Inbal Ofer

A ‘New’ Woman for a ‘New’ Spain: The Sección Femenina de la Falange and the Image of the National Syndicalist Woman

The Sección Femenina de la FET was founded in 1934 as part of the Spanish Falange. Starting in April 1937 the SF functioned as the sole secular women’s organization of the Franco regime, employing a network of professional, provincial and local delegates throughout the country. Despite its adherence to a radical right-wing ideology and its functioning within an authoritarian regime membership within the SF offered many women a life of unusual public activism, both professionally and politically. The current paper offers a reading of the SF’s gendered discourse, which takes into consideration the relationship between both its progressive and conservative elements. My contention is that in the case of the SF one cannot talk of a model of ‘old-fashioned’ femininity, which was replaced over the years by a model of ‘modern’ femininity, but rather about modernist and conservative elements, which existed in the organizational rhetoric side by side from the beginning. Within this context the ‘modern’ elements were highly significant and their definition was more or less constant as long as the messages were aimed at a population of a specific socio-economic standing and education.

Mobility of ‘the defeated’: internal migration and social advancement in a post-civil war society

Abstract The article examines the relationship between the movement across space and social mobility by analyzing the conditions for internal migration in Spain during the years of the Franco regime. Specifically it reflects on the ways in which migration from the countryside into self-constructed shantytowns in the greater Madrid area was perceived by migrants themselves, and on the strategies that enabled migration to be carried through. By focusing on the challenges that internal migration posed to the spatial practices and mobility regimes of the dictatorship, the article also explores the relationship between spatial movement, social mobility and political repression within the context of a nationalist dictatorship.

Becoming Brigadistas: Jewish Volunteers from Palestine in the Spanish Civil War:

Nearly two hundred men and women left Mandatory Palestine between the years 1936–1938 in order to defend the Second Spanish Republic. Despite the expressions of solidarity with the Spanish Republic, most of the political parties in the Jewish Yishuv were against sending youth from Palestine to join the International Brigades. The goal of strengthening the Jewish presence in Palestine was given priority over and above international solidarity or the anti-Fascist struggle. Therefore, most of the volunteers were Jewish members of the Palestine Communist Party. This article relies on autobiographical writings, individual testimonies and personal correspondence, analysed here for the first time. It is here that the private voices of the Jewish men and women who left Palestine in order to fight against the nationalist rebellion in Spain ring more clearly. The paper examines the history of these Jewish volunteers, their motivations, and the process that they went through from the time they left Palestine until they became active members of the International Brigades. As Communists, most volunteers who left Palestine to fight in Spain tended to emphasize the international solidarity of the working class and similar universalistic motivations. The idea of affirming their Jewish identity was alien to them. Reading their letters and testimonies, however, it becomes clear that their ethnic identity as Jews was certainly a key factor in their decision to risk their lives in the Spanish fratricide.

Catholicism and Citizenship Under the Franco Dictatorship

This chapter looks at the contribution of transnational Catholic networks to the recovery and reconstruction of citizenship within the dictatorial context of Franco’s Spain. The scarcely-studied contribution of nonconformist Catholics to the revival of citizenship under Franco was fomented above all by a transnational phenomenon: the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965. This chapter explores how Catholic activists redefined their religious leadership in terms of social and political activism. They used the cultural, economic and symbolic resources emanating from their position in order to empower their communities and diffuse models of participative democracy not only in their churches, but in much wider circles as among students and workers.

Professional Citizenship in the Workplace: Teachers’ Civic Initiatives

This chapter focuses on the social movements of teachers in order to explore the implications of their professional struggles for the construction of new forms of citizenship. The chapter shows that the teachers’ movements adopted strategies that were intimately connected to the essence of their work. These practices extended their obligations and rights not only as professionals, but also as citizens. By perceiving their work in the schools as part of a struggle for social rights, they were turning it into a meaningful civic act. Their negotiation of their professionalism through the reaffirmation of their knowledge, the enhancing of their autonomy, and the extension of their ideals of service strengthened their ties to the community as professionals responsible for the weakest sectors of society.

