María Salas Larrazábal


María Presentación Salas Larrazábal, also known as Mary Salas, was a Spanish writer and journalist who specialized in adult education and was a pioneer of women's laity. She was linked to Catholic Action and was the first president of the NGO. A key figure in the struggle for equality, in 1960 she co-founded the Seminar on Women's Sociological Studies, the precursor of modern gender studies in Spain, and in 1986 promoted the Women's Studies Forum that she chaired.

Career

María Presentación Salas Larrazábal was born in Burgos in 1922. Her father was a general. She studied and received a degree in Semitic philology at a time when few women attended university. She also studied journalism at the.
She was vice-president of Catholic Action's Superior Council of Women, and was responsible for the Adult Education Commission of the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations, a position that required her to travel around the world, experiencing diverse living conditions that shaped her later writing. She also directed one of the few university dormitories for girls in Madrid.
Throughout her life she was linked to Catholic Action, of which she was a national leader for more than twenty years, and to the Centers of Popular Culture, which she presided over until 1968.
In 1960 she co-founded the Seminar on Women's Sociological Studies with the support of María Laffitte and the participation of Lilí Álvarez, Elena Catena, and Consuelo de la Gándara. It became a nucleus of moderate and intellectual feminism, and a forerunner of modern gender studies in Spain.

Co-founder of Manos Unidas

Also in 1960, Salas was one of the founders and first national president of, and together with Pilar Bellosillo, was a fundamental part of the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations.
She was responsible for initiating the Campaign Against Hunger in Spain, and penned many of the earliest articles which disseminated the ideas contained in the UMOFC's 1955 foundational manifesto.
In 1968 she traveled to Sub-Saharan Africa with Pilar Bellosillo on a mission to promote women's issues. After a meeting in Kinshasa, they traveled to the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Senegal to train Catholic leaders of the new era of independence. Earlier, they toured Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico in a one-month course for the training of leaders, paid for by UNESCO.
Among Salas's missions, the one which left the deepest mark on her was the one which led her to India. As she explains in her memoirs,
In 1977 she was a candidate to the Congress of Deputies for Burgos for the left-wing Democratic Party led by Joaquín Ruiz Giménez.
She wrote assiduously for the journals Ecclesia and , and was a regular columnist for the new edition of the magazine Signo. She retired from writing in June 2008 due to illness.

Commitment to women's rights

In 1959 Salas published her first work, Nosotras, las solteras, dedicated to women who decided not to marry. Her biographer explains that she wanted to dignify this personal option and keep it away from "the rancid spinsters that appeared in many jokes."
In 1960 she co-founded the Seminar on Women's Sociological Studies, promoted by María Laffitte, a pioneering gender and equality studies group in Spain that served as a bridge between moderate feminism of Christian Democrat circles and that of more uncompromising feminist groups.
Pope Pius XII encouraged her in her commitment to women's rights. recalled words from a tribute to her in Alandar:
In 1986, together with Pilar Bellosillo, Dolores Aleixandre, and Marifé Ramos, Salas promoted the creation of the Women's Studies Forum, a space for Christian women to explore new ecumenical horizons with European networks.

Awards and recognition