13.

Secularization Versus the Weight of Catholic

Tradition among Spanish Women
Sofía Rodríguez López

Introduction
n order to measure the presence of secularism in Spain we must, first of all,
I consider the influence and impact of religion, in this case the established
Roman Catholic Church, on civil society and public institutions, particularly as
they affect the status of women. Then we shall analyze this problem by looking
at the historical development of public services such as education and public
health, which are traditionally considered to be the domain of the Church, and
how they have undergone a process of secularization. Finally, we will determine
the current relationship between women and the Catholic faith in Spain at the
individual and collective levels.
The leading feminist theories are relevant to this question. They include
humanist secular feminism, which tackles religion as a symbol of patriarchal
oppression against women; and traditionalist feminism, which considers religion
to be a moral guide for women. During the first half of the 20th century, the
latter was the dominant type of feminism in Spain among Catholic women.
Spanish women by and large have never embraced humanist secular feminism
but have found opportunities for advancement under the umbrella of the
Catholic Church. The secularist argument was a minority opinion limited to
individuals with connections to Freemasonry, atheism, Marxism, and anarcho-
syndicalism, which were prominent ideologies during the 1930s. Notable among
this group of secularist women were Hidegart Rodríguez, a reformer of Christian
moral sexuality, and Lucía Sánchez Saornil, the leader of Mujeres Libres (Free
Women). However, a mutually hostile relationship with the Church impeded
the establishment of partnerships with Roman Catholic feminists.1 In the first
half of the 20th century, religion was a tool for preventing the advancement of

177
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feminism but by the end of the century, religion served as a catalyst for a genuine
women’s movement. Still, in order to properly comprehend the development of
political attitudes among Spanish women during the 20th century, we must take
into account its social context.

The Emergence of a Women’s Movement

During the Bourbon Restoration (1873-1923), the Spanish women’s movement
leaders, such as Concepción Arenal and Elmila Pardo Bazán had modest
educational demands compared to those in France and the United States.2
Women’s suffrage was a chimera due to the inadequacies of the electoral system
and a governing system based on back room deals between the dynastic political
parties. Reformers criticized the monarchy’s disdain for democratization and
looked for support among the Church and the army. This was because, despite the
differences among the reformers, there was no doubt that all republican factions
were interested in social issues. This republican reform agenda incorporated the
secularization of the state and educational reform, which included the education
of women.
The first few decades of the 20th century witnessed measures implemented
by the Liberal Government such as la Ley del Candado (the Padlock Law). In
1910, the government imposed a two-year ban on the establishment of new
religious congregations. As a response to this government prohibition there was
a mobilization of laymen3 led by Cardinal Guisasola, which included lay women.
The new relationship between women and the Catholic Church coincided with
the publication of new social proposals in the encyclicals Rerum Novarum by Leo
XIII (1891) and Quadragessimo Anno (1931) by Pope Pius XI. These opposed
liberalism and included among their core principles were: the consecration of
private property and the acceptance of inequality; a search for harmony and
fraternity, as opposed to a Marxist class struggle; and the use of welfare as part of
a social justice agenda based on Catholic dogma.4
Church doctrine was rooted in a patriarchal system that was redefined during
the Industrial Revolution. It fostered a puritan discourse via the Casti Connubii
(1930), which promoted the submission of women to God and husband. This
meant a return to the baroque ideal of La Perfecta Casada (the Perfect Wife),
which condemned sex equality and prioritized the family over civil rights.5
However, in the second half of the 19th Century, the influence in Spain of
intellectual traditions and philosophies such as Krausism and Positivism hindered
the implementation of the Protestant liberal, Anglo-Saxon model of the modern
bourgeois “Home Angel” (Angel del Hogar). This middle class paradigm was also
contested by the existence of the peasant and working classes, which threatened
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 179

