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WOMEN AND SPANISH FASCISM -- THE WOMEN'S SECTION OF THE FALANGE 1934-1959 |
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Introduction Fascism is a complex and contested label which has been the subject of much study since the 1920s. From Communist theory, which held it to be the agent of capitalism to the belief that fascism could be placed within the broader category of totalitarianism, debate has now moved to an analysis of its conceptual framework. The belief that the ideological core of fascist regimes has a common base, with shared values, goals and operational style is expressed in the term ‘generic fascism’. [1] Under this definition, underpinning all fascist regimes is a core belief in the power of the nation as a higher entity and quasi-spiritual ideal. Service to the nation is thereby deemed as the worthiest of endeavours, requiring commitment and personal sacrifice. The fascist solution to the nation’s ills depends on an acceptance that there must be a ‘rebirth’ or ‘regeneration’, whereby present systems and values are replaced by a ‘new order’, which itself finds its inspiration in defining moments or eras in the nation’s history. [2] Although the dictatorship of General Franco in Spain has been described as being ‘authoritarian’ and ‘parafascist’ rather than fascist, there can be no doubt that his official party apparatus, the National Movement (Movimiento Nacional), had genuinely fascist elements which remained in place throughout the regime. It had originated from the small Spanish fascist party (Falange española) founded in 1934 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. After José Antonio’s death in a Republican jail in the first months of the Civil War, the party leadership was appropriated by Franco in April 1937 to provide legitimacy to his military campaign, and later to his regime. Before the Civil War, and in particular before February 1936, the Falange had few members and could not be regarded as a significant political force. In broad terms, it shared political ground with other right-wing groups in its condemnation of the policies and reforms of the first government of Spain’s Second Republic. The regionalist aspirations of Catalonia and the Basque Country, the politicization of the working classes through the existence of Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist trade unions, and the legislation that gave political and social freedoms to women were among the developments that were perceived as threatening the established order. Criticisms such as these were common to opponents of the Republic, but the Falange went further through its ideological analysis of Spain as a nation divided and having lost national pride and former greatness. Following the rhetoric of the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who in 1922 had talked of ‘the serious illness from which Spain is suffering’, [3] the Falange constructed an ideological alternative to parliamentary democracy. The totalitarian system it advocated would end the ‘disunity’ caused by regionalism, political parties and the class struggle.
The political conversion of Spaniards to the ideas of José Antonio was termed the ‘Falangist Revolution’ and it was this vision, more than anything else, that distanced the Falange from other parties of the Right. The ‘healing’ of the nation could begin, went the argument, once each citizen was working for the common good, without the competing interests of political parties and trade unions.
Moreover, the Falangist Revolution would restore Spain to its former position as an imperial power. As José Antonio said: ‘We have the will of Empire…. We reclaim for Spain a position of pre-eminence in Europe…. In relation to the nations of Latin America, we support a unifying of culture, of economic interests and of power.’ [4] The utopian vision of a nation restored to former greatness was given form through the Falange’s operational style. The militarism and asceticism that characterized the language of Falangist orators and the conduct and setting of its meetings emphasized its political goals as being attainable through service and sacrifice. As José Antonio said: ‘Spain has to be mobilized from top to bottom and put on a war footing.’ [5] Falangists were a ‘resolute minority’ who would mobilize the ‘victims of a decadent period’ to work for the common good. [6] And in its understanding of how the ‘Conquest of the State’ was to take place, the Falange justified the use of violence, a further point of difference from other political groups. Falange membership began to increase following the parliamentary elections of February 1936. Although it failed to win parliamentary seats, the Falange began to seem a possible alternative to some when a left-wing coalition won the narrowest of victories over the right-wing bloc. The February election polarized the country between two utterly opposing political creeds and some disillusioned right-wing voters began to despair that the parliamentary system would ever manage to dislodge the Left. There were fundamental differences, however, between the Falange and right-wing conservative opposition to the Republic. Part of José Antonio’s understanding of ‘social justice’ was a programme of economic reform, which included the nationalization of banks and public services, and the organization of workers into a ‘giant syndicate of producers’. [7] This set it apart from other groups, who were not interested in channelling workers’ energies in this way and whose overriding priority was the restoration of the economic power base