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Gezaltza Añana (Araba), 1943. Photo credit: Enrique Guinea. Source: Municipal Archive of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

We have recently attended tributes to the women who used the washhouse for one of their daily chores of yesteryear. Initiatives such as the ones at Zalduendo and Argomaniz remind us of the hard living conditions just a few decades ago. However, as washhouses were predominated by women (the presence of men there was merely anecdotal), the initiatives also help to bring to the fore tasks that were triply invisible: as they were to do with providing care (in other words, the home), were carried out by women and as they persisted for longer in the rural than the urban world.

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