Isabel Oyarzábal Smith
Encyclopedia
Isabel Oyarzábal Smith is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
– 1974 Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
) was a Spanish-born journalist, writer, actress and diplomat.
Oyarzábal's first position was of a Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
instructor in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. After the death of her father, she met Ceferino Palencia, the son of actress María Tubau. Oyarzábal told Palencia of her desire of becoming an actress and Palencia cast her for the play Pepita Tudó
Pepita Tudó
Josefa de Tudó, 1st Countess of Castillo Fiel, , also known as Pepita Tudó was the mistress of Spanish Primer Minister Manuel de Godoy, and likely the model for Goya's La maja desnuda ....
. She kept writing and with her friend Raimunda Avecilla and her sister Ana Oyarzábal she edited the magazine La Dama y la Vida Ilustrada. She was also a reporter for the Laffan News Bureau (a minor rival to Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
) and the newspaper The Standard
The Standard
The Standard is an English free newspaper of Hong Kong with a daily circulation of 231,018. It was called the Hong Kong Standard and changed to HKiMail during the Internet boom, but it changed back to The Standard in 2001....
. In 1909 she married Palencia and then collaborated for the Spanish magazines Blanco y Negro, El Heraldo, Nuevo Mundo and La Esfera.
In 1926, she wrote a Spanish folkore book titled El traje regional de España. In 1930 she became the only female in the Slavery Permanent Commission of the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
. In 1939, she relocated with her family in Mexico where she kept writing and died in 1974.