of the financial elites. The Falange’s populism, too, was in contrast to the established class divisions dear to the Church, Army and parties of the Right. And although religion was a fundamental element of Falangism, José Antonio had advocated the separation of the functions of Church and State. Religion was acknowledged as an ingredient of Spanish nationhood but he recognized, too, that the Church had the potential to damage ‘the dignity of the State’. [8] But more significant than the Falange’s political differences was its total opposition to the Popular Front government elected in February 1936. It was this more than a clearly articulated ideology which initially allied Army officers, Church and right-wing political parties. In the event, the radicalism of the Falange and in particular, its militarism and operational style were of great use to the rebels. Despite its small membership, it had in place a territorial organization with a policy-making committee and national council and at the outset of the rebellion, contributed militias as well as a propaganda machine. On the eve of Franco’s investiture as Head of State in October 1936, the Bishop of Salamanca called the uprising ‘a Crusade for religion, the nation and civilization’. [9] These were the early terms of reference for the rebellion and fitted well to José Antonio’s combative vision of Spain’s future. His projected social revolution was not reflected elsewhere, but its outcomes -- ending of the class struggle, a united Spain free of regionalist aspirations, political parties and foreign influences -- were in accord with the aims of the rebellion. The credentials of the Falange as a revolutionary organization, however, changed in November 1936 when José Antonio was executed in Alicante jail, leaving a question mark over who could assume the party leadership. Franco, meanwhile, needed to harness popular support for the uprising and ensure that political factions did not subvert the common cause of winning the war. He decided that the Falange structure could feasibly be expanded and enlarged to provide the administrative and governmental structure for the territories ceding to the Nationalist army. [10] Five months after the death of José Antonio, the Decree of Unification brought all the parties of the Right under the umbrella of the Falange, with Franco assuming the leadership. The Falange now became the official and only party of State. [11] Franco’s decision to merge the Falange with the other parties of the Right created a power base for the winning of the war. The more radical aspects of José Antonio’s social revolution were never seriously considered by Franco but his own political agenda was transmitted through the medium of fascist propaganda methods. Also important to the legitimacy of the uprising was the glorification of José Antonio. His death and the manner of his dying quickly became a strong propaganda tool for Franco. The Falangist doctrine of unquestioning obedience and the cult of its dead leader were useful in increasing Franco’s power. As the new head of the Falange, his authority transcended that of a military general to become one of Caudillo, the political and spiritual leader of Spaniards in their Crusade against the Second Republic. Before the Civil War, the Falange’s cult of violence had alienated many, but its hierarchical structure and doctrine of obedience to its leader were exploited fully by the Nationalists. Its Press and Propaganda section was given responsibility for censorship and media control while the departments of Information and Investigation worked alongside civil police, using often crude methods of instilling fear and rooting out resistance to the regime. In the post-war years, the departments and structures of the Falange continued and expanded their operations in the maintenance of law and order in the Francoist state. Although the National Movement, as it was now termed, had lost its original revolutionary aims, it remained the major agent of social control used by Franco to ensure civil obedience. After the Second World War, the regime distanced itself from its wartime connections with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and many of the departments and sections of the original Falange disappeared or became mere bureaucratic entities. This was not, however, true of its Women’s Section (Sección Femenina), which maintained its original structures, ideology and programme with only minor changes up to the end of the Franco regime. The present study examines first the ideology of Sección Femenina (SF) and the degree to which it may be said to exhibit the characteristics of ‘generic fascism’. Even after 1945, SF retained its credentials as the part of the National Movement truest to the doctrinal purity of its early years through the identity and political motivation of its leader, Pilar Primo de Rivera. She was the daughter of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, the military dictator of Spain between 1923 and 1930. She was also the sister of José Antonio, who had been shot in a Republican jail in November 1936. As one of its earliest members, Pilar never lost her vision of the Falange as a revolutionary organization, capable of transforming society through the efforts of its elite members. She saw her leadership of SF as completing the ‘unfinished mission’ of her dead brother, and, in a broader sense, representing the tradition of service to Spain of her late father. In this context, the fascist ideology propounded by her brother became the framework within which SF lent its support to the Franco regime. Throughout its