Women in 1930s Francoist Spain experienced major changes to marriage. Civil marriages that took place between 1932 and 1939 were annulled, and only if both partners were Roman Catholic were they permitted to remarry.
Period overview As a consequence of the Spanish Civil War, over a million Spaniards died, another million were forced into exile and an unknown number disappeared. Franco's regime would continue Civil War based reprisals until the end of World War II, with an estimated 200,000 people being executed by the regime or died in prison in that period for their alleged Republican links. Adolf Hitler provided support for Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
In the first days of the Francoist period, it was a crime for a woman to be mother, daughter, sister or wife of a "red", and this could be punished with long prison sentences or death.
Women were subjected to economic reprisals by the regime. In Galicia, around 14,600 people were victims of such reprisals. Former Republican A Gudiña mayor Florinda Ortega Pérez was one such victim. The government confiscated her business and all her property, along with fining her 10,000 pesetas. This bankrupted her and forced her into exile.
Eugenics in Spain in the late 1930s and through to the 1940s was not based on race, but instead on people's political alignment with the regime. Ricardo Campos said, "the racial question during the Franco era is complex." He went on to say, "despite the similarities of the Franco regime with the Italian and German fascism and the interest that the eugenics provoked, the strong Catholicism of the regime prevented its defense of the eugenic policies that were practiced in the Nazi Germany." Campos went on to say, "it was very difficult to racialize the Spanish population biologically because of the mixture that had been produced historically." Vallejo-Nágera in his 1937 work, "Eugenics of the Hispanicity and Regeneration of the Race" defined Hispanicness around spirituality and religion. The goal was the "strengthening psychologically" of the phenotype. Because Catholicism was opposed to negative eugenics, the only way to enforce eugenic policies was through repression of abortion, euthanasia and contraception.
Doctors in Francoist Spain had two roles: to be moral protectors of Spanish reproduction and to provide science based medical services. This put male doctors in charge of women's birth control. When medical doctors in the Second Republic and early Francoist period defended birth control, it was on the eugenics grounds that it protected the health of both women and children, especially as it curbed the spread of genetic disease and the spread of tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases.
Women in opposition to the regime Most of the resistance in Spain during the early Franco period was done by guerrillas, who coordinated their activities with political militants in exile and with militants in prison. Most of Spain's militant women who remained in Spain were in prison or had gone underground where they served as important figures in coordinating resistance activities. Prisons in this case proved invaluable for many militant women as they allowed them to rebuild their activist networks or create new networks. They were also one of the biggest sources of female resistance to the Franco regime
POUM all but disappeared in Spain at the end of the Spanish Civil War, with PCE and PSOE being more successful at re-organizing. Women affiliated with POUM found themselves imprisoned following the end of the Spanish Civil War.
Partido Comunista de España
Partido Comunista de España became the dominant clandestine political organization in Spain following the end of the Civil War. It would retain this position until the death of Franco saw PSOE replace it. Women were involved with the party, helping to organize covert armed resistance by serving in leadership roles and assisting in linking political leaders in exile with those active on the ground in Spain. During the later parts of the war, some women from POUM were coerced into making false confessions in Moscow courtrooms, and then sent to Soviet prisons. Their major crime was being Trotskyites.
Rosa Estruch Espinós, Asunción Pérez Pérez, Amalia Estela Alama, Adelaida de la Cruz Ramón Tormo, Ángela Sempere and Remedios Montero were some of the communist women imprisoned during the Franco regime as a result of their involvement with the party during the Civil War.
Partido Socialista Obrero Español
PSOE continued to ignore the unique problems of women during the Civil War. When women were interested in joining the party, they found themselves locked out of leadership positions. PSOE also refused to send women to the front, perpetuating the sexist belief that a woman could best serve the war effort by staying at home.
PSOE was one of the only major actors on the left to immediately reject the idea of women participating in combat. The idea was too radical for them, and they believed women should serve as heroes at home, providing support to civilian populations well behind the front lines. Women who were members of PSOE who found their way to combat did so by joining communist and socialist youth groups. One of the few publicly socialist identified militia women in this period was María Elisa García, who served as a miliciana with the Popular Militias as a member Asturias Battalion Somoza company.
PSOE and UGT militant María Añó was involved in clandestine PSOE organizations, and would be sent to prison several times as a result of her political activities. PSOE and UGT militant Julia Vigre played a central role in organizing clandestine union and party activities. She went to prison several times as a result. Mujeres Antifascistas member and PSOE militant Josefa Lirola was detained dozens of times for her involvement in protesting the regime. Some women were executed because of their involvement with the party. María del Rey was executed by the regime because of her PSOE party membership.
