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WOMEN AND SPANISH FASCISM -- THE WOMEN'S SECTION OF THE FALANGE 1934-1959

4.  Loyalty, influence and moral authority: SF 1936-1949

The early post-war period and 1940s were characterized by the most extreme poverty and political repression. Mass executions of the enemies of the regime followed the end of the Civil War, the suicide rate rose, and as many as 200,000 are estimated to have died of hunger and as a result of the government’s policies. [1] Daily survival was the priority of most people, made harder by the autarkic policies of the regime, which drove down wages, created massive shortages and paved the way for a widespread and long-lasting black market in essential food supplies. The ‘years of hunger’ were also characterized by the rapid escalation in fortunes of those who had been on the winning side of the war. The other face of autarky was the power it gave to the social elites, bankers, landowners and industrialists who benefited from low wage levels and the political control of the working population. It was in this climate of political violence, desperate poverty and institutionalized corruption that SF was charged with intervening into the lives of the female population.

In doing so, it faced two political realities. Even though much of its work was in welfare and regeneration activities, all its programmes were underpinned with the aim of supporting the regime. This chapter contrasts SF’s more public role as propagandist for the regime with its effectiveness as a stabilizer and control mechanism in these years. It assesses the extent to which SF was able to maintain credibility in these circumstances and how far its collaboration with the authorities was a bar to its acceptance by the wider population. The second factor in its effectiveness was SF’s ability to initiate and maintain programmes in the face of the declining influence of the Falange within the regime. The Decree of Unification in April 1937 had established it as the official party of State, but at the expense of its doctrinal radicalism. Now renamed the National Movement, the Falange was further diluted at the end of the Civil War and after the Second World War and no longer had a single political agenda. The chapter is also concerned with how SF consolidated its position in the regime in these circumstances. It contrasts Pilar Primo de Rivera’s defence of Falangism and her assertiveness in the face of opposition or competition to SF’s programmes with the organization’s more usual stance of pragmatism and political non-involvement. Relatedly, this chapter examines how SF programmes were presented as compatible with Francoism, the organization as beyond criticism and its members as unthreatening to male politicians.

In fact, although SF quickly proclaimed itself as fully supporting the Nationalist cause in July 1936, Pilar had long been critical of the direction of the Falange after her brother’s imprisonment in March of that year. It had a following among the working classes, particularly in the Valladolid area and also among the wealthier and upper classes, predominantly of Madrid and Seville. The provisional replacement for José Antonio, Manuel Hedilla, came from the former background and his leadership was strongly opposed by a group composed of the latter. These were the Falangists who had been closest to José Antonio and felt bound to his leadership style and privileged social background. Known as the legitimists, they included his personal friends and family members. Within this group, Pilar was a powerful figure and after she returned to Nationalist Spain, her flat in Salamanca became the focal point for political debate and criticism of the Hedilla leadership.

She voiced even stronger doubts following José Antonio’s death in November 1936, when Franco moved to take over the leadership of the Falange for himself. Pilar and the other legitimists opposed this and in the leadership struggle that ensued, came into serious conflict with Hedilla. Both they and Hedilla were subsequently manoeuvred into having to accept Franco as the overall leader and the Decree of Unification. Although Pilar was away from Salamanca at the height of the crisis, it is hard to take at face value her assertion that she was not involved in the events there: ‘As I was not there at the time I cannot judge the situation but I can say that in the rearguard of the war, it was a serious complication.’ [2]

She accompanied Dionisio Ridruejo when he went to protest about the Unification to Franco. [3] Within a short space of time, however, she was persuaded by Franco’s brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, that a unified command under Franco was the only hope of implanting the teachings and doctrine of José Antonio to any degree. As Paul Preston has said, it is difficult to know whether she believed Serrano Suñer or whether acceptance was a wholly pragmatic decision. [4] But acceptance of Franco brought immediate benefits. Pilar was appointed as first member of the Falange National Council, the consultative body set up in October 1937, ensuring that SF would have a voice in the limited opportunities for participation offered by the regime. [5] However, this was arguably small compensation for the changes made to SF, whose departments were restructured to spread the responsibility for nursing, female youth activities and welfare to other interested parties. From having autonomy in all these areas, SF was no longer the main player.

The decision to relocate nursing was an acknowledgement that bodies other than SF had contributed substantially to the work in hospitals. SF had provided emergency nurse training in the war and coordinated volunteer help to the front. Many of its recruits worked in military hospitals alongside conventionally trained nurses and those in the religious orders. But nursing was not an exclusive SF preserve and much work at the fronts had been done by the Traditionalist women’s groups, the margaritas. From April 1937, all its members working locally were brought under SF leadership. Less palatable for Pilar, however, was the elevation of a margarita to national leader of a new government department. Henceforth, it was to be a separate section of the Falange, Fronts and Hospitals (Frentes y Hospitales) not SF, in charge of the operation.

