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Hepworth, Andrea
2023.
Representing Gender-Based Violence.
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207.
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WARTIME AND POST-WAR RAPE IN FRANCO'S SPAIN
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2021
Abstract
By examining the experience of rape in Spain in the 1930s and 1940s, this article explains how the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship dramatically increased the likelihood of women becoming victims of sexual assault. Contrary to what historians often assume, this phenomenon was not the result of rape being deliberately used as a ‘weapon of war’ or as a blunt method of political repression against women. The upsurge in sexual violence was a by-product of structural transformations in the wartime and dictatorial contexts, and it was the direct consequence, rather than the instrument, of the violent imposition of a fascist-inspired regime. Using archival evidence from numerous Spanish archives, the article historicizes rape in a wider cultural, legal, and social context and reveals the essential albeit ambiguous political nature of both wartime and post-war rape. The experience of rape was mostly shaped not by repression but structural factors such as ruralization and social hierarchization, demographic upheavals, exacerbation of violent masculinity models, the proliferation of weapons, and the influence of fascist and national-Catholic ideologies. Rape became an expression of the nature of power and social and gender relations in Franco's regime.
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Footnotes
For their research assistance and/or their comments on drafts of this article, the author wishes to thank the following historians: Ángela Cenarro, Miguel Alonso Ibarra, Helena Andrés, Una McIlvenna, Holly Wilson, Miguel Palou, José María García Márquez, Juan Carlos Collado, Mercedes Peñalba. This research was partially supported by the project PGC2018–097232-B-C21 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE).
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