Genoveva Vázquez Calviño, the Midwife of Xinzo

Genoveva Vázquez Calviño, «a señora Genoveva», was born in Ponte Barxas (Padrenda) on 1 August 1895 and died in Xinzo de Limia on 23 September 1971. She was a midwife, without formal qualifications, and one of the most remembered residents of the Barrio de Abaixo ^[1].

Family

She was baptised on 3 August in the church of San Cibrao de Padrenda. She was the daughter of Ramón Vázquez Colmenero, a customs officer (carabinero) from Ansemil (Celanova), and Adelaida Calviño Rodríguez, from Xinzo. She married Julio Vázquez Álvarez, from Queiroás (Allariz), a miller and bricklayer who worked at the Molinería Antelana of «O Ruca», in the Vilasana district; and they raised nine children: Julio, María Asunción, Vera, Milagros, María del Carmen, Manuela, Ramón, Eugenia and Adelaida ^[1]. The marriage was not easy: in 1930, far advanced in pregnancy, she travelled halfway across Spain to Posadas (Córdoba) to find her husband, and Manuela was born there; in the 1950s their daughter Vera had to go to Ourense so that her father would come home ^[1]. During the years of hunger she also worked in the bread factory of the Molinería, owned by Luis Barge Calviño, «O Ruca», who was her second cousin. She cared for her parents, her father a carabinero and her mother blind ^[1].

The midwife

She learned from medical books she read in her spare time, from the experience of her own nine births and from the practice of other midwives she saw. She charged nothing: her help was disinterested. She baptised newborns in danger, gave care before the birth, breastfeeding advice and attention to the baby, and used home remedies ^[1]. In the Xinzo of that time, where almost all births took place at home and there were only two or three doctors of the Home Public Assistance service, no other qualified midwife is recorded ^[1].

Her great-granddaughter Noelia Gestoso said in La Región, at the council’s tribute, that, had she been born a century later, Genoveva would have been a doctor or nurse: «She was a housewife and had nine children […] She began reading books and must have liked that world. She learned to sterilise the cloths and had her own instruments» ^[1]. The comments of neighbours that Cerredelo gathered on his Facebook describe a calm, resolute and helpful woman, who stayed several days with the mother and taught first-time mothers to look after the baby; several people say she saved their lives at birth, and one neighbour writes: «she deserves a monument in this town» ^[1]. In March 2023 the politician María Xosé Porteiro referred to her as a necessary figure in the lineage of women, standing for others who did that same work ^[1].

Context

Cerredelo prefaces the account with an introduction on the history of midwives in Galicia: from the Middle Ages, when they needed the Church’s permission, to the 19th century, when they lost medication and instruments, until in the villages they remained indispensable well into the 20th century, before midwifery schools and the regulation of training ^[1].

Links

• People of A Limia
• Xinzo de Limia
• Edelmiro Martínez Cerredelo, author of the biography

Sources

1. Edelmiro Martínez Cerredelo, «Genoveva Vázquez Calviño, a inesquecible parteira de Xinzo», Historia de Xinzo, 02/09/2024. https://historiadexinzo.wordpress.com/2024/09/02/genoveva-vazquez-calvino-a-inesquecible-parteira-de-xinzo/