the prevalent morality of “separate spheres.”6

The educators at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (the Free Institution of
Teaching), expressed an idealist rationalism that was rooted in Catholicism, and
believed in the equality of the souls of both sexes and in the possibility of educating
women. However, very prestigious scientists, philosophers, and men of letters
doubted the intellectual capacities of women, and thus their need to be socially
and legally equal to men.7 This confusion between sociology and physiology,
based on “biosocial” thought, contributed to the creation of a coalition of sexist
prejudice based on the fear of socialist feminism and a misogynist pseudoscience
detrimental to Spanish women.8
Among the leaders of that period, Carmen de Burgos distinguished herself
as a symbol for women and writers influenced by Blasquismo, the idea of a
minority socialist coup d’etat.9 De Burgos’s activism in favor of divorce, women’s
suffrage, and an active role for women in public life, was influenced by both
her republican values and an anticlerical sentiment, which strengthened after a
crisis of faith in 1905. Under the pseudonym of Colombine, de Burgos pursued
an “enlightened feminism” to find solutions to the problems of Spanish women.
Her proposals stressed access to a liberal and secular education, which was not at
odds with the “mysticism of femininity.”10 Her mission was to eradicate illiteracy,
which affected family relations, and was against the honor of women as mothers
and ladies.
Moreover, Colombine ’s membership in the Freemasons is the quintessential
example of the fusion of free thought, deism or atheist spiritualism, and feminism
in the Spain between the 19th and 20th centuries. These were profoundly secular
ideas found in exclusive social circles, but liberalism was as weak as the middle
class in Spain. This alternative discourse attempted to go beyond the “battle of
the sexes,” proposing, instead, harmony and equality between the sexes. It aimed
at preparing women intellectually to go beyond their current roles in the family
and the Church.11
This struggle for women’s individuality, according to Karen Offen, Mary
Nash, and Susanna Tavera, appealed to bourgeois republican women, the Catalan
vanguard, and the revolutionary anarcho-syndicalists. This minority of women
attempted to break with a female identity based on the patriarchal model of the
Catholic family and began to progressively internalize secular individualism.12
Myriad secular feminist groups began to appear in Spain around World War
I. These associations, which sprouted in Valencia, Barcelona, and Málaga, were
unique due to their strong support of women’s education as a means to achieve
autonomy. Eventually, after 1918, female suffrage was added to the struggle by
organizations such as the Sociedad Progresiva de Mujeres (Progressive League of
180 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Women), active between 1888 and 1926 and the Consejo Supremo Feminista
(Supreme Feminist Council), founded as a coordinating organization in 1919.
In addition, the Asociación Nacional (National Association of Spanish Women),
the Cruzada de Mujeres Españolas (Crusade of Spanish Women), and the Lyceum
Club were created with a full agenda of rights. This period also saw the founding
of El Gladiador (The Gladiator), one of the first secular forums. Women involved
in these groups were caricatured in pejorative terms such as crazies, bimbos, she-
husbands (maridas), Anglophiles, atheists, and enemies of the Christian family,
which were common insults for single and/or independent women.13
Paradoxically, Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923-30) was a period ripe
for the development of this formula for women’s independence, thanks to the
expansion of formal education and a wage-based labor market. Between the
first and second Republics, a new movement and a new model of femininity
developed. This “new woman” was still a second class citizen, but one accepted
by liberals and Catholic women as another dimension of the “social woman” and
a new formula for feminism.14
However, not all of Spanish society was moving in the same direction. There
was an increasing differentiation between sexes, particularly among the upper
and middle classes, which led men to avoid liturgy and women to transform
religiosity into a female characteristic.15 This event, coupled with an explosion
in the number of religious communities of French origin due to anticlerical
legislation in the French Third Republic, tied women to a sort of “irrational
mysticism.” This mysticism and the “infantile and superficial spirituality” to
which women were destined, ended up stigmatizing them as moral traditionalists
and political conservatives.16 The author Celia Viñas projected these qualities in
her 1946 novel Tiempo Levante when one of the male characters stated: “In
this, you win. You don’t believe in ideals, or science, or love, don’t even try
to find a definition, or an understanding of the end of life. You care for our
children and men, and go to Mass on Sundays without ever asking, without ever
doubting.”17

