living room and she prepares something in the kitchen. The living room is spacious, it has a lot of things, especially pictures. From the kitchen, just as I’m turning on the recorder, she asks me if abortion is now legal in Spain.

Her: No, I don’t know, huh?

Isabel: You don’t know?

Her: Huh?

Isabel: It was thanks to you that it became legal.

Her: Oh, I have no idea.

Son: Sure, in ’85, ama.

Her: But is it forbidden here in Bilbao?

Isabel: No!

I had told them I was going to bring pastries, but they said no, because they were on a diet. She comes back from the kitchen with three small glasses of strawberries and orange juice, one for each of us. And both of them are very careful not to get the tape recorder dirty.

Her: Let her put it on a chair, just in case…

Isabel: No, no…

Her: … so that it doesn’t stain the equipment. Let’s see, should I leave it here or that’s bad?

Isabel: No, it’s fine. Oh my, that’s delicious! I’m already recording. I just started it. But don’t worry, nothing will come out that you don’t want to.

Her: Oh, no, no, no, but this is… it’s not personal, maybe we can talk about the abortion thing later. No, I was going to show you some pictures.

She’s very eager to talk, although not necessarily about the Basauri 11 case. But before we start talking, we need a name.

Isabel: Tell me your name.

Her: Will my full name appear?

Isabel: Oh, that’s right. No, I’m going to suggest a name. Let’s see, how about Diana?

Diana: My name is Diana.

I suggest Diana because that’s the name that appears in the sentence from one of the trials. For some years now, in Spain, sentences are made anonymous before they are published and other names are given to people who participate in a trial. The name they gave her was this one, Diana.

So Diana, her son and I, sitting on the couch, eat our strawberries with orange juice and as we do, we look at pictures.

Diana: Here in the hills, like a goat… Here more hills. This one, me.

Isabel: How old were you here?

Diana: 19. I already had a boyfriend, you know? I already had a boyfriend.

In the photos, you can already see the story that led her to be one of the Basauri 11: a girl who, at 18, becomes pregnant by her boyfriend.

Diana: This is me very pregnant. Eight months (laughs). In the hills, at the beach, on a motorcycle… One of these I sent to my ex in the military, he tells me: “What did you send me? I say, “Well, me on a motorcycle” (laughs).

A boyfriend who goes off to the military and washes his hands of the pregnancy.

Diana: He got scared. He was in the military and said, “Oh no, a child!

As the pregnancy progresses, the boyfriend changes his mind and decides to get married. There they are, very modern, in the wedding photos.

Diana: He didn’t want to get married and then look how he snuggled up. Silly.

Diana: I had my eyebrows like a thread and then look, they’re normal now.

Son: How beautiful you were.

Diana: Who?

Isabel: Both of you.

Diana: Who?

Son: You.

Diana: Ordinary.

And in their arms, the newborn child.

Diana: And my son is… We’re holding him in our arms at the wedding. My son went to the wedding. (Laughs)

That child is the son who now listens, sitting next to us on the couch.

Of the Basauri 11, Diana is the single woman who did not have an abortion, the one who the press called the one with the “happy ending,” because she had the child and married the father. Even so, they accused her of having tried to abort up to three times and asked for six months and a day in jail and eleven years of special disqualification.

Diana: Let’s see, I was judged like the others. The others told me, at the trials we had… I didn’t even know what it was about, because if they locked me up, I would tell them no way, that they should investigate the dates and everything. And it can’t coincide because I hadn’t done anything.

The fact that Diana hadn’t had an abortion is stated in the sentence and in the many articles that were published at the time. She was not accused of that: she was accused of having gone to the home of the woman who performed abortions up to three times, accompanied by her mother. She was accused of having tried to have an abortion. But she doesn’t remember that. Not even when I show her an article from that time that I ask her to read.

