Maternidad, feminidad, sexualidad. Algunos aspectos de las Primeras Jornadas Eugénicas Españolas (Madrid, 1928-Madrid, 1933)

Abstract

This article studies the proceedings of the «Primeras jomadas eugénicas españolas», which took place in the spring of 1933 after an abortive first attempt in 1928. Study of the two volumes of proceedings provides evidence of the ideological and political framework of the medical and juridical debate about sexuality in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1928, the Primo de Rivera dictatorship intervened to prevent the «pornographic indulgence» represented by the series of planned conferences, cutting off at the root social and political debate on an urgent problem in Spanish society: birth control and family planning. The second congress, in the final months of the «bieno reformador» (1931-1933), reveals the abyss that separated even those groups who appeared politically and ideologically closest. Now that sexuality had been removed from the confession booth, the question of the ethical and juridical limits of state intervention could be raised, and there was little hesitation in expressing viewpoints with an unmistakably totalitarian colour, alongside humanist and feminist perspectives, all of them extremely modern. Sexual difference and identity, maternity and sexuality, and female and sexual emancipation, were themes that, by raising the possibility of another sexual order, allowed the participants in the congress to glimpse the contours of a world that was unprecedented and shocking, even for the most progressive.