A Secular Republic, Secular Schools,

and Some Secular Women
The 1930s brought an air of modernity to the country, due to the Republican
attempts to introduce greater social justice by copying the secularism of states
such as France and Weimar Germany. During the first Republican-Socialist term,
girls were subject to the implementation of a new religiously neutral system of
education that contradicted Pope Pius XI’s 1929 encyclical Divini Illius Magistri.
It was a very controversial decision, and the Church accused the government
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 181

of being anticlerical and atheist. The state’s religious neutrality was considered
a betrayal of the traditions and the Christian character of the Spanish nation
and the debate became polarized between the defenders of freedom of thought
and conscience and the supporters of religion and the apostles of educational
morality. The latter accused the secular schools of being immoral, a threat to
academic freedom, and copies of those in the USSR or Mexico.
The implementation of religious freedom in schools and the symbolic
removal of crucifixes were some of the boldest achievements of Manuel Azaña’s
government (1931-33). The government’s confrontation with the Church
peaked when it failed to condemn the burning of convents in several cities (such
as Madrid, Málaga, Córdoba, Sevilla, and Alicante) during May 1931, and when
it passed the Law of Confessions and Religious Congregations in 1933. The
abolition and/or seizure of Catholic schools exacerbated the educational issue in
the country. In addition, there were problems due to the loss or transformation of
educational infrastructure, such as the prohibition against teaching by members
of regular religious orders without teaching degrees. Moreover, articles 3, 26,
and 48 of the Constitution dissolved the influential Society of Jesus (Jesuits),
eliminated the teaching of religion in schools, and promoted the primary cultural
role of the State.
These events prompted a swift reaction from the Pope and Spanish bishops.
Their strategy was to mobilize Catholic families by invoking the threat to salvation
of their children’s souls, and by calling on Catholics to boycott the new secular
public schools. After the seizure of Jesuit properties and their conversion into
welfare institutions, the Church redoubled its efforts to create a private parallel
system of Catholic instruction with parish schools under diocesan oversight.18

The Religious Backlash against the Republic

The educational secularization project was never completed due to economic
limitations and local resistance to proposals such as the 1933 Law of Congregations.
There was a deficit of national schools so they could not absorb the demand, and
teachers had to expand their school day and work afternoon shifts. Additionally,
aside from the opposition from bureaucrats and condemnation from the
political right, there was an active mobilization of parents’ associations, alumni,
and Catholic women’s organizations against the reforms. These groups collected
money, signed petitions, and used propaganda campaigns to voice the citizens’
opposition to the State’s secularization process under the banner of freedom of
religion.
Eventually, after the right came to power in December 1933, the work of
the commissions in charge of replacing religious education was stopped and the
182 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Catholic organizations kept running their educational centers. Several factors