Diana: “Diana is the young woman with the happy end. Her mother took her to see her when the girl told her she was pregnant and that her fiancé, after giving her a date for the wedding, precisely on February 14, Valentine’s Day…” This isn’t true. “He got cold feet. “I was brought there, but I didn’t let them touch me. I wanted to have the child.’ The prosecutor notes, “Isn’t it true that after two attempts, on the third, you said, ‘Let me have the child and be done with it?’” ‘I said it on the third try, yes, but from the first time I wouldn’t let them touch me, so I kept working in a factory, had the child and married the father.’” Well, but let’s see, there are things that aren’t reality because neither Valentine’s Day nor any day, I hadn’t set a date for anything.

Diana doesn’t remember being in that house.

Diana: I don’t even know what the apartment looks like.

Or that her mother took her there.

Diana: No, no, no, no!

Nor to have pronounced those words.

Diana: And “leave me alone, let me have the child” this sounds too strong, because me, at nineteen, “leave me alone, leave me alone, that I want to have the child”…

I had tried to be alone with her at some point, without recording her, to see if her story would change when her son wasn’t around, but every time I suggested it, Diana told me that it was alright, that she could say anything in front of her son. So that son, sitting next to me, is listening to the details of this story at the same time I am.

Son: If she had done so, I would have understood. Because, in a certain situation, a working-class family, she was working, couldn’t get ahead at that time and it was frowned upon and all that… But, well, if she couldn’t have dealt with it, I would have understood that she’d had an abortion.

Her son and I aren’t the only ones hearing this story almost for the first time: as we speak, Diana, little by little, begins to remember as well.

She remembers that October 9, 1976, when the police came to her home, as happened to the other women:

Diana: They ring the doorbell and say, “Is Diana here?” And my mother says, “Yes, she’s washing her hair.” They say, “Well, it’s just a moment. We’re going to go and take a statement from her.”

She remembers that she was one of the six women who participated in that press conference in 1979.

Isabel: Were you nervous?

Diana: No, why? I hadn’t done anything.

Isabel: Well, but talking in front of so many people, so many cameras…

Diana: No. And many people said “Do you want to show your face?” and they all said no, and I said, “I don’t care.” And the others “No, no, they know me.”

And that was followed by the trials, but Diana remembers little about that.

Diana: No, because it was a long time ago. I was a child then.

I don’t remember how many there were, huh?

I didn’t even know what I’d been accused of, they took me to one place and to another, “tomorrow we’re coming here”, “tomorrow we’re going there”…

Diana says it never mattered to her to show her face. Maybe this is her memory, maybe not.

What is certain is that after so many years, and after so many trials, Diana had never been aware of what that process had meant in the history of our country.

Diana: I had no idea then, because it happened… I know there were demonstrations and I know that when we came out of a trial there were many people and we were put in a van and… -one or two, I don’t remember- and people said “We support you, we’re with you,” but I didn’t know what they meant by “us”.

She didn’t even know they were called the Basauri 11.

Diana: I had no idea there were eleven of us, or five or six. I thought there were six of us.

And she doesn’t know anything about the tributes they’ve been given either.

Diana: I didn’t know anything, nor that there’s a plaque, which I don’t even know where it is because I’ve never heard of it.

And at her side, her son…

Son: I don’t know, my mother didn’t have such a bad time either. It seems the other women had a much worse time. And, well, I feel, I don’t know, a little moved, I don’t know. Because it was a historical event. From there it went to… The abortion law was created, right? Thanks to…

Diana: And you feel proud of…? (Laughs)

Diana is only one of the Basauri 11. Perhaps her story has nothing to do with the others. Maybe she was the one who suffered the least, as her son says, as she says. Or maybe she suffered, but has decided to tell herself the story this way. I can’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. Diana is the only one of the Basauri 11 who has agreed to tell me her story. And this is her story: with holes, with omissions, with recreations, as memory always is. What I do care about is this: that the only one of the 11 who wanted to tell her story is the only one who didn’t have to bear the stigma of having aborted says a lot about the weight of the stigma of having aborted, even today. And even so, even without having to carry that stigma, even speaking under another name, Diana doesn’t consider herself part of this story.

