Women prisoners in Francoist Spain
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.
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.
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.
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.
[9] The Law of Political Responsibilities established fines and expropriations for defendants and their families[10] (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.
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.
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.
[17] The Law of Political Responsibilities, reformed in 1942 and in force until 1966,[6] 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.
[22] 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".
Examples of the reasons women were incarcerated included "having gone with the comparsas of the Marisol Film Artist" and "not obeying her mother.
A Comisión Liquidadora de Responsabilidades Políticas (Commission for the Discharge of Political Responsibilities) remained in operation until 1966 when the law was effectively abolished.
[25] 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.
[29] In re-education programs at women's prisons, Sección Feminina taught things such as "When your husband returns from work, offer to take off his shoes.
If you have a hobby, try not to bore him by talking about it; if you should apply facial cream or hair curlers, wait until he is asleep; if he suggests joining an activity, then humbly agree.
[25] During the Francoist period, Caserón de la Goleta frequently faced food shortages and many children prisoners died of starvation.
According to Carlos Álvarez, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country, "Their confinement fulfilled two objectives: on the one hand to separate them from the rest of society so that they did not influence it, and on the other to be 'rehabilitated', along the path of redemption.
Its members included Isabel Grau, Inés Fuentes Fernández, Marta Aguilar Gallego, Pilar Ortega García and Maite Caballero Hidalgo.
The Valencia-based group had plans to attack an annex at the Trinitat Vella women's prison in Barcelona run by the nuns of the Crusades of Christ the King.
[35] Valencia FETE executive committee member Ángela Semper was imprisoned from the end of the Civil War until 1944.
While at the prison from the time of her arrest during the Civil War to 1942, she was subjected to constant psychological torture at the hands of the Little Sisters of the Poor who attempted to convert her to Catholicism and punish her for her Republican ties.
[38] Ángeles Malonda was one of the UGT women imprisoned during the Franco regime as a result of her involvement with the union during the Civil War.
The communist leader Juana Doña said, "Women have been given just a few lines in the mass of volumes written about the Civil War."
[48] In November 1940, the Ministry of the Interior published a decree on war orphans, namely the children of parents shot or missing (exiles, forgotten in prisons, fugitives and clandestine cases), according to which only "irreproachable persons under religious, ethical and national considerations" could obtain their guardianship.
5 of the Spanish National Audience put the number of children of republican detainees whose identities were supposedly changed in the Civil Registry and who were delivered to families supporting the Francoist regime at 30,960 in the period between 1944 and 1954.
[49] In its declaration condemning the Franco dictatorship of 17 March 2006 (Recommendation 1736, points 72, 73, 74 and 75), the Council of Europe said that the "lost children" are victims of Francoism, since their "surnames they were modified to allow their adoption by families addicted to the regime".