Pilar’s response to the changes made at Unification was an early illustration of her ability to play a double game. SF members were told to ‘come fearlessly and unreservedly’ to Unification, with the warning that discord would allow the enemies of Falange to infiltrate ‘with the cunning of their old style of politics, looking for gaps where they can get in and order us about’. [6] She exhorted margaritas to join SF but appears to have made little effort to ensure they did. [7] Although margaritas were placed where possible in SF posts of responsibility, Pilar complained constantly that the Traditionalist women did not cooperate. [8] The bad feeling was mutual. In the memory of one margarita: ‘The Women’s Section of the Falange was given every sort of help to develop and expand…. We wanted to play a positive role in the postwar. Our suspicion that we were deliberately held down proved justified in the end. We were tolerated only while the war lasted.’ [9]

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Pilar acted as if SF still had overall control of nursing. A conference report written months after its official restructuring described SF’s continuing work in hospitals and in the laundries section at the battle fronts with no mention of either Fronts and Hospitals or the margaritas within them. [10]

The same strategy was used when, as a further consequence of Unification, SF’s Youth Wing was amalgamated into the Falangist youth organization. The only indication that a change had taken place was Pilar’s renaming of the youngest members as margaritas. In every other way, she continued as if nothing had happened. Diagrams of the Youth Wing’s structure presented at the 1938 national conference made no mention of SF’s new hierarchical dependence. Even when further legislation was introduced in 1940 which spelled out the subordination of Pilar to the overall (male) head of youth, SF did not advertise the fact. [11] Instead, Pilar constantly stressed the need to keep her youth members quite separate from the boys’ equivalent organization: ‘Our training does not have the same features as the boys’ section; it does not share its element of pre-military education but it does work effectively on the girls’ youth groups.’ [12]

Pilar undoubtedly believed that girls’ interests would be better served in this way, but there were convincing contrary views. Both the head of the Youth Front, José Antonio Elola and the SF national youth leader, Julia Alcántara, thought that youth activities would retain more of their original spirit if they were organized jointly. But Pilar’s tenacity and willingness to play a waiting game paid off. Julia Alcántara’s difference of opinion with SF was interpreted as personal spite and the youth section was fully restored to SF in 1945.

Pilar’s third battle was the bitterest, because it involved not only loss of power but personal rivalry. A welfare operation had been started in Valladolid at the beginning of the Civil War by Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, widow of the joint founder of the JONS, Onésimo Redondo. [13] Mercedes did not have the political pedigree of Pilar but was none the less a prominent figure in her own right. Onésimo had been an important colleague of José Antonio and Mercedes had been on social terms with key Falangists such as the writer and poet, Dionisio Ridruejo. But her main political connections were with the working-class Falangist groups of Valladolid, which had supported the leadership of Manuel Hedilla. There were both social and political differences between these Falangists and the legitimists around Pilar. It was the working-class base of Falangism which had been associated with acts of violence and a generally more strident approach to campaigning in the pre-war Falange. Onésimo’s co-leader of the JONS, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, had been a founding member of Falange and one of its initial three-man leadership team, dropped from his post because of differences with José Antonio. His ambition for Falange was of a mass organization, which as Sheelagh Ellwood has described, was 'capable of channelling the anti-bourgeois and patriotic energies of “people of all kinds”’. [14] It was in direct contrast to José Antonio’s vision of a more selective party, where activists would ‘act as the mailed fist of a small, “poetic” elite’. [15] Mercedes’ protagonism in Valladolid may well have appeared to Pilar as a re-opening of these factions in the Falange, particularly as she had been deputizing as SF coordinator for the entire Nationalist zone. By the time Pilar arrived in Salamanca, Mercedes had officially started the Social Aid organization (Auxilio Social) by opening a dining-room in Valladolid, fund-raising and getting the permission of the military authorities to extend the initiative to Bilbao. [16]

Initially, Pilar gave no signs of resenting what had been done in her absence. According to Mercedes, her main concern when she arrived in Salamanca was the welfare of her brother. [17] But she did officially acknowledge the activities of Social Aid at SF’s Salamanca conference in January 1937. However, she was selective with the information she gave and talked of Social Aid as if it were a component of SF. Mercedes, who was at the conference, took exception to Social Aid being presented as part of the SF war effort, given that the previous month it had been officially sanctioned as a separate department of the Falange.

