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WOMEN AND SPANISH FASCISM -- THE WOMEN'S SECTION OF THE FALANGE 1934-1959

Conclusion

The significance of Sección Femenina (SF) to the Francoist State and the lives of Spanish women and girls up to 1959 is measurable both in terms of what it did and how its programmes were received. But although it operated as part of the regime’s bureaucratic framework, SF was unlike any other section of the National Movement. Its ideological roots pre-dated Franco and were set firmly in the Falange party of José Antonio. When the Falange became the administrative framework of the Nationalist State following the Decree of Unification in 1937, SF continued to operate in the spirit and style of José Antonio, interpreting its task quite literally as the ‘Falangist Revolution’.

This gave SF a unique place in the coalition of right-wing groups which formed the Francoist alliance. As part of the original Falange, it had been involved in the diffusion of propaganda and projection of the core values behind the uprising. And after Unification, despite the weakening of the Falange, SF continued in its role of propagandist as if nothing had changed. Throughout the regime, it operated on the basis that Falangism and Francoism were one and the same thing.

The reality was different. The party apparatus of the National Movement was rapidly bureaucratized, membership was often no more than a formality for appointments, and corruption and self-interest grew. But SF was able to counter this by evolving from being an off-shoot of Falange to becoming its ‘ideological reserve’. The contrast outside the Falangist arm of the Nationalist Movement was even stronger. Conservative monarchists, the Church and the Army had no wish to encourage the mobilization of any part of the population. For these groups, identification with Falangism amounted to no more than a sharing of the rhetoric and a common rejection of the politics of the Second Republic. It was therefore the case that while SF was in tune with the broad political principles of the Nationalist cause and, by extension, of the regime, it had its own clearly defined ways of attaining them. SF’s operational style, its structures and its ideological base were rooted in the doctrine of José Antonio. The pre-war Falange had borrowed rhetoric and aesthetics from the Nazi and fascist models, and SF built on these to establish its separate identity.

This was most evident between 1939 and 1942, the years when the contrast was considerable between SF’s operational style and that of other sectors of the regime. It was also between 1939 and 1942 when two more of SF’s ‘fascist credentials’ were most marked. In these years, it was most active in its attempts to mobilize women. The early mandos were charged with the task of starting all areas of SF activity across the nation. In this time, SF began its social service programme, domestic schools, youth activities, camps, choirs and welfare visitors scheme. Formal training of mandos, started during the Civil War, was now producing trained women who could take on posts of responsibility as provincial leaders and specialists. And it was in these years, too, that the utopian vision of the Falangist Revolution was at its height. Many young recruits were given huge responsibilities and those involved saw themselves as the pioneers. And when the ideas had yet to be tried, SF was helped in its vision by ‘poetic’ Falangists such as Dionisio Ridruejo, by the cult of José Antonio, and by the whiff of the revolutionary socializing potential of the Third Reich. In the words of SF’s former national head of the Youth Wing: ‘The nation couldn’t function with our theories but it was so beautiful and so incredible.’ [1]

And apart from its borrowings from foreign fascist models, there were many senses in which SF operations projected a modernizing, dynamic image, showing the contrast with reactionary sectors of the regime. As previously noted, José Antonio was attributed with wanting a ‘joyful and short-skirted Spain’ (‘una España alegre y faldicorta’) [2] and SF’s programmes were a mixture of inventions and borrowings built round these statements. The domestic, political and religious teachings delivered the serious element, while SF’s choirs and dances, camps and gymnastics emphasized a counter image of youth and vitality. At a symbolic level, too, SF’s verbal signs -- the use of the words camarada (comrade) and tú (you) replacing more formal ways of address, signalled SF’s self-image as an inclusive community defending the interests of women. And SF’s track record of good housekeeping reinforced the point. There were no hidden corners of corruption or ways of using the posts available to secure personal fortunes, unlike the party administrators of the National Movement directly involved in the supply chain of black market produce in the years of estraperlo.

