Gender violence and rape in Francoist Spain was a problem that was a result of Nationalist attitudes developed during the Spanish Civil War. Sexual violence was common on the part of Nationalist forces and their allies during the Civil War. Falangist rearguard troops would rape and murder women in cemeteries, hospitals, farmhouses, and prisons. They would rape, torture and murder socialists, young girls, nurses and milicianas.
Regular Nationalist soldiers engaged in similar patterns of rape, torture and murder in places like Maials, Callus and Cantalpino. Moroccan Foreign Legionaries were used to commit rape against women to instil terror among local populaces, using rape as a weapon of war. Women in prison were also raped, often facing death if they refused to have sex with their captors. The exact extent of the problem will likely never be known as there was less record keeping around women, and quantification attempts have largely resulted in the erasure of women's history.
After the Civil War ended, Spanish men returned home to a culture that insisted women were completely subservient to men, and where men were allowed to have sex with prostitutes and otherwise be promiscuous. Women were taught to be subservient and that their happiness was not important. This culture encouraged domestic violence by husbands towards wives, and it included rape. Laws made non-consensual sex illegal in some cases, but there was tremendous social pressure not to report this behavior. Women with Republican ties were often raped until at least the 1960s, with social acceptance of the practice. These women often tried to move to cities to become more anonymous. Some were raped and sexually harassed in prison, including Lidia Falcón O'Neill.
From 1941 to the early 1980s, the Women's Protection Board confined girls and young women deemed 'fallen or at risk of falling', even without having committed any crime, and forced them to give birth only to have their babies stolen.
As a result of Franco's death in 1975 and the democratic transition starting, the first protest condemning violence against women was held in Barcelona in 1976. Age of consent laws changed two years later, along with laws about honesty. Men were also legally able to be considered rape victims. Divorce was legalized in 1981. Other legal reforms took place in 1983. Still, rape was not treated as a serious institutional problem inside Spain and victims had little recourse. In 1987, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that rape victims did not need to prove they actively fought off their rapist to lodge a complaint.
Historical memory laws in Spain have resulted in more attention about to the violence faced by women during the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist period. The Junta de Andalusia started offering women compensation for violence against them in 2010. Court cases also began to be explored against perpetrators of these crimes, with some action taking place in Spain but most of the attempts to prosecute taking place in Argentina.
History Francoist forces in the Civil War period (1936 - 1939)
Repression against women by Nationalist forces has been difficult to understand as historians have traditionally been obsessed with quantifying the number dead, imprisoned and wounded. As much more detailed records were kept about men than women, the history of Francoist repression specifically targeting women has historically underrepresented women or devalued the specific repression women faced in this period. Much of the violence in this period was gendered, and there were efforts to dismiss, hide or downplay violence against women as part of further efforts to repress women. Quantification has largely resulted in the erasure of women's history.
Sexual violence was a commonly used tactic by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, aimed exclusively at women. It was coupled with other violence aimed at women, including forcing women to drink castor oil so they would uncontrollably soil themselves, taking children away from women in prison, taking children away from mothers and placing them in Nationalist homes before the mother was executed. Women were considered prizes of war; their bodies were considered part of a battlefield that Nationalist forces had to defeat. The purpose was to force women into subordination or to use women's trauma to control male family members.
Women and girls in Nationalist prisons were systematically raped. As a form of punishment, women sometimes were paraded through the streets wearing very little clothing. They were made to sing "Face to the sun". Their heads were often shaved in an attempt to humiliate them by stripping them of one of their outward signs of femininity. Many of these practices were borrowed from Italian fascists. To add to the humiliation of these women, many had their households ransacked, with all their valuables stolen by Nationalist supporters who then sold all their property on the black market. The Franco regime's actions against women during the Civil War were flagrant and unprosecuted violations of the 1898 Hague Convention and 1929 Geneva Convention. The total numbers of women who were victims of sexual violence and abuse during the Civil War will never be known.
Falangist troops acted as rearguard troops, serving in places captured by troops or where there had never really been any nationalist opposition. Daria and Mercedes Buxadé, two sisters from Barcelona, were participating in Republican action against Franco's nationalist forces in Mallorca in 1936. After being caught, Falangist troops gave them a virginity test, and then brutally and repeatedly raped the sisters. Margalida Jaume was in Mallorca in the same time, and Falangist also raped her. Pilar Sánchez, the wife of a socialist party member, was also hiding from Falangists. She too was discovered by a group of four Falangists who beat and raped her, before taking to her a cemetery where they raped her again and then executed her. All were thrown into common graves. During the Civil War, Falangists raped women in the courtyard of the hospital in Oviedo, and in the Melilla prison. Civil Guard corporal Juan Vadillo and Falangist Fernando Zamacola were both decorated by Nationalists forces after they raped women in Benamahoma.