Political differences between the two women were underlined by their views of how the welfare operation should be managed. Mercedes modelled her ideas largely on the Nazi welfare organization and envisaged a proactive Spanish equivalent, at the forefront of social and health policies for Nationalist Spain. [18] The only volunteers at her disposal in the autumn of 1936 were the members of SF, who were willing but untrained. [19] By December 1936, she had established a hierarchy in which salaried provincial and local departmental heads ran the operation, helped by specialist staff. It was stipulated that the latter, at least at provincial level, should be men. [20] In Mercedes’ vision of a paid team of male professionals, women would play their part but rarely at a managerial level.

Pilar, on the other hand, saw welfare as an integral part of SF work, able to be managed in the same way, within existing structures. Her vision was of a national network of elites, trained in SF academies to enable them to direct untrained volunteers and oversee all programmes. Unlike the employees of Social Aid, their work would bring no financial advantage, and while they would work in collaboration with health professionals such as doctors, it would not be as underlings.

Frustration grew as Social Aid received increasing media attention and Mercedes was featured as prominently as Pilar in the Falangist press. [21] The situation came to a head in 1937 when Mercedes put forward a plan for increasing the number of staff in Social Aid’s institutions. She had observed that fewer volunteers were coming forward than in the first months of the war. Her proposed solution was a compulsory female work scheme as an equivalent to military service. The idea found favour with Franco and the initial decree for the women’s social service scheme bore Mercedes’ name and that of Social Aid. [22] Predictably, Pilar declared herself totally opposed, believing that SF alone should be in charge of the mobilization of the female population.

The dispute continued through the war and was not resolved until December 1939 when Franco signed over all responsibility for social service to SF. In the recollection of Mercedes, she and Pilar had much the same vision of what social service should consist of and the disagreement was over its control, not the detail. However, she would have liked to see a different model for training and had sketched out a plan for women from the country to share a three-month residential experience with women from the city. Purpose-built premises had been designed and plans were at an advanced stage when SF won its argument and the entire social service project was ceded to it. Pilar’s objections had been so strongly and persistently voiced that the Secretary-General of the Movement, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, rang up Mercedes and told her she must give in to Pilar. [23]

The star of Mercedes was rapidly waning. Even after her loss of social service from the Social Aid organization, it seemed she was a thorn in the side of more powerful political opponents, namely the legitimist group around Pilar Primo de Rivera and Ramón Serrano Suñer. This was in part because of her decision to remarry. Her future husband, Javier Martínez de Bedoya, was Director-General for Social Welfare and worked with her in Social Aid. He had been a member of the JONS, a friend and colleague of Onésimo and was closely associated with the Valladolid wing of the Falange. Mercedes’ marriage was interpreted as an act of disloyalty to her late husband and, by extension, to the Nationalist cause. Martínez de Bedoya was in any case on bad terms with the legitimists, believing them to be to blame for his failure in securing a ministerial appointment. [24]

At the Social Aid December conference of 1939, Ramón Serrano Suñer delivered a speech criticizing both its objectives and management style. By May the following year, Mercedes and Martínez de Bedoya had been replaced, with Social Aid emerging as an organization with considerably less independence. Perhaps Martínez de Bedoya’s assessment of the situation was right: ‘Our wedding went down very badly with “the Falange of Madrid”; their anti-J.O.N.S. allergy broke out again and they were not content with the blow they had dealt me; now they were after Mercedes’ head.’ [25]

Following Serrano Suñer’s attack, the Falangist press accused Social Aid of being ‘an institution of scroungers’ and a ‘system of handouts’ (‘institución de sopistas’, ‘sistema de la sopa boba’). [26] What the effects of cooperation between Pilar and Mercedes would have produced can only be guessed at but in the memory of one of her staff, as soon as Mercedes left the scene, Social Aid dissolved ‘like sugar in water’. [27]

Having eliminated her major rival, Pilar was only diverted from SF business when she perceived that Falangism was losing ground or under threat from other sectors in the regime. On these occasions, she put her weight behind the legitimist cause, arguing for the maintenance of the doctrine of José Antonio. This was the case in 1941, when the National Movement was seeking to extend its influence in the government. In response to pressure, Franco had appointed a Falangist, José Antonio Girón, to be Minister of Labour, but counterbalanced this by giving the post of Minister of the Interior to a military associate, Colonel Valentín Galarza. The move was regarded as insulting by Falangists, particularly as it was followed by further government appointments of non-Falangists. There followed a highly critical article in the Falangist press and the resignation of several provincial Falangist officials. [28] The affair sparked off incidents of civil unrest, awaking the ongoing tensions between the competing power groups of the Falange and the military. Pilar and her brother Miguel presented their resignations in protest at Franco’s perceived abandonment of joseantoniano principles. ‘I cannot carry on’, she wrote, ‘working on something which we are making people believe is the Falange and which in truth is not.’ [29] The resignations were retracted only when Franco made two additional appointments of Falangists to his reshuffled Cabinet. [30]