SF dynamism was evident, too, in the way it chose to interpret Franco’s mandate of 1939. Up to this point, SF’s existence was bound to the fortunes of the male Falange. In SF’s own creation of its history, the period from 1934 to 1936 was its ‘pre-time’, the years it shared with José Antonio. [3] In the following years of the Civil War, SF came nearest to being a traditional aid provider, working alongside men and in their shadow. But the 1939 mandate gave SF an independent role and henceforth it was able to justify all its actions, attitudes and programmes as part of the instructions received from Franco to ‘reconquer the home … to educate Spanish women and children … to make women healthy, strong and free’. [4] José Antonio had repeatedly listed the ills of Spain and, in the SF understanding, his words had been vindicated by the Nationalist uprising. The perceived extent of the ‘ignorance’ of Spaniards which had caused them to have faith in parliamentary systems required the drastic solutions of the compulsory teaching programmes and intervention into the private lives of the female population.

More problematical from the regime’s point of view was the way in which SF’s dynamic, modernizing image was applied to its vision of women and their role in the New State. There was nothing controversial in the SF interpretation of how women should contribute to the rebuilding of Spain after the Civil War. Franco’s mandate was a statement that women should be restored to the home, reinforcing the patriarchal authority of the regime via their roles as wives, mothers and home-makers. Their capacity to do so, went the argument, was enhanced through the domestic and childcare programmes. But, as had been the case in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the entrusting of this to an elite group of women, predominantly from the middle and upper classes, led to ambiguities and contradictions.

Foremost among these was the ideological motivation of SF’s elite members. Their political and religious training stressed the populist origins of Falangism and their ‘mission’ to reach out to the poorest sectors of society. SF presented itself as an organization in which merit and effort were rewarded and ‘old-style’ preferment was at an end. As Pilar told members in 1938: ‘In the Falange, there are no privileged groups. With us … it’s the woman who works hardest, the cleverest, most disciplined, whatever her background and whatever her name.’ [5] But although privilege was seen as the antithesis of José Antonio’s social justice, SF did not criticize personal wealth, capitalism nor the existence of the aristocracy. And while SF’s credentials as a meritocracy were strengthened following the opening of La Mota, it remained the case that the founder members had all come from the circle of acquaintances round the Madrid Falange. The populist rhetoric of José Antonio was in the context of his own privileged background, and was founded on the belief in a small, powerful elite force whose efforts would transform society. In this, SF was characteristic of other fascist organizations, claiming to be populist but in reality led by elites.

But in one important sense, SF populism was understood and interpreted by SF mandos at a deeper level. Whereas outside SF, women of similar economic and cultural backgrounds continued to base their world-view on bourgeois and Catholic norms, mandos had a different self-image. SF disdained the perceived lifestyle of wealthy women, to whom it attributed a range of negative character qualities such as shallowness of thought, passivity and general lack of drive. It hated the idea that women from moneyed backgrounds felt they were owed a living and could fall back on the efforts of others without contributing. SF’s dislike found a particular focus in their practice of Catholicism, where external trappings were felt to disguise an absence of sincerity. For SF, therefore, religion came to have more significance than as a component of Falangism. The study and practice of Catholic liturgy and dogma became the channel through which mandos could best express their distance from old-style beliefs and codes of behaviour. By adopting the Benedictine style of worship, SF was expressing the spirit, if not the words, of joseantoniano doctrine.

In the SF belief system, it was a moral duty to hold an informed opinion about religion. Admitting to being non-practising was more honourable than going to church for the sake of appearances. Whereas outside SF, women’s practice of Catholicism was associated with a long-established female role model of submission and self-effacement, within the organization it appeared to encourage precisely the opposite.

And the contradictory self-image of SF mandos as both accepting of a deeply patriarchal political system while themselves exercising a degree of authority was mirrored in the way SF nationally related to politicians. In this, Pilar’s early support for Franco won for SF considerable operational support, even though SF was subordinate to and dependent on the Secretary-General of the Movement, and, ultimately, to Franco. Its task was made easier by Pilar’s own political importance as sister of José Antonio. This had early been acknowledged by Franco when he appointed her to the party executive and as first member of the National Council established in 1937, a position she held throughout her political life. [6]

