Art and Handcraft in the Woman's Building
of the World's Columbian Exposition

SPAIN. THE display made by the Spanish women in the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, although one of the most important in that department, suffers very much on account of the lateness of the action taken in Spain to gather specimens of the work and labor of women. By an unfortunate circumstance, there had not been a Spanish Minister in Washington for some time until the end of 1892. The American Minister left his post in Madrid also at the same time; and besides this there was in Spain a change in the govern- ment. Her Majesty the Queen did not know the importance of the Exposition and the desire of the Board of Lady Managers until a very few weeks before the opening of the Fair, and it has been very difficult to gather, in such a short time, a comprehensive •collection of what woman is doing in Spain. Immediately her majesty had knowledge of the desires of the American ladies, she surrounded herself with the ladies most accustomed to manage affairs of that sort, because of the part they take in charities, education, and in the literary and intellectual movement, and calling together the ladies of the different provinces, in a very few days they gathered what is to be seen in the pavilion of Spain in the Woman’s Building. The women of Spain have always played a very important part in the social development of the country, and in the growth of the nation. The status of woman in Spain, her position and influence in the family and in the government, does not originate only in the gallantry that is always accorded to Spain by people who think of our country with romantic ideas, but is due to the Christian principle that woman is the equal of man. The law of the country gives equal rights to rule to women and to men, and Spain boasts of such queens as Isabella the Catholic, Maria de Molina, and the present Queen Regent, who have given her the greatest clays of glory, and the best government under very diffi- cult circumstances; and of queens and mothers like the two sisters (219)