contributed to the triumph of religious traditionalism over liberal and secular
feminism. Among these factors were the Church’s quasi-monopoly on public
education until the 1930s, the labor populism of Catholic trade unions, and
mechanisms of apostolic “nationalism.”
Moreover, laywomen became the main target of the campaign by the
Church. It projected the female image as what one author called an “inferior,
ignorant, naïve, and impressionable being that needs direction and protection
from men.”19 Despite the exclusion of women from the Church’s hierarchy, and
from many liturgical ceremonies and secular associations, Spanish women took
an active part in practicing religion and doctrinal obedience. This happened,
not only due to the effect of the religious propaganda, but also because it was
the only public space to which they had access and were encouraged to belong
outside of the home.
The most dynamic Church institutions in the 1910s and 1920s had been
led by the Jesuit priest Alarcón y Meléndez, who earned the support of a group
of active Catholic women from the social elites. This was how the “charity ladies”
(damas de beneficiencia) model was born. These women dedicated themselves to
charity and the teaching of the catechism. This model lasted in Spain until the
controversial “sexual revolution” in Spain after 1968.20 These aristocratic and
bourgeois women became “heroines of religion” (heroínas de la religión) by virtue
of avoiding a frivolous use of their free time and by upholding the concept
of “separate spheres.”21 Their energy was spent on charity work because this
was work that they were gifted to do thanks to their supposedly selfless nature
and sentimentalist socialization. They founded and/or promoted the creation
of hospitals, elderly centers, orphanages, and Catholic labor unions. These
institutions were used to introduce their mission of “moralizing the poor,”22 and
obtaining rights for working women and their children. These services, as Carmen
de Burgos and socialists Margarita Nelken and María Cambrils claimed, were at
odds with the role of the State and particularly with the Republican secularizing
project developed in the Commission for Social Reforms.23 Cambrils’s Socialist
Feminism was a result of her anticlerical opposition to the leading role that
Catholic women such as María Echarri were gaining. Inspired by the ideas
of Marx and Bebel, Cambrils opposed the concept of humanistic redemption
and the ignorance and male-centeredness promoted by religious instruction.24
She believed that despite Engels’s warnings in The Origins of the Family, Private
Property, and the State, women could make an “acceptable transition” from the
home (and family life) to the public square fueled by the ideals of feminine
excellence, social maternity, and the sexual division of labor.
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 183

Those in power did not take long to realize the need for legalizing the
Christianizing and patriotic potential of women, which until the arrival of
women’s suffrage in 1931 was channeled through welfare in exchange for civil
rights. This issue was debated during the Constitutional Convention of 1934
and it exposed the different positions regarding the electoral behavior of Spanish
women and whether or not women were bound by “instructions from the
confessional box.”25
Women were attracted to religious political parties, which provided
them with different opportunities for participation. In contrast, some labor
organizations did not reach out to women because they were convinced of
the conservatism of women.26 Thus the “top-down revolution” proposed by
Catholicism based on a large-scale social mobilization counted women among
its most ardent supporters. Women joined a versatile social base in which they
were able to be active in several political, labor, and trade organizations as part
of the lay apostolic network. The Church supervised “freed” young women
through the Theresian Insitution, which was active in teachers’ colleges, and the
Daughters of Charity, active in hospitals.27
Female chapters not only inflated the number of members but also played an
important role in the propaganda campaigns of the main political organizations
opposed to the secularization project of the Republican government. The
members of the Traditionalist Communion (Comunión Tradicionalista ) were an
important group in the historical Carlist Party fief of Navarre and launched various
women’s groups onto the national stage.28 The proselytism of the “margaritas”
(named after Doña Margarita de Borbón, wife of Carlos VII) centered on elite
women who were known (from the age of 16) for their charity work.29 Using the
slogan “Dios, Patria, Rey ” (God, Fatherland, King), these women became the
Traditionalist Women’s Group, which was unique due to the Catholic/patriotic
duality of their mission. Together with the Councils, comprised of priests,
gentlemen, and pious ladies, they collected money to cover Church expenses
after Azaña’s secularization project emptied the Church’s coffers by cutting public
funding. The involvement of Catholic women in the struggle against Republican
reforms developed under a guise of female “identity politics.” The “agenda” was
to defend those values that provided women with social authority as mothers
and Christian educators and gave men the role of breadwinners using arguments
that stemmed from liberal revolutions and the Social Contract.30
According to Helen Graham, the appeal of conservative solutions to the
European crises of the 1930s was strengthened by conservatism’s commitment
to traditional gender roles and the family. These ideas promoted security
in contrast to the apparent fickleness of bourgeois feminists and workers’
184 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