SF managed to follow its own agenda through a combination of Pilar’s obstinacy and SF’s own separateness, which ensured it could function with a minimum of interference from male politicians. In contrast with the early days, when SF was very much in the shadow of the male Falange, from 1937 Pilar carved out territory for SF which would secure for it maximum autonomy. Publicly, she supported the requirements of Unification, welcoming the Traditionalist women (margaritas), while ensuring that they posed no threat to SF’s programmes. And while SF and the Youth Front shared much ideologically, collaboration with male colleagues was a second best to full control of the girls’ programmes, which was achieved in 1945. When interference was in the form of a rival organization, as in the case of Social Aid, Pilar used her political influence to deal with the threat. Her interventions led to the removal of Mercedes Sanz Bachiller from her post and the expansion of SF operations to include social service. The later appointments of male advisers to the SF national team were made for similar reasons. The presence of Luis Agosti and Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel ensured that Establishment critics would find it hard to mount a fundamental challenge to SF’s programmes, even where there were local problems. And the internal workings of SF were kept so separate that even if anyone had wished to interfere, it is difficult to know how they would have done so.

SF autonomy and influence were, of course, relative concepts. With the exception of Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, Pilar was the only female member of the National Council until the 1960s, a reflection of the deeply patriarchal nature of Francoist political structures, but SF certainly made the most of what influence it had. [7] Mandos in Pilar’s national team at Almagro 36 were close to the political realities of the day. They knew whom to approach in government, which ministers could be manipulated and which, in their understanding were ‘unreliable’. Increasingly in La Nacional, staff were graduates and their time in SF-SEU gave them a political awareness as sharp as that of any of their male colleagues. The specificity of their programmes and SF’s physical surroundings at Almagro 36 encouraged mandos to have their own political agenda, judging the impact of national events and planning their strategies accordingly. Whereas in the Civil War before Unification, Pilar’s flat in Salamanca had been the centre of legitimist activity, the focal point was now SF’s national office.

Outside the national team, however, direct involvement and even political awareness were variable. At the rank of local leader and local specialist, there was likely to be little understanding of SF’s balancing act with government. For the lower mandos, the programmes of SF were based on self-evident ‘truths’: that the Civil War had been necessary, that Spain (and particularly its women) were in ignorance, and that SF had the task of completing the ‘unfinished mission’ of José Antonio. There was a correspondingly simplistic understanding of joseantoniano doctrine. As one such former mando explained: ‘José Antonio wanted to improve the education of women so he invented Sección Femenina.’ [8]

There also existed a contradiction and a tension within SF itself as to how it should use the political process to advance the cause of women. On the one hand was the experience and dynamism of the national team, who had been instrumental in setting up the early programmes and establishing SF provincially and at local level. Added to these were women who had worked on SF editorial boards and in its press and propaganda operation. Among these members there was a feeling that SF should be more outspoken on the issue of women in the workplace. There was no disagreement on SF’s official line, namely that work was a financial necessity for many. But some mandos believed that this should have been more clearly articulated and that SF as a potential campaigning force for the recognition of rights of working women was slow to seize the initiative.

Against this was Pilar’s own stance on the work-home debate and, more generally, on women’s role in society. Apart from her thinking on SF’s religious profile and identity, her views were essentially conservative. When innovations threatened to upset the power balance in government (for example when Mercedes proposed nurseries for working mothers), she remained cautious. The price was the defection of some of her ablest members.

The strength of arguments and the intellectual capacity of mandos always carried less weight than the will of Pilar and her capacity to win the loyalty of her members. That is not to say that she was not influenced by the team of women round her. But ultimately, the identification of Pilar as the ideological core of SF ensured that her will would prevail.

Pilar’s own inconsistencies were also those of SF in general. She was so unkempt that in the memory of one mando, her shabbiness had a bad effect on SF’s national image. [9] And assuming that the reason for this was a busy schedule and the absorbing nature of her work, she gave the lie to the SF role model of the woman who could emerge from the home without losing her femininity. It is debatable whether anyone on the national team had much time to practise their domestic skills or indeed, that they regarded themselves as subordinate to men. On the occasions when mandos deferred to male authority, it was likely to be a considered strategy or pragmatism, but never a lack of nerve.

But Pilar’s eccentricities in no way detracted from her position at the core of the SF belief system. José Antonio’s teachings were fundamental to an understanding of Falangism, and the leadership of Pilar was understood to be inseparable from the workings and operations of SF. This second core belief found its fullest expression in the training courses at La Mota, soon an essential rite of passage for prospective staff members. Its classes gave mandos a better intellectual understanding of Falangism, but through its invented traditions and the actual or remembered presence of Pilar, they also experienced its symbolic and emotional base.

