Gloria Begué Cantón (23 March 1931 – 27 December 2016) was a Spanish professor,éCantó jurist, senator and magistrate. She was the first female law school professor in Spain and was a law educator at Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Salamanca.
Cantón became the first female dean at a Spanish university in 1969 and resigned three years later. In 1977, she was appointed a senator in the Senate of Spain as a member of the parliamentary group and therefore joined the Constitutional Court of Spain. She was also the first woman magistrate appointed to the Constitutional Court of Spain in 1980 and became its first female vice-president in 1986. She returned to academia at the University of Salamanca following the end of her nine-year term on the court in 1989 before retiring in 2001.
Early life and education
On 23 March 1931, Cantón was born in La Bañeza, Province of León, Spain. Her father, Juan María Begué Arjona, was a property registrar who was murdered in the first months of the Spanish Civil War in October 1936. Cantón grew up in La Bañeza and gained her Spanish Baccalaureate at the Instituto Padre Isla de León. She graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid with a Doctorate in Law and bachelor's degrees in both Law and Economic Sciences at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, where she studied on a scholarship from the Fulbright Program between 1958 and 1961. This was at a time when few women attended the university.
Career
She passed her competitive examination in 1964 and became the first female law school professor and the fourth to become a professor in Spain. Cantón was appointed adjunct professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Law of the Complutense University of Madrid and adjunct professor of Economic Theory at the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences in which she was in charge of Macroeconomics. She extensively employed macroeconomic models, which was a novelty at the time. Cantón was made chair Chair of Political Economy and Public Finance at the Faculty of Law of the University of Salamanca in 1964, launching a practically non-existent department and commencing a process to modernise the contents and approach of the economic disciplines in the legal faculties. She refused to teach an exclusive group of female students and was surprised at her request to reside at the Colegio Mayor de Santiago el Zebedeo.
Cantón became the first female dean at a university in Spain in 1969 when the Faculty Board elected her to the position. She resigned her position in 1972 due to discrepancies with the university policy of the Ministry, which had dismissed their rector mid-summer, causing her to believe there was political interference with university autonomy. The criticism resulted in her opening a disciplinary file that was due to her signature on an open letter questioning university policy in November 1973; the complaint was subsequently closed following an attack on Luis Carrero Blanco, the Prime Minister of Spain.
On 15 June 1977, Cantón was appointed a senator in the Senate of Spain by Juan Carlos I as a member of the parliamentary group and therefore joined the Constitutional Court of Spain. She was a member of the Economy and Treasury Commission and the Budgets Committee. Cantón was first vice-president of the Special Commission on Scientific Policy and was deputy spokesperson of Agrupación Independiente. She was part of the Court which drafted the Constitution of Spain in 1978. Cantón defended amendments and private votes related to the article 27 —the right to education—, article 40 —guiding principles of economic policy an amendment that served as the basis for its definitive drafting—, the preliminary article 44 —ensuring quality control and product information— and article 51 — the recognition of the rights of consumers and users. She left the Senate on 2 January 1979. Upon the end of the legisature, Cantón became vice-president of the State Administration-General Council of Castilla y León commission that was setup to lead the management of power transfer and was director of the Institute of Economy of Castilla y León between 1978 and 1980.