existence, SF functioned as the transmission-belt for the moral and political values of the regime. The causes associated with the Nationalist victory -- a return to patriarchal society and restoration of traditional gender roles -- remained SF’s fundamental doctrine. The second focus of the study is how SF maintained this primary role in the face of Spain’s changing social and economic climate. From the international isolation faced by Spain in the 1940s and its policy of autarky, the regime began a slow process of regeneration and modernization. In 1957, the appointment of advisers who sought to undertake a degree of economic liberalization was the prelude to the conversion of the nation to an industrial economy. The 1959 Stabilization Plan marked the beginning of Spain’s economic future and, to an extent, drew a line under her recent past. [12] Doctrinal values associated with the Civil War gave way to the need to integrate and compete with other economies. But 1959 was also the year by which the Franco regime had arguably achieved greatest acceptance and stability. In the post-war years, the challenge for SF was how to keep its original doctrine while adapting to improving social and economic conditions. The balance it sought between trying to keep alive the doctrine of José Antonio while recognizing the need for legislative and social change resulted in many compromises and contradictions. Of course, SF was not alone in being a transmitter of social and moral values. As only one component of the National Movement, it had to fight its corner among other sources of influence, principally the Catholic Church. This study also examines SF’s role within government and the ways it sought to maintain influence and power. In particular, it looks at the ways in which SF promoted itself as a modernizing element of the National Movement and the contradictions inherent in this. The effect of its programmes both on the female population at large and on SF’s elite members is its final focus. The earliest SF members gave practical assistance to the Francoist cause throughout the Civil War. But the volunteer help needed in the war was soon replaced by a territorial network of elite members, whose job was to establish political and social control of the female population. Added to these were members trained as instructors and health specialists to implant the teachings throughout the nation. The effect of this intervention is examined in relation to SF’s membership base and the extent to which non-affiliated women were persuaded to join its ranks. In particular, the lifestyle of the elite members (mandos) is considered. The way in which they carried out their work and the opportunities open to them are examined as representing a force for change, a forerunner of the diversity of lifestyles to come in later decades. By the year of SF’s founding in 1934, Spain had experienced three turbulent political years under the Second Republic. Democratic parliamentary government had followed the military dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera and was fragile. The years since the election of the first government of the Second Republic in April 1931 had been increasingly unstable. Government policies intended to address the social and political injustices of centuries enraged the forces of the traditional Right -- among them the Army, Church, aristocracy and many sectors of the Catholic peasantry. In particular, the strongly anti-clerical policies, which were intended to break the domination of the Catholic Church in the social and political affairs of State, left the nation divided about what sort of society was appropriate and desirable. [13] In the Republican Constitution passed in December 1931, women had been given the same voting rights as men and in February of the following year, a divorce law was passed. These were major and sudden changes in a country where Catholic values and morality had been entrenched for so long. The majority of Spanish women enjoyed neither the social nor educational freedoms of their sisters in more industrialized countries of Europe. One consequence of Spain’s neutrality in the First World War was that women had not replaced men in the workplace to any degree. Spain was still largely rural and semi-urban and the pattern of life for most rural women had hardly changed since the beginning of the century. Female employment, predominantly in agriculture, domestic service and, in urban areas, in factory work, stood at 12.6 per cent of the national workforce in 1930. [14] The adult female illiteracy rate was at 38.4 per cent in the same year. [15] And although the percentage of women entering higher education had doubled in the 1920s it was still only slightly above 8 per cent of the student population by 1927. [16] Republican legislation for women had created expectations that for some were the beginnings of identification with a feminist cause and for others aroused deepest suspicions and anxieties. Either way, for a number of women, the prospect of the new laws was the catalyst for involvement with a political cause. Many middle- and upper-class women identified with the Church’s declaration that support for the Republic was tantamount to a denial of Christian values and the traditional family base. Right-wing opposition came from a number of sources. Apart from mainstream political parties there were Church groups such as Catholic Action (Acción Católica) and the Daughters of Mary (Hijas de María) which involved women increasingly in a campaigning role. [17] But the most enduring female right-wing voice did not emerge until after the