The next day, we go together to see the plaque.

Diana: I’m going to take a picture of myself; I didn’t even know it existed.

Isabel: And why this plaque?

Diana: Well, because we could say that we were the ones… The pioneers in making the abortion law… Without knowing it, more or less.

Diana: Trial… Wow… I had never seen it before and I’ve come here… And my sister must have come, my sisters, who are from here, and no one has seen this.

Diana: Trial of the 11 women from Basauri accused of abortion and performing abortions that extends in time from 1976 to the early 1980s. In this sense, this event has become a landmark that marked the flourishing of Basque feminism.

Diana: I’m stunned.

Diana: It’s curious, it’s good. It seems that it even has light. It’s cool. It’s good that they do these things because with the injustices that exist today, people have to know. And if you don’t go out and demonstrate, you don’t get anything. You have to fight, otherwise…

Diana: Hey, can you take a picture of us?

Isabel: Can you take a picture of us?

Girls: Yes.

Diana: Hey, did you know there’s a plaque here for 11 ladies who had abortions and made abortion legal 43 years ago? Look.

Diana: But what do you think about the fact that it’s been legalised for 43 years and people aren’t put in jail or have to go abroad?

Girl: Well, that’s good.

Isabel: Do you think that’s good?

Girl: Yes, because a person can get pregnant for different reasons and…

Diana: Can you believe that one of them is me and I had the child? Now I find out after 43 years, I find out that the plaque is here and that one of them was me (laughs).

Diana: Oh, I have to climb up?

Girl: Well, you can’t see the plaque.

Diana: It doesn’t matter, we’ve already read it. Make sure it’s in the picture…

[Photo sound]

[Ambience, music]

My friend Haizea told me that this episode had to be a round-trip: make it, and have it heard by the Basauri 11. And also their children. I thought I would then take advantage of the end of this episode to tell them what the women I interviewed said when I told them I was going to try to talk to the 11.

Haizea: Well, if I have to be brief, I say thank you. For what it meant personally for them.

Justa: Because it gave us strength and momentum, to all the women who at that time defended their cause and it gave us wings to continue.

Mari Luz: Above all I would listen to them. If they want to talk, I’d listen to them.

Oihane: That they are important women, that they deserve recognition, and that they made us much freer, those of us who came after.

Paz: Well, look, I’d like to give them a hug and say hey look, my friend, we’ve been into something… We’ve dodged that ball. How has your life been, how was…?”

Demonstration: Free and legal abortion!

[Theme]

I’m Isabel Cadenas Cañón and we don’t talk about that… Or else we do.

The production, the script and the editing of this episode have been done by me. Laura Casielles is our text editor, and Vanessa Rousselot, our script editor. Our editing assistant is Paula Morais, who assists us in almost everything else too. The sound design is by me and Marcos Salso, and our sound studio is Isolé División Sonora. Our theme is by Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Laura Casielles is in charge of communication. The illustration of this episode is by Carmen Cáceres.

Thanks to Oihane López for sharing her research with us, and thanks to Charo Hernández and Toñi Montes for lending us their voices to read the sentence. Thanks to all the people who have helped us in our search for the Basauri 11 and also to those who, in collective or individual listening sessions, have helped us make this episode better. There’s so many of you that we’ve put your names in the credits of the website.

If you have a story of silences, talk to us. On our website, www.deesonosehabla.com, you can subscribe to our newsletter, listen to the rest of the episodes or send us a voice or text message, or an email. We are also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and you know how much we love to talk. If you liked this episode, recommend it to your friends, or anyone else, and subscribe to our channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Podimo, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can even leave us a rating.

De eso no se habla is produced in the proud neighborhood of Lavapiés, in Madrid, thanks to the support of PRX – Public Radio Exchange – and the Google Podcasts Creator Program.

We’ll be back in two weeks.

Thanks for listening.