Citizenship and Democracy in the Spanish Countryside

This chapter analyzes two key issues related to the interaction between local mobilization and national change. First, it deals with what was happening in most Spanish towns and villages while the main (national) treaties were being signed in Madrid. Second, it deals with what life was like in these towns and villages during the period when there was a democratic government at the national level (since April 1977), but local democratic elections had not yet been held. Focusing on these issues, the chapter provides an analysis of the process of democratization in Southern Spain, paying attention to the building process of Social Citizenship. Three towns serve as case studies for this chapter: Osuna (Sevilla), Montefrio (Granada) and Carcabuey (Cordoba).

The Right to the City and the Right to the State: Neighbourhood Associations and the Negotiation of Citizenship

This chapter analyses the role played by squatters’ associations in shaping notions of entitlement and citizenship in Spain: from the final years of the Franco dictatorship and through the period of democratic transition and consolidation. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the case of Orcasitas—one of the largest shantytowns that formed on the outskirts of the city of Madrid in the mid-1950s. The patterns of squatting and of community life in Orcasitas were representative of hundreds of other shantytowns all over Spain. The chapter shows that as the struggle for urban renovation merged into a process of political transition, local experiences of self-management and grass-roots activism interacted with an evolving discourse on democratic citizenship and with other forms of collective mobilization.

Citizen Building During the Spanish Transition to Democracy: Between the Spanish Debate and the Social Movements Debate

The concluding chapter strives to show how the four case studies represent different dimensions of the same phenomenon. Using contemporary new social movements’ theories, it attempts to demonstrate how the Spanish case was both a national and international phenomenon that illustrates how the cycle of mobilization that swept across the west, from the 1960s, introduced changes into the meaning and practices of citizenship. It also ties these changes to current social mobilization, which seems to reemploy them not only in Spain, but in other parts of the world that share the political aspirations of the Spanish “15 m” movement.

Class, Space and Urban Development: Madrid 1860-1936

The three books under review in this section constitute part of the work of a research group titled Space, Society and Culture in the Contemporary Age (Espacio, Sociedad y Cultura en la Edad contemporánea) which formed at the Complutense University of Madrid in 2006. The group, directed by Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal and Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, focuses on the history of the Spanish capital and its metropolitan area from demographic, economic, social, political and scientific perspectives. The reviewed books span the years 1860-1936: a period in which the Spanish capital made its progressive transformation into a modern metropolis. Together they explore a variety of social, technological and demographic developments that stood at the heart of the massive urbanization and modernization processes undergone by Spanish society during the years of the Restoration and the Second Republic. The two monographs by Santiago de Miguel Salanova and Luis Díaz Simón confront these changes from a highly localized perspective. The first monograph explores the development of the capital’s center from the approval of the urban reform plan of the Puerta del Sol (1862) and through the construction of the Gran Vía (19101936). The second monograph focuses on the “lower” neighborhoods to the south of the capital’s center where the majority of Madrid’s working class population concentrated in the years prior to the development of the Madrid’s southern Extension. Both monographs draw on a variety of historical sources such as reports by the local press; the different urban development and construction plans that were debated and implemented in the capital; as well as on the Municipal Census of Inhabitants of the City of Madrid for the years 1860, 1880, 1905 and 1930. They complement several

The Concept of Mobility in Migration Processes: The Subjectivity of Moving towards a Better Life

This chapter considers the concept of mobility within the debate about internal migration processes in Francoist Spain. It examines migration into the greater Madrid area starting in the early 1950s, and specifically focuses on those newcomers who settled in the massive triangle of barrios chabolistas, which formed on the southeastern outskirts of the capital. The main claim is that different notions of mobility greatly conditioned the outlook of both the authorities and the migrants on the process of internal migration as a social phenomenon. Such notions interacted with more general discourses on modernization, economic progress, and morality in Francoist Spain. The regime viewed mobility –whether spatial or social– as a destabilizing force that could easily escape its control. These perceptions influenced its outlook on the migrants themselves, and conditioned the policies towards them. Many migrants, on the other hand, perceived spatial mobility as a way of escaping a limiting environment. This view helped them to keep on a project that during its initial phases often worsened their living conditions. By examining the different interpretations and values assigned to the concept of mobility, the author attempts to better understand the politics of location undertaken by the migrants themselves, and the ways in which the authorities reacted to them.