A broader threat to Falangism was posed with the Law of Succession of 1947. Of the four major pieces of legislation passed before the end of the 1940s to legitimize the regime, this was the only one to which SF reacted. Under this legislation Franco declared Spain a kingdom and gave himself the right to choose his own royal successor, who would be required to uphold the fundamental principles of the regime. [31] The Falange had always been anti-monarchical and as one of its songs declared: ‘We don’t want idiot kings governing us. What we want and what we shall get is the syndical state.’ [32] As Sheelagh Ellwood has said, the Law of Succession was confirmation that Franco would not allow the Falange to be the primary element in the regime. [33] Coming ten years after the Decree of Unification, this was the second severe blow to SF’s vision of ‘God, Spain and its National-syndicalist Revolution’ and in the memory of a past mando, caused more debate in SF than the end of the Second World War. [34] For Pilar, political doctrine was not a negotiable commodity. She had said two years previously: ‘The terrible danger for the Falange is not that it will disappear but that it will become deformed … regarding doctrine one may or may not believe in it, but what one cannot do is amend it.’ [35]

But rhetoric was worthless without support from Franco. SF’s existence was built round the legitimacy of the regime under his leadership and this was the greater consideration. Pilar said little publicly about the succession but discussed it endlessly with her staff, particularly the provincial mandos. Her eventual decision not to offer even token opposition was based on the rationale that the event was far-off. The recognition that Franco needed a successor and that a monarchy was preferable to a Republic outweighed the serious concerns about the Borbonic succession. There were hopes, too, that after the law had been passed, some sort of intermediary solution would be found. The consensus was that on the basis of what Franco had achieved already, he deserved SF’s support. [36] The national and provincial mandos accepted it unanimously and instructed members at local level to vote in favour in the referendum of 6 July 1947. As in 1937, pragmatism prevailed.

Another consideration was doubtless the knowledge that SF’s ability to operate effectively depended primarily on its ability to attract funding. It had a base budget from the National Movement but most of its education and welfare programmes were funded either locally from civil governors or directly from ministries. This extra finance was in the form of agreements negotiated with government departments, by which SF was financed directly for fulfilling certain parts of agreed programmes. [37] This was doubly necessary from 1945 when the SF’s budget, in common with all departments of the National Movement, was severely cut back. [38]

Person-to-person contacts were therefore of great importance for Pilar and national mandos, who had to argue their case for funding directly with ministers. There was no official channel for them to meet politicians: the procedure was one of informal approach, including, at times, reaching a minister by befriending his wife. When a proposal had been agreed by SF’s national team, the member of the specialist staff (regidora central) concerned would contact the relevant minister or civil governor by letter. If the timing coincided with the national SF conference, all delegates would hear of the letter and its contents. The letter was followed by a personal visit by the regidora, often accompanied by Pilar or her deputy to negotiate a deal. [39] Negotiation and persuasion were the cornerstones of SF’s dealings with its all-male colleagues, a point confirmed by a former member who says ironically that ‘we believed in principle that it was better to talk than to come to blows’. [40] The same principle worked at an even less formal level, where Pilar used every opportunity to invite ministers to national conferences, to speak at La Mota and to be guest lecturers at the SF cultural centres (Círculos Medina). Reciprocating, SF staff saw the need to accept and offer hospitality to civil governors in the course of their duties in the provinces.

With Franco himself, Pilar is said to have had very frequent, informal contact and a contemporary believes he talked more to her than to the Secretary-General of the Movement. [41] SF had no scheduled access to the Caudillo, but Pilar asked for an audience every time she wanted to discuss politics. Typically, this would be on the occasions when government seemed to be acting against Falangists, as for example in 1942 when Franco condemned a Falangist to death following his part in an attack on military personnel. [42] She met Franco frequently to discuss the attitudes and opinions of ministers, as evidenced in their response in parliament, all with the object of enlisting their support for SF projects.

