Lesbians in the Second Spanish Republic and Civil War period were doubly discriminated against, as a result of their gender and sexual practices. Prior to the Second Republic, lesbians in Spain were largely ignored, eclipsed by gay men. They faced discrimination as they challenged definitions around what it meant to be a woman. While homosexuality was not condemned by law, it was possible for lesbians to face more severe punishment when charged with violation of morals because of their sexual orientation.
During the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the first modern laws specifically punishing homosexual acts came into force, though few cases ever came to court because gays and lesbians were considered by jurists to have mental illness. Lesbians also lived in a culture oriented around the Roman Catholic Church, which set gender norms and dictated laws which left women in general with few rights and little social capital. Where lesbians were more accepted, they tended to be stereotypes as either very masculine or overly feminine. Their social capital was at its strongest during this period in Madrid. A few prominent lesbians would rise in this period, though their lesbianism would not be known by wider society in many cases until many years later. These women included Marisa Roësset, Victoria Kent, Carmen de Burgos, Irene Polo, Carmen Conde, Matilde Ras and Elena Fortún who were all part of the Sapphic Circle of Madrid during the 1920s.
The Second Republic would usher in a period where women had more rights under the law, and where women were politically empowered for the first time. Homosexuality was also stripped from the penal code, though there were still ways for which lesbians could be charged, for example by being deemed dangerous to the state, or simply being detained by the state even if their behavior was not criminal. Prominent lesbians of this period included Lucía Sánchez Saornil, América Barroso, Margarita Xirgu, Irene Polo, Carmen de Burgos, María de Maeztu, Victoria Kent and Victoria Ocampo.
Lesbian women were often lumped alongside heterosexual women in the Civil War period, and blending in was often a survival technique. Homophobia and gender violence in Nationalist zones and rural parts of Spain made life dangerous for lesbians. Those who could went into exile. Some who could not often found themselves in prison.
The end of the war saw Francoist Spain reimpose strict Roman Catholic based gender norms and a return of women lacking legal autonomy. Women who did not adhere to expected gender norms, like lesbians, were at increased risk of punishment by the state. At the same time, the state largely could not understand lesbianism so the risk was less than that of their male counterparts. Women in exile faced a double burden of being lesbian and female. Some lesbians continued to be involved in the activism they had espoused in the Second Republic and the Civil War.
Historical memory has helped share stories of LGBT people during the Civil War. This can be problematic at times because the stories of many lesbians have been forgotten or never told in the first place. It makes it hard to remember lesbians if they have been erased from history.
Prelude to the Second Republic (1800–1922)
Laws around homosexuality Spain came into the twentieth century lacking laws about homosexuality, having only created its first penal code in the modern era in 1822. Inspired by the French Napoleonic Code of 1810, neither mentioned homosexuality as sodomy had been legal in France since 1791. While Spain's criminal codes were amended in 1848, 1859, and 1870, homosexuality was never mentioned as there were other ways, namely public scandal laws and laws against immorality, that could be used to prosecute it.
While the law made no distinctions between same-sex sexual activity and opposite-sex sexual activity, sexual offenses could still be prosecuted if resulting from a case about the violation of morals. Leniency in sentencing would be totally arbitrary and lesbians could find themselves more severely punished for violating societal gender roles.
Same-sex marriage One of the first recorded same-sex marriages in Spain occurred on 8 June 1901, when Elisa Sánchez Loriga and Marcela Gracias Ibeas married after deceiving a Galician priest into performing the wedding ceremony. Repudiated by their family and having their deceit discovered by neighbors, the couple fled to Porto, Portugal where they were arrested. The pair would then flee to Argentina.
LGBT culture Following the end of the First Republic in 1874, the Bourbon monarchy was restored in Spain along with its conservative brand of Roman Catholicism. Despite this, LGBT culture primarily focused around gay men began to develop in Madrid and Barcelona without huge opposition from Alfonso XIII.
This period represented a shift in Spain, where non-sexual lesbian love between women went from something of an idealized part of the cultural imagination of the closeness between women to that of a pervert with mental illness. These ideas were often internalized by lesbians of the period, with many feeling tortured and unhappy as it was difficult for them to live openly. There was no culture for lesbians to draw from, with no historical role models or body of literature for women to identify with. Society often blamed parents for their daughters being lesbians, accusing them of providing a bad education which resulted in them becoming homosexuals.
Some lesbians who were discovered in this period were forced to undergo conversion therapy, voluntarily submitting to it because they viewed themselves as defective and sick in the head. The creation by Freud of psychoanalysis encouraged many to believe that the method could be used to cure homosexuality. These cures often involved chemical and surgical approaches, with hormone treatments first which were then followed by drugs designed to remove a women's sexual libido. If this failed, women would be subjected to aversion therapy, which sometimes included shock therapy. If a woman still had homosexual thoughts, surgical treatments would be undertaken, including removal of the uterus or ovaries. In a few cases, lobotomies were also performed. To avoid this, many lesbians just went into deep denial.
