Footprints of women, 1953-1973

The documentary “Footprints of women. Female Scouting in Vic, 1953-1973” is the culmination of the joint project carried out between the Regional Archive of Osona and the Research Group of Female Scouting in Vic.
At the beginning, the project had a simpler objective because we were only talking about making a deposit of textual and graphic documents in the Archive on female scouting during the Franco regime in Vic; a period that begins when the activity resumes around the year 1953, going through the dark stage of the Franco regime and that ends when the Scout groups were mixed, in the year 1973.
Later, in joint meetings and internal group meetings, we glimpsed that the project had more possibilities. On the one hand, the deposit of materials in the County Archives was on the right track. The twenty boxes of photographs, songbooks, excursion routes, bracelets… were digitized and inventoried, at the same pace as the contributions grew. At the end of this stage of the project we have collected 114 photographic reports, 50 testimonial objects and more than 150 textual documents that can be viewed in Online Archives (AeL).
But, it became more and more clear that the emotional part, the leave of this life experience, was the essential question of the whole project, something that the collected documentation did not reflect. For this reason, we made every effort to obtain the participation of direct oral witnesses and the necessary means to execute the recording of their experiences and be able to synthesize them in a documentary.
The general objective of the project is to make visible the multiple activities that girls and boys did within the framework of scouting, while social, political, educational, religious and cultural changes of great historical impact took place. And it can also be interpreted as a key of remembrance and tribute to the first girl guides of Vic and to the girls who gave way to an entire invisible generation of women who knew how to open the door to the shared struggle for social equality. And he explains how scouting was a real school of life for them because, for all of them, scouting was a breath of fresh air in a society deprived of individual, collective and cultural freedoms, and even more so, if we are talking about women, girls and girls.
This first female scouting determined a generation of women whose history has not recognized the prominence they deserve. Women who, with their personal and professional example, initiated the transformation of society in many areas. They all studied. They were the first women to occupy leadership positions reserved exclusively for men. They were women who did not consider any limitations due to the fact that they were, precisely, women. They did it without too much haste, but with full awareness of being a turning point, and a mirror for future generations.
In fact, there are those who speak of “the listening style, as a way of living and doing for life”. And it is true, this way of being and doing is very evident in the documentary. An example to follow both in their personal and professional lives because they have fought to achieve social justice and equal opportunities with the men of their time.
The interviews talk about different concepts such as empowerment and leadership; of the meaning of the slogans “as much as I can”, “always ready” or “the GOOD”; of the possibility of traveling and seeing the world alone – let’s remember what historical moment women’s rights are at; the role of the church within girl scouting; the discovery of nature; the music; the sport; survival; ritualism; the Catalan language. And they explain everything wrapped in an air of normality in a situation that had nothing normal, from the perspective of now.
Currently, our protagonists range in age from the early seventies to the long eighties, but they all have in common an extraordinary power and joviality; an extraordinary leadership and team capacity; and a first-person account of what Scouting brought to them in their personal and professional lives, which impresses everyone.