In the town of Brenes, a woman was taken to a farmhouse, and then forced lay on the ground and roll up her dress to expose her genitals. After this was completed, Falangist Joaquín Barragán Díaz was given scissors so he could cut off all the woman's genital hair. He refused. A member of the Civil Guard was brought in to do this, but he only half finished removing her genital hair. Finally, the head of Falange de Brenes completed the job. Wife of a socialist councilor of a pueblo in Andalucia of El Gastor, María Torreño was beaten so badly that she miscarried. She was then abandoned by her Falangist torturers, and died a short time later as a result of the torture she had been subjected to. After Frasquita Avilés rejected a Falangist who fell in love with her, the Falangist killed her and then raped her in a cemetery.
In Fuentes de Andalucía, five young girls between the ages of 16 and 22 were raped, murdered and then thrown into a well by Falangists on 27 August 1936. Their names are María León Becerril, María Jesús Caro González, Joaquina Lora Muñoz, Coral García Lora and Josefa García Lora. Before their rapes and murders, they were forced to drink alcohol and perform oral sex on male Falangists and were paraded through the streets in only their underwear. After they were thrown in the well, the Falangists paraded through the town with the women's underwear hung like flags from their rifles and shotguns. Five female nurses from Barcelona were captured in Majorca after the Republican retreat. Falangists gave all intrusive virginity tests, and then engaged in group rape in Manacor. The next day, all five women were murdered in the Son Coletes cemetery. Following their deaths, Falangists tried to depict these Republican nurses as prostitutes to justify their actions. The reputations of these Republican nurses would not be rehabilitated until 2005.
Nationalists forces would rape girls as young as 12, sometimes repeatedly. One such incident occurred in Moguer. Sometimes Nationalist soldiers would stay in homes of poor families with no man present. They would take advantage of the situation to rape women in the household. In Peguerinos, two female nurses and other local women were raped by Falangists. Pregnant and non-pregnant women were raped and then executed in Spanish cities like Fuente de Cantos, Zafra, Almendralejo, Aguacho, Fuente del Maestre, Boecillo, Valdedios, Pallars Sobirá and Zufre. Sometimes after Falangists were done raping women, they would brand the breasts of their victims with the yoke and phalanx arrows, the Falangist symbol. In late 1938, a 17-year-old girl in Unarre was forced to watch her mother being executed, and then she was brutally gang raped and executed. When Nationalist troops occupied Vizcaya in the summer of 1937, their supporters engaged in wide scale sexual harassment. Women's heads were shaved, and some were publicly beaten while half naked. This caused psychological damage not just to the victims, but also to their families who had to bear witness to the abuse. Catholic Nationalist troops also engaged in sexual violence against Republican women. Led by General Mola, a group of regulars in Valdediós first raped fourteen nurses and a 15-year-old girl. They then murdered them.
Regular Nationalists soldiers raped at least four women in Maials. Another group of Nationalist regulars raped a woman, her daughter and her female cousin in Callus. When they were done, they then bayoneted the women. Other regulars in Marganell raped two women and then executed them by placing grenades between their legs. Regulars also raped several young women in Cantalpino. On 24 December 1938, four women in Maials were raped, including one who was raped at gunpoint in front of her husband and 7-year-old son. In Callús, a husband had to watch his wife, daughter and female cousin be raped by Regulars before they were bayoneted, also in front of him. Milicianas, female militia members, were also frequently raped by Nationalist supporters when captured on the battlefield. They also had their heads shaved.
Women and girls in Nationalists prisons were often raped. This was common in the Las Sales Prison, where women were removed by Falangists to their barracks to be raped. Thirty women were raped in the course of three months by two officials at the Albacete prison. The voices of victims could be heard screaming throughout the prison. Women in prison were constantly faced with guards who asked them for sexual favors in exchange for improving their situation in prison or the situation of other incarcerated relatives. Some female political prisoners in Vizcaya in late 1937 refused to have sex with their Nationalist military captors, even with the threat of being executed. The night after refusing, many were actually shot. The stories of these women's resistance were spread by word of mouth, and they became symbols of resistance for other women facing repression.