election of the second Republican government in 1934. José Antonio’s Falange party advocated a totalitarian system based on patriotic and military values which repudiated liberal ideas and thinking. Within its wish to return to the social and religious values of the Spain of pre-Republic days was a vision of restoring gender relations by returning women to their traditional roles as wives and mothers. In the first year of the Falange’s existence, three women had insisted on attending its meetings, among them Pilar Primo de Rivera. From being mere supporters, the women demanded to be active members in their own right, and the decision was taken to form a Women’s Section of the Falange. José Antonio appointed his sister as head of the organization in 1934 and she became SF’s first and sole national leader, in post for forty-three years. Before the Civil War, the post of national leader and indeed SF itself initially was to assist male Falangists in their campaigning. Their primary role was fund-raising but they also visited Falangist prisoners in jail and supported their families. [18] They quickly became accomplices and co-perpetrators, spreading propaganda, sewing Falangist flags and armbands and hiding weapons in their own homes. [19] When, in February of 1936, the Falange was declared illegal by the new government and José Antonio arrested and imprisoned, these activities increased as the Falange became involved in acts of violence and attempts to destabilize the Popular Front government. In his views on women, José Antonio concurred with what was to be the official Francoist line. Proclaiming their essential and unchangeable differences from men, he deplored what he saw as the effect of Republican legislation on family life. By re-asserting the primacy of the family and restoring women to their traditional place in the home, the Falange would redress the perceived damage caused by the divorce law. The agenda of the pre-war SF echoed in general terms the doctrine of José Antonio but failed to specify how women would contribute to the sought-after unity of the nation. SF’s earliest statutes declared its broad aim as ‘supporting national-syndicalist militants in their fight against the anti-Spain’. [20] They spoke little about the role of women in general, apart from declaring the need to educate them to give the ‘firmest support for the expansion of the future Spanish empire’. [21] SF had branches in eighteen provinces by July 1936 although only with 2,500 members. [22] But after the outbreak of war, it quickly became an integral and visible part of the Nationalist campaign, involving women whose principal interest was not necessarily the doctrine of José Antonio and the Falange, but simply winning the war. Membership grew steadily and at the end of the war was calculated by the organization at 580,000 women. [23] SF worked behind the battle fronts and in newly conquered territories as relief workers in many capacities. Front-line nursing responsibility was officially in the hands of the Carlist women’s group. [24] However, SF had in place a territorial chain of command and members throughout Nationalist Spain. This helped establish it as the organization best able to assume control of relief operations, especially in the newly conquered provinces. The point was underlined at its first national conference in January 1937, when its achievements could be publicly stated and endorsed. At the beginning of the war, Pilar Primo de Rivera had been in Madrid, which had remained under Republican control. She was therefore initially unable to support the rebels’ cause, but in Valladolid, where the insurgents had been successful, a provisional wartime SF organization was set up. Nursing, visiting the sick, mending uniforms and providing for orphans and refugees were SF’s primary responses as the coup developed into civil war. Pilar escaped into Nationalist Spain in October 1936 and went to Salamanca, Franco’s first military headquarters. Here, she quickly turned the 1934 statutes into a fully developed administrative structure and doctrinal base. The framework paralleled that of the male Falange, with a national, provincial and local hierarchy. Key figures were the provincial leaders, women appointed to take charge of activities and membership in their province. Local leaders had a similar responsibility for their village or district. Provincial leaders reported their progress and concerns to the national leadership, principally through the medium of an annual conference. The first of these took place in Salamanca in January 1937 with a total of fifty provinces represented and at which the new statutes were approved. Within the space of a few months, SF had expanded its pre-war role of general support, fund-raising and flag-sewing to become an organization responding to the welfare needs of war at local and national level. As the rebel troops continued their advance, SF developed its provincial base, until by April 1939 with the end of the war, all regions were represented. Work took place in the newly conquered provinces, where teams of women administered emergency food supplies, and in military hospitals, laundries and workshops. For women wishing to give a few hours weekly to the war effort, SF organized relief activities such as the making and sending of food parcels and correspondence with soldiers at the front. With the end of the war came the opportunity to extend SF’s operations from relief measures to fully fledged propaganda and education programmes for the female population. José Antonio’s agenda of restoring women to their rightful place, however, could not