Women in blue staging the nation: The gendered articulation of the ‘New State’ in early Francoist propaganda documentaries

Abstract

Although previous studies have underlined how Francoist film propaganda during and immediately after the Spanish Civil War aimed to revive Spain’s glorious past, women’s role in national history and state building has barely been analysed. This article explores cinematographic representation of the Sección Femenina (Women’s Section) of the Spanish Falange during the early years of Franco’s regime, when the propaganda was led by the Falangist sector. Through textual analysis, the rituals, symbols and rhetorical strategies deployed in two documentaries are analysed. These documentaries depict the two main public rallies of the Sección Femenina, one in Medina del Campo at the end of the Civil War in 1939 and the other in El Escorial in 1944. A comparative analysis reveals that while the Sección Femenina played an active and progressive role in the articulation of the nation in 1939, by 1944 its function was mainly to represent tradition but outside the spaces where politics were negotiated and were visible