A change of government was always the basis for a discussion with Pilar, following which the regidoras centrales were called to a meeting and the contents of the interview with Franco relayed. As part of the briefing, Pilar instructed them on the official line to take, particularly with regard to their colleagues in the provinces. It was here, in the national offices of SF in Almagro [36], that confidences were shared about the realities of the regime and in particular, the likely effect of newly appointed ministers on its programmes. [43]

Past members are unanimous in their belief that Franco had a particular affection for SF which went beyond approval for its work. This included a high regard for Pilar, an attitude which seems mutual. The less than energetic attempts by Franco at the beginning of the war to rescue José Antonio from Alicante jail appear to have been interpreted by her as wholly positive and contemporaries have confirmed that she attached no blame to Franco for their failure. [44] The mutual regard was doubtless based on the carefully measured requests made by Pilar, all of which were incontrovertibly in support of the pillars of the regime and ruffled no male feathers -- the family, religion, the health of the nation and development of rural Spain. Even where an issue had the potential for being contentious (such as Pilar’s complaints that the regime was discriminating against girls in the unequal provision of female places in sanatoria) and the perennial dissatisfaction with the designated budget, there was no challenge to underlying principles or doctrine. [45] On Franco’s part, he officiated at the opening of the national schools and visited them all subsequently, always presiding at any award ceremony. He is said to have enjoyed eating with SF staff and his head of security once remarked to a mando that it was only in the SF schools that he was not required to taste the food on Franco’s behalf. [46]

Amid the worries about the declining support for Falangism, the 1940s also brought the greatest opportunities for SF to show its loyalty. In July 1941 Spanish troops went in support of Hitler’s offensive on the Russian Front. [47] The Blue Division, so named because many were Falangists, were volunteers from the regular army and the Falange who believed that Spain should enter the Second World War on the side of the Axis. SF immediately aligned itself with the anti-communist rhetoric expressed and saw a chance to rekindle the patriotic fervour of its response to 18 July. It put its full weight behind the patriotic effort, with frequent articles in Revista ‘Y’ exhorting members to knit gloves and balaclavas and by organizing a penfriend service to soldiers. [48] In particular, the making up and sending of parcels -- a symbolic act of female solidarity -- was a propaganda opportunity for the organization. And given the food shortages and general hardship of 1941, the scale of the contents was also a statement of members’ personal commitment. [49]

However, the most public statement of solidarity with the Blue Division was undoubtedly SF’s sending of nurses to the Russian Front. Confirming the connection between service in Russia and the Nationalist cause, SF only accepted applications from members who had nursed in the Civil War. An SF nurse who volunteered has confirmed the patriotic fervour among the women and remembers the farewell at Madrid station as ‘an incredible experience’. [50]

With the Blue Division’s recall, SF never again had such a platform to proclaim the centrality of Falangism to the legitimacy of Francoism. From 1943 it concentrated on local and provincial activities and projects which became, indirectly, the successes of the regime. The mass rally of 1944 in El Escorial was the last occasion when it could set out its stall nationally and present its activities as a political statement. It was a four-day event, a combination of public displays, marches, speeches and static exhibitions attended by 15,000 SF adult and youth members and a number of speakers, including Franco. [51] The tone of the literature set out the intent of the occasion:

The rally is not meant to be a comfortable experience or a pleasure trip; it is a material sacrifice imposed by the Falange for us to increase our spiritual strength. So we shall think the less of any comrade grumbling about the lack of facilities, because it will show that she still does not understand what Falange stands for. Comrades will have enough food and sleep but nothing else. Life is a militia, to be lived in a pure spirit of service and sacrifice. [52]

The spirit of sacrifice is confirmed in the memory of a member who attended and whose food ration supplied by SF provincial office for the train journey to El Escorial (which took sixty hours) was two hard-boiled eggs and a small loaf. On arrival, after drill exercises for two hours in the sun and a compulsory sight-seeing visit to the El Escorial monastery, many of her travelling companions fainted from hunger. [53]

There were no more rallies, but SF played a continuing role as propagandist for the regime through its Foreign Service. This department of SF had been started during the Civil War to make contact with expatriates and sympathizers abroad. Foreign Service staff members entertained visiting dignitaries and provided a uniformed presence on ceremonial occasions. These low-key activities were sufficiently unthreatening for the regime to allow it to continue after the end of the Second World War, in contrast to the male Foreign Service, which was swiftly disbanded. But in 1948, SF’s Foreign Service, on its own initiative, organized a tour to Argentina and Brazil of its best choir and dance teams (coros y danzas) to perform at embassies and cultural associations. The tour was financed through SF existing budgets and was apparently well received: there were favourable press reports and ministers began to appreciate that SF could contribute to foreign relations by rekindling feelings of patriotism among Spaniards in exile. [54] What had started out as a cultural event had also become a political triumph. In Pilar’s mind, there was no doubt that the journey had established the joseantoniano understanding of Spanish nationhood (hispanidad). [55] As she told the SF conference in 1949:

We have made contact with the peoples of America because their lives are so important to us. Together we create hispanidad, that is to say we place more importance on eternal values than on the materialistic world which is in darkness. Furthermore, let us not limit the concept of unity of destiny to the regions of our nation. We should extend it to all nations of the globe which recognize the superiority of spiritual, eternal values. [56]

