Memories of Resistance: Women Activists from the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

F THE THOUSANDS of articles and books about the Spanish civil war, few contain information about women's role in the war and its aftermath, except for brief descriptions or scant references in footnotes. Yet the Second Republic (1931-36) was a period of great change for Spanish women, a flash of freedom from the oppression of the past and from the encroaching darkness of Franco's post-civil war regime. In fact, the most revolutionary opportunity for the emergence of women on the intellectual and political scenes took place at that time. In 1931, for the second time in Spanish history (the period of 1868-75 was the first)1 a democratic government was established and a number of women were elected to parliament. For a brief time women were a vital part of this democratic process: the anarchist thinker Federica Montseny was elected to a ministerial post; Victoria Kent, one of the female members of parliament, was made director general of Spanish prisons; a few women writers and activists, like Maria Teresa Leon, Maria Martinez Sierra, the feminist Maria del Maeztu, and the Communist organizer Dolores Ibarruri, achieved literary and political fame. Women's concerns were becoming visible for the first time in Spain. Divorce was legalized, along with abortion, giving women much more control over their lives than they had had in the past. A women's suffrage law was passed in 1931, thanks to the courageous lobbying of the feminist Clara Campoamor. Women were awakening to the possibility that