What does a women’s March in Madrid, mountain biking and the uncontrolled spread of the Coronavirus in Spain have in common?
To answer that I need to build a story for you and in doing so first need to take you back to my blog about cycling in Barcelona and my distress at not finding other women on the trails amongst the over 100 male bikers I encountered on each and every ride.
At the time, the strange looks I received in my fancy MTB kit and snazzy protection, was the reason I thought I was duly receiving this attention - not just my exceptional trail skillsJ. Well imagine my surprise in discovering the real reason Spain has such a notable absence of women in sport and, to my shock, realise the role they played in spreading the Coronavirus through Spain to a state of out of control.
So let’s step back into history and the current gender climate of this interesting and diverse country
On the 8th of March tens of thousands of women took to the streets in Madrid and other Spanish cities on International women’s day to protest against gender discrimination. Why you might ask? In 2020? Well, Spanish law enshrines certain rights for men that are not granted to women and no-where is this more prevalent than in the world of sports. It has been by law that women cannot be professional sports players and only 20 percent of female athletes are licensed to compete at an international level, limiting representation at the Olympic Games and other global events.
When they have competed the Spanish media has referred to them as “girls”. When sportswomen fell pregnant an “anti-pregnancy clause” in their contracts allowed clubs to terminate the contract with no right to compensation.
Until 1964 women were not allowed to compete in the Spanish Athletic Championships and until 1968 no female reached an Olympic final. In the 1970’s a woman wearing a tracksuit was considered a tomboy. In as recently as 1976 Julio Bravo, the team leader of the World Championships, said to the women competitors; “I have nothing to say to you. You are all just tits and ass. Whatever you do will be fine.” Fast forward to now and attitudes have not changed much… the female winners of the 2019 Spanish National Squash Championship received vibrators and leg wax, in addition to their trophies, as prizes.
Understanding the history of women in Spain is important context; under the dictatorship that lasted till 1975 they had no rights, only civil obligations. They were made dependants of their husbands, fathers or the state. Spain’s democratic transformation did not change the situation much and it is only off the back of the 2018 elections that they have seen a ground swell in movements to change this. This is the reason why women across Spain attended International Women's Day marches in their tens of thousands along with an unprecedented strike of millions of workers across the country targeting gender inequality and sexual discrimination.
But it’s more than just women’s rights, it’s ingrained in the culture
I have been battling to find female runners and mountain bikers in Spain that I can follow, to track their destinations of choice in the mountains for my own inspiration and routes to follow. Not only has this been a difficult task, it’s near impossible. In searching through social media platforms for trail runners or mountain bikers I eventually came across Amanda Machado who has inadvertently helped me understand my lack of success. In her blog, The strangeness of being a Latina who loves hiking, she explains how from a young age she has always been told that a lady must always look “bien arreglada” - that meant perfectly ironed blouses and polished shoes. Arriving at her family home in hiking clothes was not well received. Her parents could not understand how, when they worked so hard all their lives to ensure a roof over her head and provide her with presentable clothes to wear, she would intentionally choose to sleep outside wearing clothes covered in dirt on her backpacking weekends. In Spain to be a lady means to treat oneself delicately, and to be a gentlemen is to honour a women’s fragility. Amanda’s dilemma is how to honour her identity while being a person who loves the outdoors.
There is also a distinct lack of media coverage and social images of female athletes in Spain, which a recent study linked to the lack of role models for girls and young women to aspire to and imitate. Even more so in a “less mainstream, extreme sport” such as mountain biking.
“if we stop, the world stops"
In the lead up to the Women’s Day marches 5.3 million women joined the 24-hour strike, backed by some of Spain's top female politicians. Hundreds of thousands of women joined street protests across Spain forming human chains and shouting "if we stop, the world stops". The protest in Madrid was the largest with over 120,000 in attendance with Barcelona 50,000 attendees and Bilbao 52,000.
While this event has been seen as critical to women’s rights in Spain, the outcome of allowing it to continue has had serious ramifications far beyond merely damaging the reputation of health emergency coordinator Fernando Simon, who allowed the march to proceed in the face of the growing global Coronavirus outbreak. A number of events had already been cancelled or postponed across Spain but Fernando Simon stated that the Health Ministry did not consider the marches to pose any risk. This is the same man that is quoted as saying “Spain will only have a handful of cases”; six weeks later he reads out daily figures of hundreds of deaths.
It’s all about the numbers; on the day of the marches (8 March) there were 430 known cases, ten days later 11,178 cases. Sadly in order to gain equality control of the virus was lost.
While the lack of equality for women in sport seems to be a global phenomenon, things are changing for Spain and mountain biking. President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, recently congratulated Spanish women in sport and said that, "when we ask ourselves in a few years' time when it was that we started to fairly appreciate women's sport and football, we will say it was in 2018".
However, to my great excitement, (yes my sister is thinking I am insane at this stage but hey I am 25 days down in lock-down) while tirelessly searching for outdoor women in Spain I was exceptionally fortunate to recently find a fearless down-hiller and cyclo-alpinist, Laura Celdran Subiela, who spends her weekends as a mountain bike instructor focusing on women. She would like to see women’s cycling flourish so her logic is that if she wants to see the mountains full of women, someone needs to train them.
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