organizations reforms. The latter offered little security to women across social
groups, particularly rural women. The unpopular top-down approach to female
enfranchisement and mobilization by an inexperienced ruling class, coupled
with a state family policy that threatened people’s values and belief systems
(e.g., secular education, divorce, maternity benefits), allowed “the people and
right-wing organizations to mount a blockade of the Republican secularization
efforts.”31
Despite their secondary roles as parliamentary players, the women’s political
chapters had the potential of being mobilized by the Republican government’s
aggressions against the Church. Many women, fueled by the Falange’s populist
concept of national unity as a grand family and its propaganda against the
Republican government that represented secularism, sexual freedom, and
federalism, dedicated themselves to oppose the government.
After the victory of the reactionary coalition in the 1933 elections and after
the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, women supportive of male guardianship
promoted “the return to the home.”32 Thus, according to the religious elements,
the crises of the 1930s could only be solved by the re-Christening of Europe
through an increase of charity activities, obedience to traditional authority, and
lay missions.33

Francoism and Catholic Dominance

Given national conditions and the weight of the Catholic tradition, particularly
among women, it appears that the “overloaded Republican agenda” ran out of
time for educating and sensitizing the people with their neutral schools and
other reforms.34 In addition, the radicalization of the secularizing projects after
the February 1936 triumph of the Frente Popular Antifascista (Popular Anti-
fascist Front) and the anticlerical reaction at the beginning of the Civil War
deepened the political and ideological cleavages of the Spanish into what can
arguably be called a crusade.
During the war, the purges of the clergy started early. A large number of
Church officials were assassinated while nuns became the objects of gendered
violence. Acts of physical destruction and arson directed against artistic treasures
of the Church became symbols of the revolution and the “bestiality of the Reds”
which were much cited by Francoists over the years. The images of “burning
saints” caused deeper wounds among the people than any of the Republican
constitutional reforms. The dictatorship perpetuated these images as a means
of consolidating its own legitimacy.35 As a result, the legitimacy of the serious
proposals for Church-State separation and secularization took a back seat.
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 185

As Rafael Cruz says, the Republic never articulated an authentically

Republican culture able to substitute religious traditionalism and expel
Catholics from the national community. Hence, the war was also a clash between
“threatened collective identities” that were equally violent and intransigent.36
After the end of the Civil War, all those opposed to the “National Movement”
and, by association, the Church, were persecuted. This persecution involved the
physical disappearance and administrative purges of many men and women who
were not considered “religious, patriotic and proper.”
Only a few intellectual Falangists dared to criticize aspects of the Spanish
Catholic Church during the post-war period. The Catholic leanings of the
Franco government’s domestic policy agenda empowered sociopolitical sectors
associated with the Church.37 The Church became a guarantor of the traditional
order during the dictatorship and the clergy organized “female elite supporters
of the cultural Counter-reform.”38 After a period of high mobilization among
Spanish women, Sección Femenina competed with Acción Católica in the 1950s
for the fulfillment of their cultural mission. During these years the Mediterranean
dictatorships of Greece, Portugal, and Spain destroyed the remnants of feminism.
These years also witnessed the discrediting of independent women and a return
to Baroque models of femininity based on the home, maternity, and Christian
marriage.39
Until 1953 (when the Concordat with the Vatican was signed), the dominant
values of spirituality and militarism imposed a Manichean ideology that pitted
Nationalist-Catholic discourse against the Republican ideology. This discourse
helped define the dictatorship as antithetical to the values once defended by the
Frente Popular: centralization versus 19th century federal liberalism; capitalism
v. communism; National-Catholic v. laicismo; confessionalism v. anticlericalism
and “masonic” rationalism; traditionalism v. modernity and feminism. The
mixture of these ingredients produced an “ideological cocktail” of Spanish myths
and extreme nationalism that praised the peasants’ and the military’s values. It
was based upon the imperial spirit of the medieval Reconquista and the Counter-
Reformation that divided Spanish society between good and bad people and
transformed individuals into useful subjects of the fatherland:
The Spanish women under the autocracy and during the Cold War were
represented as a “reservoir of Christendom” and “sentinels of the West.”40
Although a new period of openness was soon to occur, this openness did
not stop the dictatorship using the Church to legitimate the dictatorial
system and to continue using the anticlerical characterization of the Left as
a weapon and public insult.41
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The ideological reconstruction under Franco was matched by the tangible

