Kent, Victoria, 1892-1987

Dates

• Existence: 1892-03-06 - 1987-09-25

Biography

Victoria Kent was a prominent lawyer and politician from Spain. She was born on March 6, 1892 in Málaga. (During her lifetime Kent maintained she was born in 1897, however, organizers of an homage to Kent in Málaga discovered in 1997 that her birth date is in fact 1892.) As a young woman Kent studied law at the University of Madrid and after graduation she became the first female lawyer in Spain. She gained notoriety as a lawyer in 1931 when she was one of the defense lawyers for politicians Fernando de los Rios, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, Francisco Largo Cabellero, and Álvaro de Albornoz. She served as a congresswoman in the Parliament of the Second Spanish Republic (1931) and as Director General of Prisons (1931-1934) but was forced to flee Spain during the Spanish civil war. Kent lived in exile in France (recounted in her book Cuatro Años en París) and served as the Secretary of the Spanish Embassy (1937-1939). Kent lived for a period in Mexico -- where she taught penal law at the University of Mexico -- and then moved to the United States where she worked as a member of the Secretariat for the United Nations (1950-1952). Crane and Kent published Ibérica, a Spanish language anti-Franco magazine from 1954 to 1974. Following Josephine Boardman Crane's death, Kent and Crane lived together in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Redding, Connecticut.

Kent died of a heart attack in September 1987.