begin without the recruitment of elite members. SF had already started the process by setting up a school in Málaga during the war to train the future mandos needed immediately as provincial leaders. Initially, these had been appointed from the ranks of the pre-war members, but further politically trained staff (mandos políticos) were needed to take responsibility both for the provinces and for SF centres in villages and towns. There was also a second kind of mando -- a specialist teacher (mando de servicio). The majority worked alongside the local leaders, often sharing their premises and responsible for SF’s delivery of its welfare and education programmes. Recruitment of these teachers began after the Civil War when courses were run in the new SF specialisms of agriculture, physical education and music. Successful candidates became mandos de servicio, qualified to transmit their skills to other SF members and unaffiliated women and girls. Now the war was over, the training of both types of mando became the most urgent need. SF’s contribution in the war was recognized officially by Franco a month after hostilities ceased. At a set-piece rally held in Medina del Campo in the province of Valladolid, he publicly thanked SF and set out its mandate for the post-war period. It was to organize training of all women, to equip them for life in post-war Spain. He promised a centre which would also act as the focal point of the organization -- the castle of La Mota in Medina del Campo -- and he also promised support. The two promises were kept: La Mota was restored and converted to the main training academy for elites and Franco publicly and privately endorsed SF’s programmes. But within the vision of the ideal Falangist woman, there were ambiguities. José Antonio, though a prolific orator, had said little about women’s role beyond insisting on their natural dignity and the need to separate their functions from those of men. This was the task for Pilar -- how to develop the separate role of women as outlined by her brother to fulfill Falangist aspirations without challenging the authority of the male. In practical matters, this was not difficult, because the domestic contribution of women could be emphasized and refined. Housekeeping and childcare -- both undisputed areas for the woman -- could become areas of expertise, benefiting from specialist courses and the latest information. The same applied to cottage industries, such as traditional crafts and small-scale domestic agriculture, where women’s work generally did not compete with that of men but served to bolster the family income. The usefulness of this in the stabilization of the post-war economy reinforced the authority of the message. Domestic efficiency was necessary for national regeneration. Involvement in domestic duties was also an interpretation of José Antonio’s demand that women be treated seriously ‘and never as the stupid target of catcalls’. [25] He had claimed that the Falange was a way of being, requiring an ‘ascetic and military definition of life’. [26] From the earliest days, Pilar Primo de Rivera interpreted this as the necessary direction for SF. The austerity and militarism of the pre-war Falange meetings were mirrored in the surroundings and atmosphere of the first SF conference and continued largely unchanged. As the sister of the dead leader, Pilar Primo de Rivera was both the link with the original truths of Falangism and the guarantor of their survival within the National Movement. Even when the Movement’s bureaucracy increased and much of the early impetus provided by Falangists within it was lost, she continued to adhere to the doctrines of José Antonio. The building of the training schools and Pilar’s creation of icons, honours systems and her code of conduct for members developed the identity of SF and defined the ideal of women within it. La Mota provided the mix of traditional and modern elements in the Falangist message. Its training routine and carefully restored interior embodied the military and the spiritual, while its decor was both traditional yet simple and uncluttered. In particular, La Mota’s courses in religion were fundamental in establishing a spiritual identity for members that had no parallel outside SF. The style of liturgy, meditation and prayer taught at La Mota had an element of modernity, emphasizing the potential of women as participants and not passive observers. That this occurred twenty years before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council was all the more remarkable. SF’s vision of woman as an active participant in the economic and spiritual reconstruction of the nation was consonant with the fascist ideal of a mobilized population ready to tackle problems in a modern, dynamic way. But this had to be weighed against another fascist imperative -- the rejection of liberal politics and the freedoms they implied. Since the 1920s, informed liberal opinion had increasingly gone against the traditional vision of women as set out by the Catholic Church, the main provider of secondary schooling. The Ladies’ Residence in Madrid, for example, had pioneered a new framework for female higher education. Similarly, although it was for a tiny minority of women, the Women’s University Association (Asociación Universitaria Femenina) founded in 1920 and the Women’s Lyceum Club (Lyceum Club Femenino) founded in 1926 had promoted cultural interests of professional women. Women’s lifestyles -- particularly those of the urban middle classes -- had in any case been changing since the 1920s. With the growth of towns and cities came new opportunities for