Women prisoners in Francoist Spain were often there because of specific repression aimed at women. During the Civil War, many women were in prison because family members had Republican sympathies or the authorities wanted to lure out male Republican affiliated relatives; it was not a result of anything the women did themselves. The Law of Political Responsibilities, adopted on 13 February 1939, made such repression easier and was not formally removed from the Criminal Code until 1966. Prisoners and people in concentration camps, both male and female, would total over three quarters of a million by the end of the Spanish Civil War. Of these, 14,000 women were held in the Las Ventas Model prison in Madrid.
The official start of the Francoist period in late 1939 saw the continuation of specific repression against women through the prison system and the death penalty. Pregnancy did not allow women to escape either execution or unsanitary conditions that led to high rates of infant death. Women could also find themselves incarcerated in reformatories without trial for violating female morality in a parallel prison-type system. Housed in overcrowded conditions, women were forced to support Catholicism if they were to avoid harassment or obtain benefits. They were threatened with hunger and ran the risk of contracting diseases like typhus.
During the democratic transition period, women took to the streets to demand freedom for political prisoners. Partial amnesty came in late 1976, with a general amnesty in 1977. In post-Francoist Spain, female prisoners have largely been forgotten as victims of regime repression. Bones of many female Francoist victims remain scattered throughout the countryside. In 2014, an Argentine court began investigating abuses suffered by some women at the hands of Antonio González Pacheco in Madrid while they were incarcerated.
History Francoist forces in the Civil War period (1936–1939)
The Franco regime organized reprisals against women from the start of the Civil War. Many of the women had committed no wrongdoing and were targeted only because they had family members with Republican sympathies. That was particularly true of housewives who found themselves in prison. Matilde Eiroa commented, "They were often used as bait to attract the men of the family who fled." War councils proscribed punishments, and of the people they ordered executed, 5% were women. Women were victims of Franco's repression. More than 100 were sentenced to death by the war councils and executed, many of them in Madrid and Andalusia. The best known case in Spain is Las Trece Rosas, who were shot in August 1939. Many wives, widows, sisters or daughters of republicans were humiliated and punished "with marching through the streets of the town and the dispossession of their property."
The Law of Political Responsibilities () was issued by the Francoist dictatorship on 13 February 1939Boletín Oficial del Estado nº 44, de 13 de febrero de 1939, Gazeta histórica. Referencia: 1939/01451, páginas TIFF. two months before the end of the Spanish Civil War. The Law targeted all loyalist supporters of the Second Spanish Republic and penalized membership in the Popular Front of the defeated republic.Cuadernos de Historia Nº 39 - Universidad de Chile The law declared guilty of a crime of military rebellion, all those who were members of a Popular Front party from 1 October 1934 and all of those who had opposed the military Coup d'état of the 17–18 JulyThomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2003. p. 870 including all the government officers of the Republic and all the members of the Republican Armed Forces. The law was retroactive and could be applied as far back as October 1934, a juridical aberration, for those who had followed the laws of the legally constituted Government of the Spanish Republic. They were suddenly prosecuted for "helping rebellion"....a «quienes habían permanecido leales al Gobierno constitucional se les encausaba ahora por "auxilio a la rebelión"» in Julio Gil Pecharromán, (2008). Con permiso de la autoridad. La España de Franco (1939-1935). Madrid: Temas de Hoy. . p. 40
The Law of Political Responsibilities established fines and expropriations for defendants and their familiesGraham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War. A very short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2005. p. 134 (from 100 pesetas to the confiscation of all the accused's assets). Furthermore, additional penalties included restriction of professional activities, limitation of freedom of residence, and forfeiture of Spanish citizenship. Deceased and disappeared persons could be held responsible and their families inherited the economic sanctions.Mir, Conxita. The Francoist Repression in the Catalan Countries. p. 8
By 1939, there were officially over 270,000 prisoners in Spain. There were also around 500,000 people in concentration camps. When people were detained, Franco used them as cheap slave labor. Among those in camps, 90,000 were in worker battalions. Another 47,000 were in military battalions. Of these, 13,779 were involved in urban reconstruction projects while 9,500 of those involved in military battalions worked on fortifications, while another 8,898 worked on re-cooping war materials. Many of these prisoners and concentration camp victims were women. By the end of the war, the Nationalist run women's only Las Ventas Model prison in Madrid had over 14,000 women. More than 190 concentration camps, holding 170,000 prisoners in 1938 and between 367,000 and about half a million prisoners remaineded when the war ended in 1939. Most of the camps were created during Spanish Civil War, only a few being created in the following years. Hostal de San Marcos de León concentration camp held 7,000 men and 300 women from 1936 until 1939.
