Looking for Lola: Spanish women and historical memory

Abstract

This thesis explores the life and death of Dolores Garcia-­Negrete (1886-­1940) and how she has been remembered. It seeks to explain her growth from a devout Catholic woman, wife and mother to the political activist for which she was arrested, tried and executed at the end of the Spanish Civil War. The thesis situates her life within the context of the social and political transformations that impacted on women’s lives in Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that the changes to acceptable social roles for women made possible her late, public transformation into a vociferous defender of the Second Spanish Republic. The thesis further argues that her execution was the result of her transgression of the regressive gender norms espoused by the victorious Franco regime (1939-­1975).