Evita traveled with an entourage of ten people, including her friend Lillian Lagomarsino de Guardo, the wife of the President of the Chamber of Deputies; her brother, Juan, who served as Per�n�s private secretary; two military aides; her speech writer, Munoz Aspiri; a photographer; her hairdresser; and the head seamstresses from Henriette and Naletoff, the couture houses that designed her wardrobe. Her close friend, shipping magnate Alberto Dodero, who financed her entire tour of Europe, acted as her guide.
On June 8 she arrived in Madrid, where she received a magnificent welcome, as she did throughout Spain. She attended gala evenings, official ceremonies, bullfights, and the opera. Franco even decorated her with the Grand High Cross of Isabella the Catholic, Spain�s highest honor. Everywhere she went in Spain, the streets overflowed with cheering crowds.
This kind of enthusiasm was not repeated in the other countries she visited, but Evita was clearly becoming an internationally prominent figure. �Time� magazine, for example, which was known to be unsympathetic to Per�nism, assigned a reporter to cover the tour, and featured Evita�s picture on the cover. She appeared intensely concerned about her public image on this trip; throughout her entire two-month tour, she spoke with Juan Per�n by telephone daily to assess the public impact of her trip at home, and to keep abreast of Argentine politics.
From Spain, Evita traveled to Italy, where Pope Pius XII granted her a private audience. In Paris, after fulfilling her official duties, Evita, extremely fatigued, left her hotel only to visit Versailles (closed since World War II, it was opened especially for her) and Notre Dame Cathedral, where Cardinal Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, was her guide. She spent a few days on the Cote d�Azure, visiting Monaco and cruising the Mediterranean on one of Dodero�s yachts. Her trip to England was canceled, and she went to Switzerland instead. Her final destination was Portugal. The entire tour was punctuated by visits to working-class neighborhoods and institutions engaged in social action. These were stops made on Evita�s initiative, as they were not part of the official program, and she made contributions at various places, including a large gift to the victims of an explosion in the port of Brest that occurred while she was in France.
She traveled home by ship, which gave her a few needed days of rest after more than two months of incessant activity. As she passed through Brazil and Uruguay on her way to Argentina, her schedule was once again filled with official ceremonies. In Rio de Janeiro she attended the Inter-American Conference on Peace and Security. When she finally arrived home in Buenos Aires, she received a hero�s welcome.
Under the Per�nist Government, Evita was the natural spokesperson and defender of women�s rights, which were now intimately tied to changes in the labor sector. A month after her European tour, the law was passed that gave Argentine women the right to vote. Even though they had fought for suffrage for more than fifty years, it was a cause that Evita had made her own ever since Per�n had assumed office and the legislation was linked to her name. In 1949 the Per�nist Women�s Party was created in support of Per�n and his policies; Eva was elected president of the party, with full organizational authority. Moreover, the Per�nist Party was the only political party in Argentina at that time that included women on its membership rolls; in 1952, twenty-three women deputies and six women senators were among the Party�s representatives in the parliament.