Araceli Sánchez Urquijo

Araceli Sánchez Urquijo (17 February 1920 – 2010) was a Niños de Rusia child evacuee during the Spanish Civil War and the first woman to work as a civil engineer in Spain.

Early life Araceli Sánchez Urquijo was born in Sestao in the Basque Country on 17 February 1920. Her parents were Jesusa Urquijo Aldasoro (1895–1984) and Benito Sánchez Garcia (1899–1959). She was the second of five children, with an elder sister Isabel, and younger siblings Oscar, Begoña and Esteban. They became known as the Niños de Rusia. Araceli Sánchez Urquijo was amongst the children who were chosen to go, leaving Spain from the port of Santurtzi in 1937. She sailed on the Habana from the port of Santurtzi on 13 June 1937, initially to Bordeaux. She was classed as a monitor because at 17 years old she was slightly too old to be evacuated as a minor, classed as between 1 and 16 years. The Habana was escorted by a Royal Navy ship, which meant that, despite a tense encounter with a Francoist navy ship, they were finally allowed to continue their voyage, with 4,500 children on board. At Bordeaux, 1,495 children transferred onto the merchant ship Sontay, destined for the port of Leningrad, which they reached after a seven-day voyage. The Sontay had an Asian crew, so communications were difficult because of the language barrier. The children travelled in the holds, in unfit conditions, and arrived in Leningrad dirty, with lice, colds or pneumonia. Araceli Sánchez Urquijo later remembered "rats as big as cats" in the holds. The children were immediately seen by medical professionals. The evacuation was the second to go to the USSR.

The Niños de Rusia were largely welcomed and well cared for in Russia, living in Las Casas de Niños, large children's houses. They were mostly educated in Spanish and taught to appreciate Spanish culture but using the Soviet method. Some of the children were encouraged to learn to speak Russian but not all learned it. The presence of the children was seen by the Soviet Union as a way of publicly supporting the future Spanish socialist republic which they hoped would emerge from the Civil War by caring for the next generation of their political elite. She later recalled her early years in Russia as the happiest of her life.

Education After the Second World War, most of the surviving Niños de Rusia settled in or near Moscow. She later said "I owe everything to Russia and that I have had a hard time... What I did would have been impossible for a woman in Spain."

Sánchez continued to work for Isodel until her retirement in 1987. By the time she retired she had employed 14 female draftsmen to work in her department.

Araceli Sánchez Urquijo died in Cabuérniga in 2010.

Commemoration On 27 June 2023, "Bide-ingeniaritzako euskal emakume aitzindariak” an exhibition celebrating Basque Women Pioneers of Civil Engineering, was opened at the headquarters of the College of Civil Engineering in Bilbao. It told the story of two Basque women pioneers, Araceli Sánchez Urquijo and Laura Irasuegi Otal, both “gerrako umeak” children of the war, who trained in Moscow as civil engineers, a discipline traditionally dominated by men.