Evita: a visit to Spain that was too uncomfortable for Franco

• Dates Centenary of the birth of Evita Perón: the 18 days in which Carmen Polo competed against her

This Wednesday, June 8, marks the

of a historic event:

of what was already a living myth in Argentina,

,

wife of President

.

The natural daughter of

offspring

reflected in her birth certificate marked her deeply and explains her

She achieved

film, theater and radio actress until in 1944 she met

Juan Domingo Peron at the

who had been minister of war and served as

for the government born of the 1943 revolution.

They were married in 1945, and a year later, Perón was elected

after an electoral campaign in which Evita actively participated,

in the wife of a candidate.

Later, her figure grew to

becoming

populist movement known as "Peronism" although her detractors criticized her

Despite this, in the six years that she served as first lady, since

of uterine cancer, she won the

of the popular classes, which she referred to as her

, also becoming an

by getting women's suffrage approved in her country.

Unheard of at that time was the

in politics, and even more so that she represented her country on

as she did the

from end to end as a prelude to her European tour, baptized as " Rainbow Tour".

The visit was a great oxygen balloon

because after the allied victory in World War II, his affinity with Hitler and Mussolini caused our country to be

and with the economy devastated by three years of civil war.

Only the populist Argentina of Perón, at that time a great power,

sending an ambassador to Madrid and establishing an

with Franco, by which Argentina would send tons of

on credit. in exchange for metals such as

and machinery for electric motors.

Evita's arrival at Barajas airport on June 8, 1947, at 8:30 p.m., was

, because in addition to a crowd instructed by the regime, she was received

Carmen Polo, the government and the

of the army, the church and the phalanx.

October 1951 photo of Argentine First Lady Evita, waving to the crowd at an event in Buenos Aires. GTRES

Also memorable was the

held the following day in the royal palace where the dictator imposed on her

the highest decoration, then going out to the balcony where she was

since the regime had decreed a holiday for that they could come.

Apart from these tinsel, the reality is that

ideas

, as for Evita herself, upon verifying the

of the humble classes and the situation of political prisoners.

El Escorial, an asylum for the poor

At the lunch that was held in the royal palace after the event, there was

when Carmen Polo insisted that Evita visit Madrid de los Austrias, but she insisted on going

She there she did not stop asking the men if they had work, she was interested in the sick children and

proclaiming that she was not alms but "social justice".

On a subsequent visit to the monastery of El Escorial, surprised by the size of the monument and the number of empty rooms, she advised Franco

for orphans of the civil war, in the face of the dictator's suppressed anger.

Evita and General Franco, during Argentina's visit to Spain.EM

A

that he also exhibited during the rest of his tour of Spain, where he did not stop publicly referring to

"In Argentina we work

do it too," she proclaimed, also denouncing the oppression of women and demanding the release of political prisoners.

He succeeded in the case of the communist militant

whose son had written a letter to the Argentine first lady begging her to intercede for his mother,

Evita managed to get Franco to commute his sentence before saying goodbye to Spain by visiting Barcelona, ​​where he read a

and took the plane to Italy at El Prat airport, to the cheers of some ten thousand people who came to fire her

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• Francis Franco Bahamonde

• Argentina