leisure. Women had increasingly taken advantage of opportunities to emerge from their homes into more public social spheres such as the tea salon, the club or the big hotel, where they would drink, smoke and dress fashionably. Cinema stars, often American, were public role models and with them their fashions and social mores. Whereas in rural areas, work patterns were slow to change, in the towns there were opportunities for secretaries, telephonists and receptionists as well as more exotic occupations in the theatres and night clubs. The challenge for SF was how to attract women who had been used to these freedoms and offer them programmes which were politically acceptable and socially useful. It attempted to do so with its training programmes for all women, which were concerned mainly with domestic matters. ‘Education’ in this context could be regarded as a body of knowledge, the reverse of the ‘ignorance’, which (it was claimed) had led to the severe demographic and health problems of the 1920s and 1930s. SF would help remedy the nation’s problems by ensuring that the required knowledge would be transmitted to the entire female population. But SF also promoted female education and culture in the belief that women were de facto educators of their children. For this reason, girls were encouraged to enter secondary and higher education with the help of SF grants and bursaries. It was also acknowledged that some women would not marry and would therefore need to support themselves. It was, however, difficult to draw a line between ‘necessary’ education and learning for its own sake. It was even more difficult to distinguish the promotion of higher education from the despised feminist intellectualism associated with the Second Republic. SF tried to lay down ground rules -- that women should not compete with men, nor ‘fall on the reefs of frivolity and pedantry’ [27] while insisting on its support for female education and personal development. Alongside this was a contradictory stance on women and work. On the one hand, the SF press continually promoted the ideal of the woman at home. On the other, the organization stated its responsibility to the many for whom work was a fulfilment of ambition or an economic necessity: ‘The State and the National Movement will endeavour to give full encouragement to the legitimate aspirations of young women seeking to follow a career and to employ all others whose single state requires them to earn their own living.’ [28] SF supported the working woman by promoting the representation of women on syndical committees although such intervention and support was balanced by repeated statements that work was for many a necessary evil and in any case, a second best to marriage and family life. It was no easy task to promote a broader view of education and the rights of working women as part of Falangism but different from the ideals of the Second Republic. Central to SF’s attempts to do so was the creation of an ideal of femininity that would place women above criticism, allowing them to be educationally and professionally fulfilled and yet not a challenge to male authority. For the masses, this was translated into textbooks of social behaviour, outlining etiquette and dress code. For its own elite members, however, dress code and behaviour were understood and expressed through SF’s use of the word ‘style’ (estilo). It was used to denote a simple but smart way of dressing together with a confident manner and social graces. This set an SF member apart from the stereotypical intellectual woman whose absorption in learning had caused her to neglect her personal appearance and forget how to behave with men. But here too was a contradiction: at its most effective, estilo was a powerful lever, enabling women to be active participants in an essentially male world while appearing to remain in a passive role. The ambivalent attitude to work was also seen in the contribution of SF to legislation affecting women. It had an entry into national politics through Pilar’s membership of the National Council and Spanish Cortes (parliament) and the fact that she had the ear of Franco. There was little legislative change for women in the 1950s, but a view held by many former members is that the influence of Pilar both directly and indirectly paved the way for the advances of the 1960s by gradually persuading male critics of the need for change. The contrary view is that chances were lost in the 1950s and that SF set back the cause of the working woman because of Pilar’s conviction of the damage done to a family where the wife worked. SF’s contribution to other political issues was no less contradictory. The most vigorous of Pilar Primo de Rivera’s political battles sprang from her conviction that SF needed the maximum possible sphere of influence in order to carry out its programmes. In this belief, SF was vocal, proclaiming its right to control its own affairs and affirming its commitment to the rights and duties of women. But in most other matters it remained outside controversy and political debate on the grounds that its primary duty was loyalty to Franco in all things. Only where Pilar Primo de Rivera perceived events as threatening the organization or its doctrinal base was this loyalty tested. This was the case with the Decree of Unification in 1937, the Law of Succession of 1947 and Franco’s decision to move the tomb of José Antonio from the Escorial Palace to the Valley of the Fallen in 1959. [29] It would be wrong, however, to imagine that loyalty to Franco went no further than tacit acceptance of his policies. Pilar Primo de Rivera’s interpretation