Rosario Valpuesta

Aged 60, Rosario Valpuesta died of cancer, from which she had suffered for years, in her home city of Seville. A year before her death, the Regional Government of Andalusia, José Antonio Griñán being its President, awarded her with the Meridiana Award, coinciding with the International Women's Day. In 2009, President Rodríguez Zapatero awarded her with the Plaza de España Award for “her defense of democratic values”; another award was presented to the journalist Iñaki Gabilondo.

One of the incidents that she had to face during her term as a Vice-Chancellor was the sit-in of half a thousand illegal immigrants claiming their regularization in 2002. Finally, after several attempts to resolve the conflict, some altercations with workers and after they had threatened to occupy more buildings, she ordered the eviction of the immigrants from the University premises. Mariano Rajoy (who at the time was Spain's vice-president) linked the protest with the European Council meeting which was being held in Seville during those days, and with a call for a national strike. The People's Party (PP) asked the Andalusian Regional Government at the Regional Parliament to assume “political responsibilities” for “encouraging and protecting” the sit-in of the illegal immigrants at the University premises.

In Spain, the Civil Guard honored her with the “White Cross of Civil Merit” in October 2001. A year later, she entered the “Real Academia de las Ciencias, Bellas Artes y las Buenas Letras Luis Vélez de Guevara”. In 2004, the University Pablo de Olavide awarded her with the medal of honor of the institution. In 2009, she received the Sociedad Award at the first edition of the Gabriela Sánchez Aranda Awards, and in 2012 she was awarded the Meridiana Award, for her defense of equal rights between men and women. As a posthumous homage to Ms Valpuesta, the city of Seville awarded her with the Medal of the city in 2013, which was accepted by her son, Alberto Giráldez Valpuesta.

Manuel Chaves (the former President of the Regional Government of Andalusia) appointed her as the Vice Chancellor of the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) by statutory order on July 29, 1997. She renewed the position in April 2001, through elections; she occupied the position until June 10, 2003, when Agustín Madrid replaced her.

She also collaborated in different projects with many town halls in Andalucía in order to raise the awareness of rural women about their situation of subordination and work discrimination. She also worked in Latin America with women who fought for their rights in countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Peru or Bolivia and she participated in many programs to help them fight discrimination toward women. In recognition of her work on women's rights, she received several international awards throughout her career. She was named Honorary Professor of the National University of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco (Peru) in 1988 and of the University of Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito, Ecuador). In 2002, she received a Diploma of Honor from the Municipal Chamber of Curitiba (Brazil) and in June 2017 the National University of Catamarca in Argentina named her Doctor Honoris Causa.

She arrived at the Pablo de Olavide University with experience in university management, since she had been the Vice-Chancellor of Students at the University of Seville between 1984 and 1986 and the Head of the Department of Civil Law, Private International Law and History of Institutions at the University of Huelva from September 1993 until March 1997. Valpuesta, who held the Chair of Civil Law at UPO, also held other positions outside the academic field. She was Vice-President of the Andalusian Advisory Council (1990-1955), a Counsellor of the Andalusian Advisory Council (1994-1997) and a member of the Andalusian Council for Minor Affairs (2002) and of the Autonomous Commission of Ethics and Research (2003).

Valpuesta was born in Seville, and began her university career at the Faculty of Law of the University of Seville, where she graduated in Law with the qualification of Sobresaliente (Outstanding) 1976. Subsequently, she got her PhD from the same university in 1980 with the highest qualification ("Cum laude"). Her doctoral dissertation, supervised by Prof. Dr. Ángel M. López y López (a Professor of Civil Law at the same University), which was published, dealt with “Los pactos conyunturales de separación de hecho: historia y presente”. Two years later, she became a senior lecturer at the University, and in 1989 she became a Professor of Civil Law at the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences of Huelva (Spain), which at that time was part of the University of Seville. She later served as a Professor at the University of Huelva, from 1993 until 1997, at the University of Seville from 1997 until 1999, and finally at the Pablo de Olavide University from 1999 until 2013.

María Rosario Valpuesta Fernández (1953–2013) was a Spanish academic. She was the first Andalusian woman to be in charge of a Rectorate and only the fourth in Spain's history.