reconstruction of Church infrastructure. There were repairs to churches, rectors’
houses, cemeteries, and chapels such as the ones dedicated to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus. The government also encouraged the building of memorials for the fallen
martyrs of the Civil War as well as new churches all over the country.
In the educational arena, there was a proliferation of parish school and youth
groups. The Jesuits and Salesians took the lead among the religious congregations
dedicated to these missions. The women’s lay ministries dedicated great efforts
to these spiritual exercises and the maintenance of public and private worship.
For their part, Acción Católica gained a larger social base for their charity and
relief activities.42 However, the main service of the Church to the dictatorship
was social demobilization. The Church did not hesitate to collaborate with the
regime and kept silent about political repression after 1939 so it could enhance
its own influence over the people.43
In the 1950s and 1960s, the dictatorship’s new diplomatic and commercial
treaties did not lead to a reduction in ultramontane Catholicism. Although there
were dissident stirrings and small rebellions among the disadvantaged,44 public
meetings were still banned during the 1950s, especially those that could affect
Church attendance. As Kaplan indicates, the government in Madrid “would
have been happy” prohibiting all public celebrations, including funerals that
risked becoming a demonstration or symbol of popular resistance against the
Regime.45
The nationwide and dogmatic “crusade of decency” faced popular resistance
because it censored carnival dances and the wearing of swim suits by female
tourists. Both prohibitions were considered punishable offenses. Despite this,
Franco was conscious of the value of preserving specific traditional festivities
such as the Marian pilgrimages and processions during Easter week. These events
were regarded as devotional expressions that did not lead to threats to the social
order.46 In the face of these prohibitions, the political, artistic, and confessional
acts celebrated by the regime repeated a familiar ritualism. Even though the
Church lost some degree of control over the meaning of these images, it won
the capacity to influence life in the cities and new suburbs. The “de-Christening
environment” of the workers’ world made this necessary, because the population
affected by the rural exodus stopped practicing their faith and instead acquired a
model of consumer behavior opposed to Catholic spirituality.

The Political, Ecclesiastical, and Secular Transition

Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council made the 1960s a decade of symbolic
changes aimed at getting the Church closer to the “people,” for instance, by the
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 187

substitution of the cassock by the clerical collar and the substitution of the Latin
Mass by Spanish.47 Beyond the position of the official church, the last decades
of the dictatorship witnessed the expansion of the Catholic workers’ movements
represented by the youth, brotherhoods, study groups (GOES), and trade unions
(CISC-USO). Together with the Workers’ Commissions, these would show a
clear anti-Francoism. They energized their bases with a class consciousness and
by a movement to the political left. Women were participants in this, thanks
to the political renovation of Acción Católica, the feminist impulse in social
commitment, and the leadership of the Christian Democrats.48
In the years prior to Franco’s death, Spain developed a social platform
which made it possible to reconcile opposition to the regime alongside Church
membership. Female mobilization groups were created in the parishes along with
neighborhood services such as day care centers and hospitals. Improvements
in the status of women occurred through organizations such as the Galician
shellfish gatherers (mariscadoras) from the Popular Cultural Center of Yecla and
groups from the Cordoba countryside.49 There were demands for a non-sexist
culture so women would no longer be used as pornographic media objects.50
Other issues under debate concerned the family, prostitution, homosexuality,
Church influence on the women’s vote, and what the left was offering women
compared to the right.
From the vantage point of gender as a social variable, the transition from
Francoism made it possible to consider common and specific issues affecting
women51 both as anti-Francoists and feminists, and as housewives and workers.
These multiple identities included their identities as Catholics. Others acquired
autonomy through Catholic organizations and then moved to the political left,
so establishing a conversation with Marxists (apostolic movements, Christians
for socialism, and liberation theology) that preceded the secularization of lay men
and women. According to Mary Salas, while there was no organized Catholic
feminism, there were Catholic women in the feminist movement.52
Despite the generational differences there were moments when the old and
the new guard joined forces among the Spanish population.53 There was not,
however, a generalized sentiment of anticlericalism among the generation of the
transition because of the work of the new Spanish clergy and social doctrine
represented by Cardinal Tarancón. The new clergy formed a sort of “Parallel
Church” comprised of the “Christian Workers Front” and “red priests” from
disadvantaged neighborhoods, who supported strikers and demonstrators during
the disturbances during the Burgos trials of 1970 of Basque separatists.54
There was a demand for laicismo as the cornerstone of a new free and secular
state. The Church was not a target because of its renovation exemplified by its
188 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

