Women, political agency and counterrevolutionary violence in Spain (1934-1944)

Abstract

This article seeks to review ten years of great political violence in Spain, to determine the role played by women in the counterrevolutionary bloc. Contrary to what had so far been believed, right-wing citizens were not mere supporting players or passive victims of the street riots and the wars that took place between the October 1934 insurrection and the Blue Division’s withdrawal from the Russian front. Adopting a pioneering approach to research sources of a juridical and military nature—such as the high treason and espionage courts, kept with the Causa General in Salamanca, or the SIPM files in Ávila—we will show how these Spanish women became instrumental fifth columnists who collaborated in Franco’s Civil War victory, deploying a specifically female repertoire of struggle and civil disobedience. We will identify jobs undertaken by women in the sabotage and boycott of the Republic and why they were chosen to play this part, noting how gender roles in certain activities proved essential to the rebels.