Judging folklore a safe outlet to express regional loyalties, Pilar projected the wearing of local costume and the singing of folk songs as contributing to pride in the diversity of the nation. As she told members shortly before the end of the Civil War, this was the key to regaining national unity:

When Catalans can sing the songs of Castile; when in Castile they know what sardanas are and that the chistu is a musical instrument [57] … when the songs of Galicia are known in the Levant; when fifty or sixty thousand voices join in the same song, then we shall have achieved unity among the people and the lands of Spain. And what happens with music, happens as well in the countryside and on the land; the land which gives us bread and oil, wine and honey. Spain would be incomplete geographically if it were just made up of the north or the south. Spaniards, too, are incomplete if they are attached to just one area of the land. [58]

The assertions of former members that there was no political motive in their encouragement of songs in Catalan, Basque and Galician cannot be taken seriously. In an attempt to prevent separatist aspirations, there was a ban in public places and in print of peninsular languages other than Spanish. The sardana, regarded since the beginning of the century as a statement of Catalan nationalism, was included in the SF repertoire, and songs in the vernacular were published with no repercussions from government. It was an obvious way in which SF could identify its doctrine with the principles of the Francoist State.

A further area in which SF could exercise social control was in its rural regeneration programme. The early Falange had made a commitment to rural communities, recognizing the countryside as ‘the permanent seed-bed of Spain’. [59] The Francoist Labour Charter of 1938 endorsed support for rural areas by promising protection for artisans and a small piece of land to peasant families. [60] Courses to train country women in rural industries had been started during the Civil War and by 1950 had been extended to all regions. [61] From 1944, SF’s department of Town and Country developed rural employment opportunities in conjunction with the Syndical Organization. One of its sections concentrated on recouping and teaching crafts such as lace-making and raffia work and then providing village women with materials and a market outlet. Craft instructors also worked in the department’s agricultural schools and had a role in the travelling schools, which visited the neediest areas of the country.

The scale of the project was ambitious. Forgotten local crafts were reintroduced and in the new villages being built, SF advised on schemes that would make best use of local resources. [62] SF also operated with help from the Prado Museum in Madrid. Funded by the Ministry of Labour, seventy workshops were set up to train country women in specialist embroidery work, recreating designs that had survived only in museum exhibitions and old books. A team of specialists advised on authenticity and the goods were sold in provincial exhibitions, Medina Circles and even the State-run hotel chain, the paradores. The cost of materials was subsidized by the Ministry of Labour and the scheme was eventually incorporated into the State holding company, the National Institute of Industry. [63] The schemes fitted well with SF’s idealized view of rural society and to her members, Pilar presented them as proof of women’s ability to change lives:

With your efforts, the villages of Spain will be cleaner, happier, more educated; through your efforts, children will sing the old songs of your native soil in the squares and on the threshing-floors; … through your efforts women will again weave at their looms as they put their children to bed and make the meal for when their husband comes home. [64]

The public image that SF was able to convey via its coros y danzas and its rural regeneration programme was wholly positive, an important factor in its acceptance with conservative and monarchist sectors of the regime. The poor state of SF finances may also have helped the organization indirectly to gain public credibility. Economy measures were built into the ‘way of being’ and SF was run with the make-and-mend mentality of the early post-war years, making a virtue of austerity and implicitly endorsing the regime’s autarkic policies. For Pilar, SF -- its possessions as well as its organization -- was the patrimony of Spain, to be treated with respect, preserved and used appropriately for the glory of the nation. She told conference delegates in 1947 to ‘take more care of each piece of furniture, each book, each pot, each uniform than if it were your own … everything that gets broken or damaged for no reason means a reduction in the activities of the SF’. [65] In every detail, the daily running of SF was testimony to this doctrine and it gave an official minimum service life for each of its fittings, furniture and articles of clothing. [66] Constant underfunding was part of the equation of Falangism with the near impossible and Pilar told conference delegates in 1948 that they must work the miracle of the loaves and fishes with SF’s money. [67] SF was meticulous in its accounting and behaved as if questions of money belonged to activities of a lower order. The SF, paupers in the service of Spain, would be judged on their works. [68]

The context of this moral rectitude in the early post-war period was a society in which corruption and black marketeering were widespread. The widespread poverty that its workers encountered in rural areas was an inevitable consequence of the low wage levels and poor working conditions imposed by employers and landowners. [69] Franco’s policy of attempted economic self-sufficiency based on State controls of industry and agriculture was directly responsible for the widespread and severe food shortages affecting the civil population in both town and country up to the 1950s. However effective at a local level, SF’s welfare and nutrition campaigns could not disguise the fact that the State food ration cards met dietary requirements for only three days of the week nor that many Spaniards literally starved to death. [70] Obtaining food on the black market (estraperlo) soon became essential for survival, however loud the official protests about the evils of the black marketeers. SF was in the curious position of administering relief to the poor and nutrition advice and teaching to the female population while its male counterparts in the National Movement were themselves responsible for the most institutionalized of the black market operations. [71]