preaching of liberation theology. This did not mean an official alliance with the
democrats and feminists since the Church always opposed reforms related to
family law and the advancement of women. The Episcopal Conference opposed
the legalization of divorce, abortion, and the birth control pill in 1982 and
today still opposes gay marriage. As late as 1987, the traditionalist University of
Navarra published books about female secularism with antiquated views about
feminism:
There is also operating the misnamed “women’s liberation” which emphasizes
efforts to masculinize or assimilate to the male (attire, behavior, rights, etc.)
rather than the authentic development and maturation of their female
potentialities in the human and social spheres.55

Contemporary Spain
Such attitudes explain the anti-religious trend in recent times and the crisis of
religious vocations (down from 91,000 to 76,000 religious women, between
1969 and 1980). There was also the appearance of the unusual phenomenon of
Apostasy.56 Indeed, currently there are more non-religious Spanish women than
at the beginning of 20th century, and there are many more than in 1975.
On Sundays, most Spanish families no longer attend mass because they
prefer the supermarkets, the new cathedrals of postmodernity. True, Spain is still
not a secular nation. Although Spain’s Constitution, passed just three years after
Franco’s death, claims it to be a secular and non-denominational state, the weight
of the Catholic heritage is still evident. However, currently this Catholicism
is not at odds with ecumenism, modernity, or equal rights and citizenship for
women. Nowadays, religion-state debates center on the school curriculum, the
financing of religion through the general fund, and tax exemptions. The clergy,
Opus Dei, and a few monastic orders survive as primarily religious organizations,
whereas the catechists, Acción Católica or Caritas, coexist in civil society with
new non-governmental associations. However, worship is still alive in churches
and households. Religion has become a more intimate privatized affair although
it is still institutionalized in the swearing-in of public officials and State funerals.
Recently, as Spanish Catholicism has been challenged by Muslim immigration,
the Hispano-American immigrant community has reinvigorated it.
Today, Spanish women are not fully secular and the Church remains
influential. Most women who get married still prefer a Catholic wedding
ceremony and May is still the Marian month. But now, Church power is inferior
to the State’s and is no longer part of a traditional alliance of “the throne and
the altar.” Its capacity for social exclusion and of decision-making over society
has been reduced considerably. This does not mean that the new generations
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 189

of Spanish women have revived the lay and freethinking ways of the old 1930s
radical feminism. The difference is that today’s society possesses functionalist,
or perhaps pragmatic, values that are less combative and spiritual. Other than
some minor groups, the political left has not monitored and defended the lay
state despite the constant deals between the government and the Church. Since
there have been constitutional reforms correcting the inferior status of women
on civil, labor, and education rights, politicians have ignored the misogynist
environment still existent in the Catholic Church. Furthermore, there are no
public discussions about the gender inequalities in the Church’s hierarchy or
of the prohibition on female priesthood, but also there is the impression that
encyclicals are no longer a threat to gender relations.
Today’s lay ministries are shaped around issues such as abortion and gay
marriage. With these pro-life groups and “Family Forums,” the heirs to the
Catholic propagandists of the 1930s have revived in opposition to the socialist
government. Paradoxically, 75 years after the Republican reforms, the insult
remains the same for the Archbishops of Madrid, Toledo, and Valencia. They
describe “secular culture” as “a fraud” that “leads to despair through abortion,
express divorce, and ideologies that pretend to manipulate the education of
the youth” and will end with the “collapse of democracy.”57 These statements
that consider public education as anathema and abortion as a crime against
“innocent saints” were made to over a million supporters. In Spain today,
progressive women have abandoned the banner of laicismo and allowed a fearless
conservative mobilization to monopolize the Christian definition of family
under the Church’s umbrella. Political speeches and social and cultural practices
are more disconnected from each other than ever. Thus, it is clear that while
secularity is dominant among the people, the actual secularization of public
policy in Spain remains a work in progress.