of SF’s mandate was that women should contribute actively to national life. In the 1940s, this meant endorsing and promoting Franco’s policy of self-sufficiency and playing an interventionist role in health and welfare. More generally, it meant contributing to the regime’s acceptance and stability by a ceremonial and propaganda role in Spain and abroad. During the 1950s, as the post-war hardships gradually lessened, and Spain took its first steps towards economic development, SF’s role as stabilizer became less necessary and its propaganda and control function less pronounced. All its operations expanded throughout the decade but brought added bureaucracy. It prided itself on a shoestring budget, but organization and structures grew more complex. This, in conjunction with the improving economic conditions of the country, affected the spirit in which the work was being carried out. From a situation where the humanitarian face of SF’s interventionism and social control had been obvious, its mandos increasingly had to rely on their own enthusiasm to persuade their audiences. One of the key messages of José Antonio had been the need for social justice -- the idea that people were best helped by positive programmes such as job creation and training, rather than charity handouts. The welfare programmes of SF were undoubtedly interventionist but had been a counter-balance to the injustices and repression of early post-war Spain. SF propaganda continually stressed the humanitarian nature of its work and members were told to avoid recriminations and references to the past. Nonetheless, their message of social justice sat better with the post-war poverty and privations of the 1940s than in the following decade, when recovery and reconstruction had begun. As SF became part of a seamless whole with other State training providers and welfare bodies, so the political part of its programme lost any resonance. In 1956, Pilar told her conference that she felt that the Falangist message was either misunderstood or simply ignored by the majority of Spaniards. ‘We ask far more of life than complacent people ever can. Perhaps we have demanded so much from this world of worn-out ideas and ancient moulds that at times we feel let down.’ [30] This pessimism was only in part justified. Neither SF nor the male Falange could claim that it had achieved the social revolution of José Antonio, but SF was its own harshest critic. It failed to convince the post-war generations of the political truths of Falangism, but its programmes and aid work provided a social and welfare structure which was an important stabilizing factor in the Franco regime, while its ceremonial and propaganda role contributed to its general acceptance. There were other aid providers and groups loyal to the regime but no other organization came near to providing the educational and professional opportunities that were offered to SF members and, to an extent, to the whole female population. Pilar’s main task had been to impose SF’s teachings to all women and girls in the cause of national recovery and reconstruction. This was accomplished, but the teachings arguably had less impact in the long term than the role models of the teachers. The doctrine of José Antonio as applied to restoring women to the home and creating ‘healthy, strong, independent women’ provided an ideological base for elite members. [31] In practical terms, this meant that mandos had to be flexible professionals, able to cope with varied responsibilities and prepared to live and work away from home. Most, although not all, stayed single, challenging the stereotype of the unmarried woman as an object of pity. Specialisms varied, but the elite’s lifestyle had little in common with that of the ‘angel of the home’ (ángel del hogar). The contrast between the elite member and the reactionary nature of the message she preached remained a paradox. In the early post-war years, her dynamism and mobility could be interpreted as necessary to SF’s objective of aiding the Francoist state. But as Spain began to modernize its economic structure in the following decade, some of the freedoms of the mando were experienced by a new generation of women by dint of their entering the workplace. SF doctrine was increasingly out of step with the growing mobility and career ambitions of this group. Amid the soul-searching to modernize the message without losing the thrust of José Antonio’s doctrine, mandos had to reconstruct their own image. From the ‘select minority’ of the early years, cast as revolutionary, mobilized workers in the service of Spain, they were now considerably more static and often less diverse in their field of action. Yet despite the growing bureaucracy and the clear failure of the ‘Falange Revolution’, there remained a zeal and political conviction in both the older mandos and the newer recruits. By the 1960s and 1970s, the changing of attitudes towards women was accelerated by social and labour legislation. SF had played its part towards this and helped raise the expectations of women. Underpinning its programmes was the philosophy that women needed to take responsibility for their own development and could, by their own efforts, bring about change. The work of the mandos did not bring about the Falange Revolution, but their own lifestyles and their efforts to empower other women were none the less striking. In this sense, the core myth had served its purpose, although the official icons of St Teresa and Queen Isabella were, in the end, less effective carriers of its message than SF’s own members.
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