Isabel Muñoz-Caravaca (b. 3 August 1838,

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

— d. 28 March 1915,

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) was a

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teacher, journalist,

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activist, ecologist, and

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active in Guadalajara until 1910.

Life and work

Isabel Muñoz-Caravaca was born to an aristocratic parents Francisco and Alejandra de Alcázar in

, Spain on 3 August 1838 and did not live a happy childhood by her recollection. She studied in Madrid and in Paris, receiving tutoring in music and the French language at the

Madrid Royal Conservatory The Madrid Royal Conservatory () is a music college in Madrid, Spain. History The Royal Conservatory of Music was founded on July 15, 1830, by royal decree, and was originally located in Mostenses Square, Madrid. In 1852 it was moved to the Roy ...

with Manuel de la Mata. On 7 December 1874, she married Ambrosio Moya de la Torre y Ojeda, a professor at the

Complutense University of Madrid The Complutense University of Madrid (, UCM; ) is a public research university located in Madrid. Founded in Alcalá in 1293 (before relocating to Madrid in 1836), it is one of the oldest operating universities in the world, and one of Spain's ...

who was 26 years her senior. She had three children and lived a comfortable life until her husband died in January 1895, leaving her a widow. She then broke convention by entering the Atienza Girls' School, where she soon found pedagogical work at the age of 47. Her teaching was not limited to the Girls' School; she began to hold a night school to teach adult workers at the same time she was preparing schoolgirls to enter the normal school in

. She stayed in Atienza until her oldest son Jorge became an assistant to the provincial board of education in 1910. From 1898 to 1899, Muñoz-Caravaca began her journalistic activities in Guadalajara by writing about local history for the paper ''Atienza Illustrated'' and became a regular contributor to the publication ''Flores y Abejas'' (''Flowers and Bees'') from 1900 to 1914. In 1899, she published the ''Principles of Arithmetic'' in Madrid, a text based on her teaching of mathematics in Atienza that came complete with exercises, questions and tables. At the beginning of the 20th century, she also published in Madrid the ''Elements of the Solfeggio Theory'', a book that facilitated the teaching of music. Muñoz-Caravaca published numerous articles in the left-leaning weekly publication ''La Alcarria Obrera''; it is possible that she wrote under the pseudonym El Republicano between 1902 and 1905. Muñoz-Caravaca resigned from her teaching position in 1902 in the face of resistance from local government and ecclesiastical entities (she often refused to work with teachers' associations), though she promoted the construction of a new school in Atienza, which closed in 1916. A budding

, she installed a

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in her home and traveled in August 1905 to Almazán with the

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to observe the eclipse. This scientific was criticized by Madrid magazine ''Gideon'', prompting angry response from Muñoz-Caravaca through ''Flores y Abejas''. In 1914, Muñoz-Caravaca became ill with cancer, and she died of it in the dawn of 28 March 1915.

Life and work

References

Further reading