SF’s attitude to estraperlo was ambiguous in the extreme. Officially, it lent its voice to the public condemnation of the black marketeers, reflected by vitriolic articles in the Falangist daily paper, Arriba and its own Revista ‘Y’. [72] To blame were ‘the enemies of Spain’, which included ‘reds’ and Falangists unworthy of the name who, in Pilar’s words ‘are now in our midst but who left us alone when the wine at our table was vinegar and the bread was hard’. [73] Estraperlo was presented as a crime perpetrated by individuals trying to cheat the State, never as a fraud so institutionalized that it had become an essential part of the economy. [74] Nonetheless, SF did acknowledge its existence, offering housewives recipes that could be made ‘without ration cards or black market’ [75] and tried to combat it. In the memory of a national mando, each provincial branch instructed local leaders in combination with the local divulgadora to organize information campaigns and report suspicions to the mayor or civil governor. [76] But given the undoubted collusion of authorities, it must be assumed that such protests were largely symbolic. This tacit acceptance of estraperlo was consistent with SF’s usual stance of conciliation and practical help within a framework of total faith in its political masters. For SF, alleviating the poverty and building up relationships in the community was seen as more productive than informing the authorities. [77]

SF programmes in the early post-war years totally supported the principles of autarky. The rationale behind its domestic training courses was that successful domestic management would help the national economy. Examples of practical help were the numerous articles in the organization’s journal on the subject of good housekeeping. From August 1939 articles such as ‘Autarky and you’ and ‘The spiritual value of money’ in Revista ‘Y’ explained the principles of the circulation of money and how good housekeeping contributed to national prosperity. [78] These were accompanied by advice on how to make raffia shoes and fur coats, as well as suggestions for new food sources, such as beekeeping and even the cultivation of frogs. [79] Making economies was a fundamental political concern as well as a pragmatic necessity.

However, as in the case of estraperlo, SF’s principles of good housekeeping were in marked contrast to activities within the National Movement, characterized as José Luis Delgado has said, by ‘the asphyxiating control of bureaucracy and multiple administrative irregularities’. [80] There certainly seemed no possibility of personal gain within SF, where a directive from Pilar forbidding staff from giving or receiving presents was applied rigidly. [81] Male functionaries, on the other hand, were allegedly not above accepting wine or sausage on occasions in the course of their duties. [82]

The intent behind SF’s rural initiatives and promotion of domestic skills was to cushion families from the worst of Francoist agricultural policies. As noted by Sevilla Guzmán and González de Medina, these amounted to ‘agrarian fascism’ by representing the ‘sovereignty of the peasantry’ as an idealized social entity while ensuring that the dominance of landowners continued and wages were kept very low. [83] The situation was worsened by the absence of paid employment possibilities for women. There was no equivalent to the cleaners and domestic servants employed in the cities, jobs which enabled women in many cases to hold the family together when the male wage was either inadequate or non-existent. Added to this were the effects of the repression on rural communities, whereby agricultural workers were not easily able to migrate to the cities to find better paid work. In this situation, female income was of inestimable value and regeneration schemes were an important safety valve for the government, made all the more attractive, as with SF’s Foreign Service propaganda, by their extreme cheapness. And the efficiency of SF was renowned.

SF’s programmes also helped to cushion the hardships in towns and cities, where working-class women were employed directly and, even more than their male equivalents, suffered the consequences of poor pay and conditions. The 1938 Labour Charter had removed many women from the workforce by forcing dismissal from certain job areas when women married. Subsequent welfare legislation discouraged female employment by the granting of subsidies and allowances to families where the wife was at home. But SF’s interventionist techniques in the urban workplace brought it into conflict with both employers and government ministers. Rural women could be helped without upsetting anyone, but improvements to the lot of women in factories threatened to upset the balance of the male-dominated Syndical Organization and, with it, the machista framework of Francoist society. [84]

