The expert, who was the first female professor at the Literary Faculty at the University of the Basque Country, dedicated her career to studying the literature of the Middle Ages with a gender perspective.

With the death of Eukene Lacarra Lanz last Friday, June 2, at the age of 78, studies on medieval Spanish literature loses a person who in the last forty years has shaped them in a decisive way; Those of us who have dealt with her have lost an unforgettable colleague and friend from whom we have learned a lot, and with whom we have laughed more.

Eukene —then and for years called María Eugenia— was born in Estella (Navarra) in October 1944, into a family inclined to the world of law —her great-grandfather, her grandfather, her father, and one of her brothers.  To that of medieval historical studies were her uncle José María, her cousins María Jesús and María del Carmen.

She received her PhD. in 1976 from the University of California in Los Angeles with a thesis on the “Cantar de mio Cid” (1976), later published as a book “El Poema de mio Cid. Realidad histórica e ideología 1980;” prologue dated April 1977, in which she studied the poem from a socio-historical perspective far removed from the dominant trend in epic studies shaped by the work of Menéndez Pidal.

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