page_title: Lesbians in the Spanish Second Republic
section_title: Prominent lesbians
hierarchical_section_title: Lesbians in the Spanish Second Republic / Second Spanish Republic (1931–1937) / Prominent lesbians
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Люсия Санчес СаорнильEnglish: Lucía Sánchez Saornil in 1933
context_page_description: Lesbians in the Second Spanish Republic and Civil War period were doubly discriminated against, as a result of their gender and sexual practices. Prior to the Second Republic, lesbians in Spain were largely ignored, eclipsed by gay men. They faced discrimination as they challenged definitions around what it meant to be a woman. While homosexuality was not condemned by law, it was possible for lesbians to face more severe punishment when charged with violation of morals because of their sexual orientation.
  During the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the first modern laws specifically punishing homosexual acts came into force, though few cases ever came to court because gays and lesbians were considered by jurists to have mental illness. Lesbians also lived in a culture oriented around the Roman Catholic Church, which set gender norms and dictated laws which left women in general with few rights and little social capital. Where lesbians were more accepted, they tended to be stereotypes as either very masculine or overly feminine. Their social capital was at its strongest during this period in Madrid.
context_section_description: One of the most prominent lesbians of this period was Lucía Sánchez Saornil, a Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) member and founder of Mujeres Libres.  She denounced her contemporaries for supporting the current patriarchal paradigm.   Later, she started working for the newspaper Umbral, where she met her partner América Barroso in 1937. Sánchez Saornil argued in this period that motherhood was just one option available for women, and that women should first and foremost be autonomous individuals. Rather than her anarchist ideology, her own experiences as a lesbian probably informed her views about motherhood. Her lesbian status would not be well known until the 1980s, though she wrote using a male pen name in the Second Republic period, where she defended lesbian desire.  Those who worked with her at Mujeres Libres in this period have said that Sánchez never hid she was a lesbian from them, and that her non-normative relationship with América Barroso was well known.
  Margarita Xirgu was a well known Catalan stage actress during the Second Republic who was known in the theater community as an out lesbian.  She performed in many plays written by her openly homosexual friend Federico García Lorca, including Yerma, Blood Wedding, and Doña Rosita. At the premiere of Yerma in Madrid, right-wing supporters in attendance interrupted the show to accuse her from their seats in the upper gallery of being a lesbian and a queer. She left Spain in January 1936 for an overseas tour, where she performed a number of Lorca's plays.  She was met by appreciative audiences in Mexico that year.
  Irene Polo was another Catalan lesbian, who was also a self-taught journalist and out to those in the newsroom. In her youth, she was known to bathe naked at Port de la Selva on the Costa Brava with the goal of attracting other women. Meeting Margarita Xirgu in Barcelona in January 1936 for an interview after the performance of Doña Rosita, she left her position and followed the theater group to Mexico.  Her abrupt decision to move resulted from her love for Margarita Xirgu.  The pair would split a few years later as the relationship was largely a one-sided affair. Neither Margarita Xirgu nor Irene Polo would return to Spain. Polo committed suicide in Chile in 1941 by jumping out of a window.
  Carmen de Burgos was a prominent lesbian during the time of the Second Republic.  The first professional woman journalist in the country, her open lesbianism was tolerated as a decadent vice.  A number of her works had the theme of lesbianism running through them.  She was linked romantically to fellow feminist and Portuguese suffragette Ana de Castro Osório.
  María de Maeztu, Victoria Kent  and Victoria Ocampo spent time living at the Residencia de Señoritas in Madrid during 1931.  The residence allowed women to openly discuss their radical beliefs, including the concept of free love and prison reform. In the early 1930s, María de Maeztu had an intense interest in Victoria Ocampo and was jealous of Victoria Kent. In 1931, Victoria Kent became the General Director of Prisons (Spanish: Dirección General de Prisiones), the first woman to get a high ranking political appointment in the Second Republic.
caption: Lucía Sánchez Saornil in 1933.
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