page_title: Women prisoners in Francoist Spain
section_title: Francoist forces in the Civil War period (1936–1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Women prisoners in Francoist Spain / History / Francoist forces in the Civil War period (1936–1939)
context_page_description: Women prisoners in Francoist Spain were often there because of specific repression aimed at women. During the Civil War, many women were in prison because family members had Republican sympathies or the authorities wanted to lure out male Republican affiliated relatives; it was not a result of anything the women did themselves. The Law of Political Responsibilities, adopted on 13 February 1939, made such repression easier and was not formally removed from the Criminal Code until 1966. Prisoners and people in concentration camps, both male and female, would total over three quarters of a million by the end of the Spanish Civil War. Of these, 14,000 women were held in Las Ventas Model prison in Madrid.
  The official start of the Francoist period in late 1939 saw the continuation of specific repression against women through the prison system and the death penalty. Pregnancy did not allow women to escape either execution or unsanitary conditions that led to high rates of infant death. Women could also find themselves incarcerated in reformatories without trial for violating female morality in a parallel prison-type system.
context_section_description: The Franco regime organized reprisals against women from the start of the Civil War.  Many of these women had committed no wrongdoing, and were targeted only because they had family members with Republican sympathies.  This was particularly true of housewives who found themselves in prison. Matilde Eiroa commented, "They were often used as bait to attract the men of the family who fled."  War councils proscribed punishments, and of the people they ordered executed, 5% were women. Women were victims of Franco's repression. More than 100 were sentenced to death by the war councils and executed, many of them in Madrid and Andalusia. The best known case in Spain is Las Trece Rosas, shot in August 1939. Many wives, widows, sisters or daughters of republicans were humiliated and punished "with marching through the streets of the town and the dispossession of their property."
  The Law of Political Responsibilities (Spanish: Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas) was issued by the Francoist dictatorship on 13 February 1939 two months before the end of the Spanish Civil War. The Law targeted all loyalist supporters of the Second Spanish Republic and penalized membership in the Popular Front of the defeated republic. The law declared guilty of a crime of military rebellion, all those who were members of a Popular Front party from 1 October 1934 and all of those who had opposed the military Coup d'état of the 17–18 July including all the government officers of the Republic and all the members of the Republican Armed Forces. The law was retroactive and could be applied as far back as October 1934, a juridical aberration, for those who had followed the laws of the legally constituted Government of the Spanish Republic. They were suddenly prosecuted for "helping rebellion".
  The Law of Political Responsibilities established fines and expropriations for defendants and their families (from 100 pesetas to the confiscation of all the accused's assets). Furthermore, additional penalties included restriction of professional activities, limitation of freedom of residence and forfeiture of Spanish citizenship.  Deceased and disappeared persons could be held responsible and their families inherited the economic sanctions.
  By 1939, there were officially over 270,000 prisoners in Spain.  There were also around 500,000 people in concentration camps.  When people were detained, Franco used them as cheap, slave labor. Among those in camps, 90,000 were in worker battalions. Another 47,000 were in military battalions. Of these, 13,779 were involved in urban reconstruction projects while 9,500 of those involved in military battalions worked on fortifications, while another 8,898 worked on re-cooping war materials.  Many of these prisoners and concentration camp victims were women. By the end of the war, the Nationalist run women's only Las Ventas Model prison in Madrid had over 14,000 women. More than 190 concentration camps, holding 170,000 prisoners in 1938 and between 367,000 and about half a million prisoners remaineded when the war ended in 1939. Most of the camps were created during Spanish Civil War, only a few being created in the following years. Hostal de San Marcos de León concentration camp held 7,000 men and 300 women from 1936 until 1939.
  Caserón de la Goleta, the prison for women in Málaga, held thousands of women over its history.  Women found themselves there for a wide variety of offenses including infidelity, divorce or lesbian relationships.  They were also there because the state determined they were delinquents, alcoholics, psychopaths or "degenerate" women.  For women imprisoned in the earliest period of the prison's history, they had no ability to defend themselves as they were there as a result of war council sentences. The conditions for the 4,000 female prisoners at Caserón de la Goleta were horrible and unhygienic, with prisoners crammed into small spaces that helped to spread disease.
caption: Women pleading with Nationalists for the lives of prisoners in Constantina, Seville in 1936.
exif: {}