Domestic Queens and Warrior Wives: Imperial Role‐Models for Spanish Schoolgirls during the Early Francoist Regime (1940s–50s)1

Abstract

This article focuses on heroic images of Spanish women in schoolbooks for girls published during the dictatorial regime of General Franco (1939–75). Alongside the female members of Spain’s royal ranks and the holy women of the Catholic Church’s canon, who were domesticated by association with the needle, some schoolbooks also recovered a small number of women warriors. 1 An earlier version of this article forms as part of a chapter in my thesis: ‘The feminising process: The construction of girlhood in La nueva España’, Ph.D diss., University of London, 2002. A further version was presented at “Contested Terrains: Gendered Knowledge, Landscapes and Narratives”, Women’s History Network Conference, 13/14 September 2003 at the University of Aberdeen, where the paper was entitled: “Domesticating Queens and Saints: Teaching Spanish Schoolgirls National History and Culture During the early Francoist Regime (1940s–50s).”