The most well known LGBT figures in pre-Second Republic Spain were gay men. These included Emilio Castelar, José Lázaro Galdiano, Álvaro Retana, Miguel de Molina, Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda and Alfonso Hernández Catá. On the literary scene, there were few lesbians. Lesbian writers in this period were often erased in multiple ways as part of a broader issue of women's erasure in society. They were often forced to use male pen names to be published or had to remove female characters from stories. Lucía Sánchez Saornil began writing about lesbians in 1919.Sanfeliu Gimeno, Luz ."Lucía Sánchez Saornil; an alternative life and work to the society of his time " . Retrieved on 25 August 2016 . Her writing was characterized by an ultramodern avant-garde aesthetic. In discussing lesbianism, her work demonstrated that Spanish society was backward in its thinking and out of touch with the rest of Europe.
Societal views of lesbians A manual published in 1908 described a lesbian as "an active, courageous, creative type, of fairly determined temperament, not too emotional; lover of life outdoors, science, politics or even business; good organizer and pleased with positions of responsibility .... Her body is perfectly feminine, although her inner nature is largely masculine."
Lesbians were also described in another sexology publication in that period as "congenital inverts". A third described them as "pseudoinvestidas", suggesting they would have been heterosexuals had they not been lured into inversion by others. Another espoused that lesbians could not be women, because women exist only as binaries, coupled with men for the purpose of reproduction.
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930)
Laws around homosexuality The first laws criminalizing homosexuality appeared in Spain in the 1928 Penal Code. Implemented for a four-year period that ended in 1932, the law applied to both sexes, and came out of Miguel Primo de Rivera's disgust towards homosexuals in the Spanish military. Primo de Rivera justified these laws by calling back to an earlier time, when Catholic Monarchs ran Spain and the Roman Catholic Church persecuted homosexuals. Article 601 resulted in two to twelve years in prison for people engaging in dishonest abuses of people of the same sex. Article 616 stipulated, "Those who routinely or with scandal, commit acts contrary to modesty with persons of the same sex, will be punished with a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 pesetas and special disqualification for public office from six to twelve years." () Homosexuality itself was not illegal, but rather same-sex sexual acts were. Few prosecutions were ever brought to trial because jurists, influenced by medical scholars like Gregorio Marañón, believed homosexuals were sick in the head.
Lesbian culture In the 1920s, Spain was very Catholic in terms of cultural orientation. Women in general during this period faced many types of social discrimination, and had few rights. They were wards of their male family members, could be forced into marriage and could not divorce.
The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera occurred during a period where Spanish women were influenced by Anglo-Saxon flappers and the French garçonnes, who helped redefine Spanish womanhood, femininity and masculinity. Set against an international backdrop of return to normalcy and previous gender roles following World War I, it combined femininity with sensuality. There were two stereotypes of Spanish lesbians during the 1920s: butch lesbians who had mannish manners, and flappers. Butch lesbians at this time were characterized by their cigar smoking and consumption of wine and spirits. They imitated men. Lesbian flappers imitated Carlota, from the novel Sab. These were European women, who found freedom through work outside the household. In Madrid, these women had considerable cultural capital, and were portrayed as being almost Grecian in appearance, without any degeneration associated with them.
For some men in the Primo de Rivera period, there was no separation between feminism and lesbianism; the two were easily confused by many men including Gregorio Marañón. Gregorio Marañón saw lesbianism as a result of women eschewing traditional feminism, and instead taking up more masculine pursuits like sports.
Prominent lesbians
Marisa Roësset, Victoria Kent, Carmen de Burgos, Irene Polo, Carmen Conde, Matilde Ras and Elena Fortún were all part of a lesbian circle in Madrid during the 1920s. Lesbians in the late 1920s faced a number of challenges. People viewed them as having a mental illness, and being inverted.
A prominent lesbian of this period was Victoria Kent, one of three women elected to the first Congreso de Diputados in the Second Republic. In 1924, she made history when she became the first woman to join the Colegio de Abogados de Madrid and become a lawyer. In 1926, she was appointed vice president of Lyceum Club Femenino in Madrid. Like others, her lesbian status would not be well known until after the Civil War.
Elena Fortún was another prominent lesbian of the era, known for her vividly written children's stories. She had an unhappy childhood and never managed to fit in. She felt disgust at the idea of binding herself to a man for life. From a young age, she always wanted self-determination. Despite this, she did marry a cousin in 1908 and it was her husband who encouraged her to take up writing. The couple had two children.
Second Spanish Republic (1931–1937)
Laws around women and homosexuality