How SF was thought of by politicians and the nation as a whole is a wider issue. Franco publicly supported its initiatives while always keeping it short of money. The revolutionary fervour which accompanied its programmes presented no threats to the power balance maintained in the regime. On the contrary, SF’s imposed school curriculum and the efficiency of its interventions were both control mechanisms and stabilizers in the years when Spain was at its poorest. Domestic programmes, regeneration and welfare schemes cushioned the disastrous effects of the regime’s imposition of autarky. And the fact that SF distanced itself from the early post-war culture of reprisals and violence established its humanitarian credentials and earned it respect. [10]

Among the unaffiliated, the diversity of women’s and girls’ life situations caused them to experience SF in a number of ways. Factors such as economic and marital state, familial political background and even geographical area determined the degree of acceptance with which SF teachings were received and the attractions of membership. Perceptions of the wider community, too, were not uniform, and changed as the regime moved from the bleakness and hardships of the 1940s to the slowly improving economic climate of the following decade. It was the case that SF’s imposed teachings brought direct and measurable benefits to some. Exposure to domestic teachings, for example, could lead to training as a divulgadora. Girls who showed aptitude academically were able to apply for grants from SF for further study. And for many girls in the 1940s, an SF youth camp was the nearest to a holiday they were likely to experience. But the positive aspects of compulsion could not mask the flawed logic of the SF Revolution, which attempted to impose norms and values on women in the cause of national regeneration.

Early memories of those loosely connected to SF are also those of the Civil War itself and the early post-war period. In these years, perceptions are linked to how SF responded to the hunger, poverty and social conditions of the times. [11] Its programmes were an integral part of the regime’s efforts to impose strict social control and a set of moral values on the female population. Outright opposition was therefore as unlikely and as dangerous as other forms of resistance to the regime. But at an individual level, it was possible to ignore the political connotations and take part in SF activities for the material benefits they brought. Women could choose not to enrol for welfare benefit schemes or attend courses other than those prescribed for social service, and as one former primary school teacher recalled, it was not possible for SF to recruit her compulsorily into the Falangist Teachers’ Service, even though it would have liked to do so. [12]

SF’s collaboration with the health authorities produced measurable results, but it is more difficult to assess the impact of its compulsory education programmes on the unaffiliated population. [13] Overall, however, it appears that few women wanted to involve themselves further with SF. Statistics for 1948 and 1951, for example, show that just a few hundred women in these years became full SF members as a result of doing social service. [14] Equally, the low annual figures recorded for completion of social service (despite the fact that it was compulsory, at least in theory) indicate that very many women were simply not interested. [15]

This may have been because SF steadily became part of the bureaucratic framework of the State. In many towns and villages, SF headquarters were a room in the local Falange centre and the only reason for many women to pass through their doors was to register for social service. Those who were least likely to have contact were women from the wealthy classes, who were not intending to work and who could therefore escape social service relatively easily. For these women, unless they had a political interest in SF and perhaps an ambition to be a mando, their experience of SF was largely through their schooling. Even here, the degree of direct contact was variable. It was the case that all schoolgirls had to study the SF curriculum of domestic subjects, politics and physical education and that textbooks in these subjects were SF publications. But the women teaching them were not all mandos. In the 1950s, it was common for SF’s subjects to be taught by mainstream teachers whose only connection with SF was an accreditation to teach its curriculum. These staff had completed training with SF but were not its elite members.

A further complicating factor in assessing how many women were involved at any level with SF was the shifting definition and understanding of the term ‘membership’. Data surrounding this is scarce and often contradictory or ambiguous, but SF increasingly defined itself in terms of its elite members (mandos), the staff carrying out the programmes and managing the local and provincial SF centres. Whereas this group was identifiable by rank and status within SF, others termed as members (afiliadas) were less homogeneous. Up to the end of the 1940s, SF appears to have followed the rest of the Falange in its designation of members as either ‘active’ (militantes) or ‘passive’ (adheridas). This latter category was a statement of adhesion to the regime, a necessary formality for any State post, at least up to the end of the 1940s. But the implications of signing the SF promise and carrying the Party card appear to have varied according to the times. One nurse-practitioner interviewed, for example, did not need SF membership in 1946 for employment in the Falange-owned Mother and Baby Home in Salamanca, although this had been required of her sister four years earlier in the same post. [16] In her understanding, membership of SF for employment purposes was never more than a formality, which eventually was not required. Those more involved with SF rationalize the membership question, denying that it was ever part of the Franco mandate. [17] As the influence of the Falange declined in the regime, this was no doubt a pragmatic stance. In any case, by the 1950s SF had spread its wings to the extent that its training establishments were a significant part of mainstream provision. Its penetration of society was, in its own eyes, less measurable by membership than the fact that SF’s moral and cultural standards were embedded in colleges, institutes and university residences throughout Spain. [18]

