- An image of Cristina Uriarte, Minister of Education of the Basque Government, was published on July 22 by the Facebook page of the exclusionary alarde of Hondarribia. Uriarte’s daughter is going to be a bartender at a company in Alarde this year; the counselor appears next to her in the photo reporting the appointment.
On the 8th of September will be held the celebration of the festivities of Hondarribia, a parade to commemorate the siege suffered by the people in 1638. Twenty-five years ago, in 1993, several women in the village declared that they wanted to parade in this celebration under the same conditions as men – that is, as soldiers; not in the only role hitherto offered to women to participate, that is, as singers.
After years of ignoring this demand, in 1996 several local women tried to get involved and a conflict has arisen in the coastal town of Gipuzkoa that has not been resolved since: on the one hand, those who defend that women have the right to march also as soldiers; on the other, those who are convinced that women do not have the right to do so.
While denying the possibility of marching as soldiers, however, the exclusionary companies have redefined the role of women in the parade over the years: they have strengthened the role of the cantinas to circumvent the criticisms they received for discriminating against women. This is the role that the daughter of the Minister of Education of the Government will play this year in the company Gora Ama de Guadalupe, with which Cristina Uriarte appears in the photo that announces her presence as canteen.
Uriarte and alarde exclusivo: an ancestral relationship
The Minister of Education has previously participated in the events of the Alarde Foundation that were created to make the exclusionary Alarde last. On August 15, 2014, for example, he attended the inauguration of the headquarters that this association opened in the Plaza de Armas in Hondarribia, according to the chronicles.
The presence of the counselor did not go unnoticed and EH Bila demanded the appearance of Uriarte in the Parliament of the Basque Country. For the patriotic coalition, the councillor expressed his support for the barbarism that discriminates against women by participating in this event. “It is out of place for senior officials to support the exclusionary mob and take pictures alongside its organizers,” said MP Tierra Etxeberria.
The Alarde Foundation criticized the “witch hunt” against Uriarte, without denying that the counselor participated in the event. Uriarte's version was different: He stated that he attended a painting exhibition in the Plaza de Armas, a “cultural event”, not the inauguration of the headquarters of the Alarde Foundation. However, the painting exhibition of the painter Javier Sagarzazu was part of the inauguration of the residence.