Concepción Arenal

Who was Concepción Arenal?

Concepción Arenal Ponte was a Spanish feminist writer and activist.

Born in Ferrol, Galicia, she excelled in literature and was the first woman to attend university in Spain. She was also a pioneer and founder of the feminist movement in Spain.

Her father, Ángel del Arenal, was a liberal military officer who was often imprisoned for his ideology and opposition to the regime of Ferdinand VII. He fell ill in prison and died in 1829, when Concepción was aged 8. She moved to Armaño with her mother, and then to Madrid in 1834, to attend the school of the Count of Tepa. Against her mother’s wishes in 1841 she entered the Faculty of Law of the Central University, becoming the first woman in Spain to attend University, where she was forced to wear masculine attire. She also attended political and literary debates, unheard of at the time for a woman

She graduated and in 1848 she married lawyer and writer Fernando García Carrasco. They had three children: a daughter that died shortly after birth, and two sons, Fernando and Ramón. In her later years, her health being a permanent cause of concern, Concepción Arenal lived with her son Fernando and Fernando's second wife, Ernestina Winter.