My interest in life under the Franco regime began during a class on 20th century Spanish history that I took when I studied abroad the summer before my junior year of college.
To my naive brain, the II Republic presented Spaniards with a golden opportunity for self-determination (especially for women), and the regime that resulted from the Civil War seemed unbearably cruel. At the same time, a lot of aspects of women's lives under the Franco regime seemed to reflect those of women living in the US in the 1950s (lack of access to bank accounts and loans, the rhetoric and societal expectations surrounding domesticity and motherhood, etc...).
For a few blessed years, Spanish women had the right to vote, and then, thanks to Franco, they didn't until 1976 (Franco supposedly restored suffrage to both men and women in a referendum in 1966, but, like all referendums that occur under a dictatorship, we can't really trust that the measure was free and fairly passed). In fact, the US and Spain had a pretty tense relationship between 1939 and 1953. After all, many in the US had supported the Spanish Civil War, and Franco rhetoric towards democracy and liberalism (hallmarks of US national identity) was particularly scathing during his first decade as Spain's head of state.
I wanted to know how just what made the lives of Spanish women different from those in the US at the time, and also what made them similar. My research led me to gossip, specifically to magazines, press and foreign films aimed at women. Gossip tells us what we value as a society, and it can help women survive rigidly patriarchal cultures. It is often a double-edged sword: policing women's behavior, even as it reveals areas of slippage where women might flout expectations. The film industry, too, can reinforce or undermine societal and gender expectations.
We've recently seen gossip's power in the whisper networks about sexual assault in various industries, and under the Franco regime, gossip and cinema served as a peek into other worlds. Press censorship was fairly stringent, but women's magazines were treated as fluff and not quite as heavily policed. So to survive a dictatorship, you do what you can. Focus on the frivolous, the particularities of everyday life. Escape into another world through a movie or television show.
The good news is that the US is not a dictatorship (yet), and we still can exercise our rights to organize and vote. The bad news is that the current administration bears some striking rhetorical resemblances to authoritarian regimes throughout history, and it will take a lot of survival work until it ends.
To my naive brain, the II Republic presented Spaniards with a golden opportunity for self-determination (especially for women), and the regime that resulted from the Civil War seemed unbearably cruel. At the same time, a lot of aspects of women's lives under the Franco regime seemed to reflect those of women living in the US in the 1950s (lack of access to bank accounts and loans, the rhetoric and societal expectations surrounding domesticity and motherhood, etc...).
For a few blessed years, Spanish women had the right to vote, and then, thanks to Franco, they didn't until 1976 (Franco supposedly restored suffrage to both men and women in a referendum in 1966, but, like all referendums that occur under a dictatorship, we can't really trust that the measure was free and fairly passed). In fact, the US and Spain had a pretty tense relationship between 1939 and 1953. After all, many in the US had supported the Spanish Civil War, and Franco rhetoric towards democracy and liberalism (hallmarks of US national identity) was particularly scathing during his first decade as Spain's head of state.
I wanted to know how just what made the lives of Spanish women different from those in the US at the time, and also what made them similar. My research led me to gossip, specifically to magazines, press and foreign films aimed at women. Gossip tells us what we value as a society, and it can help women survive rigidly patriarchal cultures. It is often a double-edged sword: policing women's behavior, even as it reveals areas of slippage where women might flout expectations. The film industry, too, can reinforce or undermine societal and gender expectations.
We've recently seen gossip's power in the whisper networks about sexual assault in various industries, and under the Franco regime, gossip and cinema served as a peek into other worlds. Press censorship was fairly stringent, but women's magazines were treated as fluff and not quite as heavily policed. So to survive a dictatorship, you do what you can. Focus on the frivolous, the particularities of everyday life. Escape into another world through a movie or television show.
The good news is that the US is not a dictatorship (yet), and we still can exercise our rights to organize and vote. The bad news is that the current administration bears some striking rhetorical resemblances to authoritarian regimes throughout history, and it will take a lot of survival work until it ends.
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