Basque nationalism During the Civil War, PNV was split in its position because nationalists views and Catholic orientation. Despite initial statements indicating support for the Second Republic, not every local section was willing to express support for armed resistance to Nationalist forces. Early on in cities like Guipúzcoa, the party tried to be neutral and mediate conflict between both sides. In cities like Vizcaya and Bilbao, PNV organized militias in support of Republicans.
The Basque Country in the early Franco period saw many people being subjected to mass arrest and imprisonment, along with many people being killed. The regime engaged in an active suppression of all nationalist expressions across Spain, impacting Basques, Catalans and others. National flags were prohibited. All languages but Spanish were banned. Basque cultural symbols were replaced by those of Spanish National Catholicism.
In the Basque Country, following the Spanish nationalists seizing control of the area, women found themselves being investigated by the new regime. In Biscay, over 300 different women were investigated in this period. Many were also imprisoned. They were subject to scrutiny because they were accused them of being involved with or having sympathies for groups like PCE, UGT, Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), and Emakume Abertzaleen Batzak.
Starting at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Basque nationalists began to stockpile weaponry. They also began to train members in weapons use out of fear of the growing risk of illegal violence toward them by right wing actors. This accelerated during the 1940s as a result of World War II, when French Basques were active in their resistance to Nazi Germany.
By year
1936
In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War started with a military coup attempt launched from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. In October of that same year, Franco took over as the Generalissimo and Chief of State in Nationalist zones.
By the start of the war in July 1936, Sección Femenina had 2,500 members nationwide organized into 18 different province based branches. The death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera at the hands of Republican forces in November 1936 left Pilar Primo de Rivera feeling empowered to carry on his work, claiming the need to finish what he had started. She took a firm hand to lead Sección Femenina during the Spanish Civil War. Pilar would continue to head the organization for another 43 years after its 1934 founding. While Pilar had been in Madrid when the war broke out and could not flee until October 1936, she moved to Salamanca where Nationalist coup supporters had proven more successful. Meanwhile, Sección Femenina established a provisional headquarters in Vallodolid. During the war, women affiliated with Sección Femenina spread propaganda, sewed flags, visited Falangist prisoners in jail, supported families of prisoners and engaged in large scale fundraising activities in support of nationalist causes. Sección Femenina trained instructors and health practitioners, and in the process developed a number of female leaders. The organization also created territorial based sub-entities to implement their wider agenda of controlling women across Spain.
UGT leader Francisco Largo Caballero served as Spain's Prime Minister from 1936 to 1937. UGT and PSOE were both banned by Franco in 1938.
By the mid-1936 and through to 1938, Spanish communist found itself in internal conflict between Stalinist and Trotskyites, with PCE lining up behind Stalin and POUM supporting Trotsky. The Russian backed Stalinist PCE started purging left-wing Trotskyites in the during the Civil War, culminating in the May Days of 1937 purges in Barcelona and the overthrow of Prime Minister Largo Caballero. POUM was damaged by these events, but did not disappear. Instead, members went into hiding until the end of the war and continued to publish La Batalla and Juventud Obrera.
During the Spanish Civil War, the autonomous Basque government avoided chaos in Biscay and western Gipuzkoa, and took the reins of the coordination and provision of military resistance. On occupation of the territories loyal to the Republic, the Francoist repression was focused on leftists, but Basque nationalists were also targeted, facing prison, humiliation, and death. As the rebel troops approached Biscay, the Carlist press in Pamplona even called for the extermination of Basque nationalists.
José Antonio Aguirre, the leader of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), became in October 1936 the first lendakari (Basque president) of the wartime multipartite Basque Government, ruling the unconquered parts of Biscay and Gipuzkoa.
1937 Starting in 1937, Franco started an attempt to purge the movement he created of its explicit fascist origins. Part of this process involved the Degree of Unification. Despite this, Franco never fully purged some fascist implements such as Sección Femenina who support state patriarchy, and joined the state with Catholicism.
On 19 April 1937, Catholic and Falangist parties were merged, making Falange Española Tradicionalista the official state party behind Nationalist lines. Sección Femenina held their first national conference in January 1937, which allowed for the organization for the first time to highlight their accomplishments with support from the nationalist Spanish state. By 1939, Sección Femenina had a membership of over 580,000 women nationwide.