The other face of SF’s humanitarianism was its role in the regime’s control of the civil population. It was operating in a climate where a raft of legislation crushed any opposition to the regime and exacted the highest of prices for those who had been on the losing side of the war. [85] SF opposed reprisals, giving help to all comers and, as far as can be judged, took no part in the repressive machinery of State. One mando remembers that the local SF premises were the official venue in wartime for people to report suspicious behaviour or denounce a neighbour, but that SF staff were not involved with the investigation. [86] Another mando served in 1942 on a government panel, part of the National Movement’s Information and Investigation department, but never made a report on anyone. [87] As for SF’s work with the Falange Teachers’ Service (Servicio Español del Magisterio), the claim is that teachers were helped by its intervention. [88] A former SF member whose husband was the head of this organization states that many primary teachers who had worked in the Republican zone were defended by panels which had SF representation. [89] The fact that SF did offer genuine help in at least one case is confirmed by a contemporary whose mother (a primary teacher who had worked in the Republican zone) was facing a military court. SF provided statements of good conduct, although its members had never met his mother and knew nothing about her. Perhaps more significant, however, was the response from the Department of Education, who was under instructions to ignore SF testimonials because they were known to be statements of charity. The only statements accepted were from parish priests and other clergy. 90

SF’s longer-term active involvement appears to have been variable and dependent on the individual personality of the mando, not the previous political climate of the area. In Salamanca, for example, despite its importance as the first Francoist war headquarters, SF was not particularly strong after the war. In Guadalajara, by contrast, ‘it was a whole world’. [91] To claim, as past members have done, that they were at all times above the political considerations of the moment seems disingenuous, given that many ordinary members (if not many mandos) were married to functionaries and would have been direct beneficiaries of corruption within the Movement. On the other hand, it was no doubt expedient to distance themselves from political goings-on, particularly for those women dealing directly with the human problems derived from them.

It was certainly true that SF used control measures in order to impose its values and principles on the female population. Access to SF-promoted posts, grants or courses was via written recommendations and progress reports. Standard questionnaires asked for details on family background, personal character and religious and political reliability. [92] Personal files were ‘the vital nerve of the Organization’. [93]

A different kind of control was exercised by SF over the dispensing of its welfare programme. The teams of health visitors and travelling teachers going into the country areas had a brief to gather information about families’ living conditions, religious observance and political status. There had been a precedent in the gathering of data set by Social Aid, whose early social visitors had taken in questionnaires to families, ostensibly to determine need. [94] But questions included finding out if children were baptized and if couples were married. Information of this sort was handed to the parish priest. Similar intervention was possible in a joint project with the Syndical Organization in which SF administered a low-cost scheme for the buying of furniture for newly-weds, entailing an inspection of the home: ‘The furniture will not belong to applicants until the last installment has been paid and up to that time they will have to satisfy the network of inspectors that it is being well cared for and used properly.’ [95] Intervention was also ensured in SF’s issue of baby clothes and Moses baskets to needy families. The giving of the basket established a contact with an SF mando who could then exert pressure for the child to be christened and even, according to the propaganda, persuade the parents to choose a suitable name. [96]

The effect of SF’s carrot-and-stick approach on the civil population is less easily gauged than the public perception that the organization was always loyal to the regime. Its interventions were always politically motivated but stood out as being scrupulously honest in the years when much of the National Movement was patently not. The transparency of its conduct was useful for its dealings with the Franco government, enabling SF to get much of what it wanted without threatening male sensitivities.

The fact that Pilar was also engaged in an ideological battle to preserve the legacy of her brother was largely unseen. It suited her purpose to present herself as above political considerations, even proclaiming on one occasion: ‘Let us just get on with our own business and leave the men to sort out all the complications which governing the nation involves, because that is what they are called to do.’ [97] But in the face of the rhetoric, Pilar used her influence as a leading legitimist to form alliances and get her own way. The nursing department she had so objected to was closed down after the Civil War, the youth section and social service were eventually returned to the SF fold and her main rival, Mercedes Sanz Bachiller, was removed from the scene.

Pilar’s single-mindedness served her well in the political circumstances in which SF was operating. Just as she had ignored, or refused to accept, certain of the consequences of the Decree of Unification, she was not diverted in the post-war years from developing SF’s programmes. Her political goal remained that of the social control of the female population, but the fact that SF’s enthusiasm for Falangism also bound it to the corruption and cruelty of many of its adherents was simply not acknowledged. Under Pilar’s leadership, SF managed to remain firmly within the regime and yet a step away from its worst excesses.

Plate 4.1 SF course in Pontevedra. Source: J. Alcántara.

Plate 4.2 First training course for youth leaders, Olmedo (Valladolid). Source: J. Alcántara.

Plate 4.3 First holiday home for working women, Ramallosa (Pontevedra). Source: J. Alcántara.

Plate 4.4 Official opening of the National School for Youth Instructors ‘Isabella the Catholic’, La Quinta del Pardo, Madrid, October 1942. Franco and Julia Alcántara. Source: J. Alcántara.

Plate 4.5 Exhibition for youth members’ activities, opening of ‘Isabella the Catholic’. Source: J. Alcántara.

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