Gloria Begué Cantón

Gloria Begué Cantón (23 March 1931 – 27 December 2016) was a Spanish professor, 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.

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 became the first female dean at a university in Spain in 1969 when the Faculty Board elected her to the position. 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. 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 left the Senate on 2 January 1979. Cantón was the first female magistrate on the Constitutional Court of Spain. Cantón was rapporteur in more than 100 judgements such as the right to work; presumption of innocence; conscientious objection; the draft Organic Law on the Harmonization of the Autonomous Process; the partial decriminalization of abortion; the Coat of arms of Navarre; the application of tax regulations; bank savings; university autonomy; She taught courses on the European Union in the Jean Monnet Chair, the legal-constitutional aspects of economic relations in doctoral and postgraduate programs. Cantón participated in symposiums organised by the Encuentro Foundation and in seminars of the Fe y Secularidad Institute. She was chair of the Management Board of the Institute of International Issues and the Independent Association Foundation of the Senate; was a member of the European Institute of Spain; the Committee of Experts of Expo '92; Council for the Debate on the Future of the European Union and was on the jury of the Prince of Asturias Awards in the Social Sciences in 1998.

Awards On 27 February 1989, Cantón was decorated with the Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by Juan Carlos I. She received the Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit from the King in Madrid on 8 September 2000. Cantón was awarded the Gold Medal by the University of Salamanca, their highest accolade, for her career in academia in 2004. She also got the Order of Constitutional Merit.