Spanish Civil War, Women and the

From 1936 to 1939 Spanish women participated in a civil war that convulsed their nation. Women fought on both sides of the struggle; however, a surprisingly large number of Spanish women supported the Nationalist forces (Smith 1989, 474). The Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, represented conservative sectors like the Falange, a mass-based fascist organization, and were backed by much of the military, the Catholic Church, and large landowners. The Republicans, opponents of the Nationalists, were the governing coalition. They ruled Spain from their 1931 election, at which time they established the Second Republic, until their 1939 defeat. They received support from peasants, workers, and sectors of the middle class; the coalition included communists, socialists, anarchists, and liberals.

In the 1920s and 1930s most of Spain was mired in poverty. Unlike much of the rest of Europe, it had failed to industrialize, except in the north, or carry out agricultural reforms. As a result, the population was malnourished and lacked good housing or health care (Smith 1989, 472). Women worked in agriculture, sweatshops, and factories. Rates of infant mortality were high, as were the number of children born out of wedlock (Koonz 1998, 471). The Republican forces came to power pledging to modernize Spain and improve the population’s standard of living.

When the Republicans took control of the government, Napoleonic legal codes and conservative Catholic practices governed how most Spaniards lived. Families could "force their daughters into marriage" (Smith 1989, 473). Divorce was illegal, and husbands could imprison their wives for "disobedience and verbal insults." Women’s literacy rate (50 percent) was much lower than that of men (70 percent) (Koonz 1998, 471). As part of its modernization project, the Republican government passed a series of laws that granted women equal status as full citizens. Women obtained suffrage rights and maternity benefits, the option of no-fault divorce, and civil marriage (Koonz 1998, 472).


Republican women fought to maintain the social gains they had won and to preserve the overall political and economic program of the government. In order to counter the threat that the growing power of fascism posed, antifascist Spanish women joined the Worldwide Committee of Women against War and Fascism (Smith 1989, 473). Initially, Republican women joined militia units and took up arms against the Franco forces. Lina Odena was the first Republican to die in battle when she committed suicide rather than surrender to the Nationalists as they overran her position (Smith 1989, 454). Dolores Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria, called on women and men to fight against the fascists. When the Nationalist forces attacked Madrid, one of the last Republican strongholds, she urged women and men to take up arms against them.

Neither the social changes instituted by the Republicans nor their attempts to break up the large estates and set up peasant cooperatives, increase wages, or undermine the power of the Catholic Church pleased conservative forces within Spain. In 1936 the military under General Franco rebelled and initiated the civil war that, three years later, would defeat the Republican forces.

The majority of Spanish women rejected the Republicans and sided with the Franco forces. Unlike the Republican women, they embraced conservative ideas about gender and heeded the call of the Catholic Church to rally to its defense in opposition to the Republic. In the 1930s Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera started the Falange, using Benito Mussolini’s fascism as a model. In 1934 Pilar Primo de Rivera, Jose Antonio’s sister, organized the Seccion Fe-menina (Women’s Section) of the Falange, under the leadership of her brother. It was started to "give aid to Falangist prisoners and assistance to the families of fallen members" of the movement (Enders 2002, 86). The organization grew rapidly and exponentially: from an initial group of 300 women in 1934 it grew to 400,000 in 1938, according to its own estimates. The vast majority of these women worked in Auxilio Social (Social Assistance), the Falange organization that "provided food, clothing, and shelter to widows, orphans and the destitute, and taught them to ‘love God and understand the Falange’" (Enders 2002, 87). They supported separate spheres for men and women and believed that the most important quality a woman could possess was abne-gacion (self-sacrifice).

Although these women engaged in very public activities, such as nursing, running soup kitchens, and in some cases taking up arms, they never did so in order to challenge male power or gender relations, as was the case with some of the Republican women. Instead, their goal was to "strengthen the family within a ‘New Spain’" (Keene 2002, 184). They fought to restore conservative ideas about gender; to establish the woman’s role in life as a wife and mother within the home, not in the streets; and to uphold the spiritual teachings of the church over all aspects of their lives.

In 1939 Nationalist forces defeated the Republic, and General Franco ruled Spain dictatorially until his death in 1975. Some of the Republican women, especially the most visible leaders like Dolores Ibarruri, went into exile. The lives of most women who stayed in Spain came under the strict control of the Franco government and the Catholic Church. The fascist government rescinded women’s right to vote, made divorce illegal, and instituted the Charter of Labor that said "women’s only proper sphere is in the nursery" (Koonz 1998, 473). Pilar Primo de Rivera continued to head the Seccion Femenina of the Falange, which became the official women’s organization until Franco’s death. If women wanted to work for the state, "obtain a driver’s license, a passport, or the like, [they were] obligated to serve six months with the Seccion Femenina".

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