From a position where SF’s militarism and operational style stood out against the more conservative sectors of the regime, by the 1950s, the contrast was less marked. After 1945, when the regime in general became more explicitly National-Catholic, SF’s ceremonial presence was less central to its image than its role as provider of services within health, welfare, education and employment. With this came a certain merging of SF’s ideology with the views of other sectors. It was not that SF changed its views but rather that its original position on issues regarding women came to be the mainstream of public opinion. Its early articles on work for example, while stressing the domestic ideal, also acknowledged the problems and attractions of the workplace. Views expressed in the 1938 issues of Revista ‘Y’ would not have been out of place twenty years later. Similarly, its early differences with the Church were less significant than its support for religion as an important part of women’s education.

But despite SF’s expansion, bureaucratization and its cautious overall attitude to change, the constancy of its presence and the single-mindedness of its staff kept women’s issues alive in the regime. The changes to the Civil Code and the pensions of domestic workers were small in comparison to the overall injustices of life for women in the regime, but would not have happened without the intervention of SF. To achieve even this degree of lasting change in the context of the regime’s patriarchal vision of women’s place in society was testimony to the constancy of SF’s presence and the single-mindedness of its national mandos.

The fact that SF set out to assert the social and familial importance of the woman, defining both her role and the character qualities needed to fulfill it, was a necessary prelude to the larger changes in legislation that happened in the following decade. The endless repetition of SF’s vision for women via propaganda, courses and the intervention of mandos set the scene for wider debates in later years, with SF established by then as the principal channel for representing women’s issues. Pilar’s pace of change which she set for SF was irritating for the more progressive members, but given the forces of reaction within the regime, was realistic.

For mandos, work with SF allowed them to derive esteem without the need to be either a wife or a mother. For this group, the existence of SF both in early and later periods of the regime gave opportunities which otherwise would not have existed. But in this, as with a consideration of the effect of SF’s welfare and humanitarian programmes, it must be remembered that the total number of mandos was just 15,000. [19] However dynamic and efficient their programmes, with just this number of staff, their impact had its limits. Equally, although mandos enjoyed different lifestyles, freedoms and working practices, these were the preserve of only a minority of women.

Since Spain’s return to democracy, the detail of SF’s programmes has been largely forgotten. Despite the fact that much of its work was humanitarian, that it frequently operated on its own initiative and was free of the regime’s corruption, SF’s public adhesion to Francoism has remained its identity tag. Any assessment of SF’s own achievements, however, must take into account its unusual position as an organization which retained genuinely fascist elements throughout the Franco regime. Its vision for women, although derived in part from role models of the Golden Age, was based on its judgement of the needs of the present. Its desire to return women to the home was matched with the aim of showing the choices within that role that were possible with self-help and a willingness to learn. In this sense, SF was forward-looking and its work in rural communities an example of how women could, by their own efforts, improve their standard of living.

Amid the contradictions and ambiguities of SF, the basis of its ideology was its most constant and enduring feature. The inherent impossibility of the Falangist Revolution did not diminish the personal fulfillment of those working at its core and continued to be a lived reality for mandos long after the rest of the regime had consigned Falangism to history and was shaping a different kind of future. In the words of a former mando: ‘We struggled so that everyone else would have things, but we got nothing ourselves.’ [20] That was in part true. Elite members earned little, had autonomy only in their own field and limited influence outside SF. In the course of the 1950s, mandos readily acknowledged that the task of convincing the unaffiliated was becoming harder. But no one in the higher ranks of SF challenged the basis for their work, and the legacy of José Antonio and the leadership of Pilar continued as unalterable truths.

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