Caserón de la Goleta, the prison for women in Málaga, held thousands of women over its history. Women found themselves there for a wide variety of offenses including infidelity, divorce or lesbian relationships. They were there also because the state determined they were delinquents, alcoholics, psychopaths or "degenerate" women. For women imprisoned in the earliest period of the prison's history, they had no ability to defend themselves, as they were there as a result of war council sentences. The conditions for the 4,000 female prisoners at Caserón de la Goleta were horrible and unhygienic, with prisoners crammed into small spaces that helped to spread disease.
Francoist period (1939–1975)
In the first days of the Francoist period, it was a crime to be a mother, daughter, sister or wife of a "red", and this could be punished with long prison sentences or death. The Law of Political Responsibilities, reformed in 1942 and in force until 1966, was promulgated in order to give a legal cover to the repression carried out during the dismantlement of the Spanish republican institutions, as well as to penalize those who had remained loyal to the legally established government at the time of the July 1936 military rebellion against the Spanish Republic.La Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas, un arma más de represión durante el franquismo The punishment for being a female relative of a "red" male was resurrected between 1945 and 1947, when there was a surge in guerrilla activity. This resulted in a large number of rural women swelling the ranks of Spanish prisons, including in women's prisons in Madrid, Córdoba, Málaga and Segovia. They had received sentences of 20 to 30 years merely for feeding "red" male relatives. Age did not matter, as girls as young as nine were sent to prison where they would be physically assaulted by guards. Republican women were also victims of the repression in postwar Spain. Thousands of women suffered public humiliation (being paraded naked through the streets, being shaved and forced to ingest castor oil so they would soil themselves in public),Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936-1945. Cambridge University Press. 1998. p. 55 sexual harassment and rape.Preston, Paul. Doves of War. Four women of Spain. Harper Perennial. London. 2002. p.413 In many cases, the houses and goods of the widows of Republicans were confiscated by the government.Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution & Revenge Harper Perennial. 2006. London. p. 307. Thus, many Republican women, living in total poverty, were forced into prostitution.Preston, Paul. Doves of War. Four women of Spain. Harper Perennial. London. 2002. p.266 According to Paul Preston, "The increase in prostitution both benefited Francoist men who thereby slaked their lust and also reassured them that 'red' women were a fount of dirt and corruption".Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, revolution & revenge. Harper Perennial. 2006. London. p. 308 Furthermore, thousands of women were executed (for example the 13 roses) among them pregnant women. One judge said: "We cannot wait seven months to execute a woman".Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, revolution & revenge. Harper Perennial. 2006. London. p.314
From the 1940s to the 1980s, families, religious figures and strangers could all report women to the authorities for violating female morality. These women then could then be imprisoned without trial in reformatories. Examples of the reasons women were incarcerated included "having gone with the comparsas of the Marisol Film Artist" and "not obeying her mother. She likes the street a lot and does not want to work." These reformatories did not close until the 1980s, and only then as a result of abuse documented by the women involved.
Prisoners at Caserón de la Goleta were between 13 and 85 years old, the vast majority between 21 and 40. 38% were known to be married, while 17% were single and 18% widowed, the remainder having unknown marital status. Because of a desire to protect their family or out of antipathy towards the church, some women did not to reveal their marital status to the authorities. Most of the women in the prison were illiterate; the prison did not try to teach them and instead focused on giving them gender-specific jobs like sewing which did not require literacy skills.
The Law of Political Responsibilities was only nominally repealed in February 1945. A Comisión Liquidadora de Responsabilidades Políticas (Commission for the Discharge of Political Responsibilities) remained in operation until 1966 when the law was effectively abolished. Between 1939 and 1945, 500,000 persons out a population of 23,000,000 (2% of the population of Spain) were subject to Political Responsibilities proceedings. To relieve prison overcrowding, concentration camps were opened, where prisoners were forced to engage in manual labor. Because of economic problems in the 1950s and as part of efforts to appear less totalitarian abroad, the regime released many women from prison.
During the 1940s, there was an increase in the number of women in Málaga sentenced to Caserón de la Goleta for crimes related to food acquisition. There was a severe shortage of food in the city and typhus was common. Women would arrive at the prison and happily suck on orange peel because that was more than was available on the streets of Málaga. There was no protection from typhus and other diseases which continued to spread throughout the prison as women were placed six to a room designed for two. The prison closed in 1954, with its prisoners moved to a provincial jail on the Cártama road. The Local Police Headquarters in Malaga were later built in the facility that held Caserón de la Goleta.