We often live on our backs in our peoples, without hardly knowing our neighbour. In addition, as age progresses, it is more difficult to find spaces to be together. This is the case of Muxika (Bizkaia).

On March 8, several women from Muxika met around food. Among them was Onintza Enbeita, who told us the citizenship initiative. They had a clear objective: to increase the participation of women in the people. At first, they came up with recording a video, but that, in addition to asking for a lot of papers, and thinking that those that appeared in the video were not going to have an echo beyond watching the projection, was suspended: “Then, we gave him two laps in the head and it occurred to us to pay tribute to six women from the people who were incarcerated during the war.” In this way, the initiative was launched to enable 55 women to work together at present.

They did with their daughters and nephews a small act that lasted half an hour. “With this excuse, we were able to read some texts and put over 30 women to sing the dust of the stars.” This was therefore the precedent. Subsequently, a meeting was held between Enbeita herself, members of the assembly, the culture technique of the City Hall and other women, and it was proposed to make theatre to the women who participated in the tribute last year.

“It’s not easy to go see these women and explain what feminism is, talk about empowerment,” Enbeita said. Somehow they wanted to work those values with the women of the village, but they needed to find the right way. For the first representation, 40 women were obtained: “It is a merit of Christ that of those women who made a proposal to us and in the first they told us yes, if when I am 80 years old we come to ask the girls to do theater I will send them to take the popa,” says Enbeita with humor.

With this first theater, 40 women filled a gap. The City Hall, in the book on Muxika's history, collected only male interviews, and the purpose of this play was to tell the day-to-day lives of the women of Muxika. Fill, in a way, the gaps in history. After the first successful delivery, the following year they went from 40 to 55 women. In the latter, they represented the times of inquisition with akelarre.

Surely it would be the first akelarre that has been made in the church of Muxika. As the village does not have a living room, the shows are held in the church, making the altar a stage. “There are women of great faith but we have had no problem.” Enbeita explains that, at first, explanations were given for the fact that the subject of the work was going to make more than one strange: “This is not against the church; we acted or not, the Akelarres, the inquisition… they happened.” When he was represented in the church of Ajangiz, for example, the priest was in the front row and the one of Muxika explained that he liked it very much.

In the moments leading up to the start of the career, Enbeita has highlighted the nervousness and the illusion: “I was also very nervous but I dissimulated.” The women jumped on the stage and the audience welcomed them with applause. “They came up onstage as ashamed, as if they didn’t deserve applause,” but they received a well-deserved thanks, “all of these applause were the acknowledgement of all the work done in their lives.”

More than a show

They don't want to do professional theater, they don't want to have an amazing script. They don't want the best actors. They want to learn and be together, get to know each other and make alliances. They want to enjoy, learn, have a good time. “It’s beautiful that a whole people participates, break the walls of ideology, break the distance. Everyone has room in this project.”

Enbeita insists on the intergenerational relationship, on how children learn from the elderly, and vice versa: “To an 80-year-old grandmother, perhaps, you have to explain things more than once and a child comes to you saying ‘I don’t know who hasn’t understood it yet’ and he explains it.” In addition, the trials carried out to prepare the theatre have brought the participants together a great deal, “we now participate together in other activities of the people”.

Another option to enjoy feminism is to work on the empowerment, care and occupation of public space. There is no age to be a star, “it is amazing the ability that those women who have dedicated their whole life to care have on the stage.”

Everyone does what they know or want to do: sing, representing, sewing clothes, adorning… Enbeita explains that they have also had the opportunity to work on self-esteem: “In the entrance hall to the altar of the church – the stage – everyone was looking at the ground and I asked them if in the Sunday Mass they threw the money to the ground, so everyone was looking at the ground. They laughed at me, and from there I tell them to go with their head upright and their breasts torn apart,” explains Enbeita.

“I have not had such a good experience in my life; I have never received so much love and gratitude. At first, your head hurts a lot, but then what you get back is amazing,” he explains excited. This year, among other things, no theatre works have been prepared for Muxika. As the citizens are grieved, an act will be held on 6 March in memory of the forgotten women of history.

“A friend told me the other day I thought I was watching the play, “Are there so many women in Muxika?” and I answered him yes, and more.” If they exist, they need to be seen.