Since 2023, on 31 October, the Day of Remembrance and Tribute to all the Victims of the Military Coup, the War and the Dictatorship has been officially celebrated in Spain. On this occasion, one of the figures remembered and honoured will be a Protestant woman, teacher and trade unionist from Jerez de la Frontera: Carmen Hombre Ponzoa.

Her figure is perhaps unknown at a national level, although in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia she is more widely recognised. There is a street named after her in the city of Jerez, and there is also an award with her name that the Evangelical Council of Andalusia (Consejo Evangélico de Andalucía) has been giving for the last six years to highlight the educational work of organisations, historian Antonio Simoni told Protestante Digital.

Protestant teachers

Carmen Hombre Ponzoa was a teacher born in San Fernando on 30 December 1903. She taught in several schools in the Jerez area. She was a Protestant Christian in a context where this faith was a tiny minoirity. Hombre Ponzoa was politically active as a trade unionist affiliated to the General Union of Workers (in Spanish, UGT).

In those years, the Spanish Republic had expanded its educational presence by means of schools throughout the country. However, that spirit was cut short by fear and repression in 1936, when the Civil War started.

The teacher was arrested along with her husband, Juan Máximo Salazar, another teacher member of the Federation of Education Workers. Carmen was jailed and held in the prison in the Plaza de Belén, until she was executed in August 1936, when she was eight months pregnant. Her husband was also shot by the authorities.

Of this family, only a one-year-old son survived, who was saved from death by being rescued and secretly handed over to Carmen’s sister.

Some lines of investigation conclude that the motive for her killing had mainly to do with her religious beliefs.

Repression continued against her extended family, whose property was seized.

Democratic memory: events in Madrid

In 2023, the Spanish parliament in Madrid organises the Day of All Victims of the Civil War and the Dictatorship. The commemoration was created as a part of the Law of Democratic Memory.

On this occasion, an act of homage and remembrance to the victims of the Civil War and Francoism is being prepared in the Congress of Deputies for the first time, on Wednesday 30 October.

The following day, 31 October, an event will be held in Madrid at the Auditorio Nacional de la Música, which will be attended by the President of the government, Pedro Sánchez, where a commemorative diploma will be presented to the relatives of some twenty victims and reprisals.

On behalf of Carmen Hombre Ponzoa, two direct relatives (grandchildren) will receive the distinction.

This is the first time that an official tribute to the victims of the dictatorship and the war has recognised the repression of a person for their evangelical faith. Her name has been put on the table by Fernando Martínez López, the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, who recently participated in a training course on memory and Protestantism, organised by the Spanish Evangelical Alliance and the Faculty of Theology of the Assemblies of God in La Carlota (Córdoba).

Evangelicals and the dictatorship

Evangelicals were one of the religious groups that suffered the repression of Franco’s regime (1936-1975). In addition to arrests and executions such as those suffered by Carmen Hombre and her husband or the well-known case of Pastor Atilano Coco, a friend of the famous intellectual Miguel de Unamuno, for several decades there were restrictions in the exercise of the evangelical faith.

In a context of lack of freedom of worship and of expression, the closure of evangelical schools, the seizure of property and various forms of discrimination that also led many Protestants into exile.