Sex education in Francoist Spain and the democratic transition

During the mid-1950s, this practice began to change, and after formal government approval sex education incorporated more elements of psychology and biology.

More generally, as women approached the age to marry, they received more sexual education from friends, mothers, sisters, and future in-laws.

One government report encouraged the teaching of sex education, primarily because they believed it would serve to decrease the growing population of lesbians in Spain.

[1] With the forcible introduction of Francoism, women's sexuality was relegated in society exclusively to the realm of medicine, and only allowed to be discussed in medical literature by male doctors.

[4] It was in this atmosphere that on 24 January 1941 as part of a number of laws around women's sexuality that sex education was banned, with punishments attached for teaching it.

[9] As they grew older and closer to the age to marry, girls received more sexual education from friends, mothers, sisters, and future in-laws.

Few girls from economically disadvantaged families had access to texts that could provide them with additional information, not even in manuals designed for marriage preparation courses.

It was revolutionary for its time, in that it encouraged mixed-gendered classrooms, emphasized the importance of psychologists being involved in students school life, taught children in Catalan, and supported sex education.

[13][14] Modern Sexual Techniques published in 1959 by Robert Street would serve as a sex education guide for a number of men in 1960s Spain.

Among the findings were that the number of lesbians was increasing owing to factors such as "physical or congenital defects", the "affective traumas and unsatisfied desires", families being unable to prevent women's conversation, "Contagion and mimicry" and "[...] the lack of relationship with men as a consequence of an excessively rigid education, the existence of institutions which by their very nature eliminated these relationships: prisons, hospitals, psychiatric and religious communities, etc.

To tackle the problem of the growing lesbian population, the Government commission proposed solutions like "early diagnoses and medical treatments and psychotherapeutics that [corrected] possible somatic defects", creating a sex education program and the promotion of the idea that both genders can peacefully co-exist.

In their reports, single motherhood was identified as a problem, though they noted it was in decline which they attributed in part to the use of the pill and other contraceptives, and to women having abortions in other countries where the practice was legal.

[15] Meaningful reforms to bring sex education into the classroom did not begin in earnest until 1990, well after the democratic transition period had ended.