ENDNOTES
1. Martha C. Nussbaum, Las mujeres y el desarrollo humano, El enfoque de las capaci-
dades (Barcelona, Spain: Herder, 2002) pp. 239-246.
2. Mary Nash and Susanna Tavera, Experiencias desiguales, Conflictos sociales y respuestas
colectivas, Siglo XIX (Madrid: Síntesis, 1994).
3. The Church defines the concept “layman” (laico or lego) as baptized. This is differ-
ent from the current meaning influenced by the recent history of secularization.
“Secularity defines the active and specific participation of laymen and women in
the Church’s mission. However, today’s secularity is degenerating in secularism, pre-
cisely in historically Christian countries and at a time when there is talk of the lay
leadership on issues concerning the Church.” Manuel Guerra Gómez, El laicado
masculino y femenino, (Navarra, Spain: Universidad de Navarra, 1987) p. 135.
190 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

4. Mónica Moreno Seco, La quiebra de la unidad, Nacional-catolicismo y Vaticano II en

la diócesis de Orihuela-Alicante, 1939-1975 (Alicante, Spain: Instituto de Cultura
“Juan Gil-Albert,” 1998) pp. 80-167. The author analyzes the Thomistic conception
of the Catholic Church which exalts inequality as the “perfect type of social relation,
because it is the way God created the world.”
5. Vid., Adela Oña González, “La literatura religiosa como conformadora de un modelo
de educación femenina en la Restauración (1875-1931)” in La mujer en Andalucía,
Tomo I. Encuentro Interdisciplinar de Estudios de la Mujer en Andalucía, Pilar Ballarín
and Teresa Ortiz, eds. (Granada: Feminae-Seminario de Estudios de la Mujer de
la Universidad de Granada, 1990) pp. 499-507; Frances Lannon, “Los cuerpos de
las mujeres y el cuerpo político católico: autoridades e identidades en conflicto en
España durante las décadas de 1920 y 1930,” Historia Social 35, 65-81 (1999).
6. Vid., Nerea Aresti Esteban, “El Ángel del Hogar y sus demonios. Ciencia, religión y
género en la España del siglo XIX,” Historia Contemporánea 21, 363-394 (2000).
7. For the positions of Krausists read: Rosa María Capel Martínez, “La apertura del
horizonte cultural femenino: Fernando de Castro y los Congresos Pedagógicos del
siglo XIX,” in Mujer y sociedad en España, 1700-1975 (Madrid: Ministerio de Cul-
tura-Instituto de la Mujer, 1986) pp. 113-146; María Isabel Cabrera Bosch, “Las
mujeres que lucharon solas: Concepción Arenal y Emilia Pardo Bazán,” in El femi-
nismo en España: Dos siglos de historia, Pilar Folguera Crespo, coord., (Madrid: Pablo
Iglesias, 1988) pp. 29-50.
8. Shirley Mangini. Las modernas de Madrid, Las grandes intelectuales españolas de la
vanguardia (Barcelona: Península, 2001).
9. M. Luz Sanfeliú Gimeno, Republicanas. Identidades de género en el Blasquismo (1895-
1910) (Valencia, Spain: Universitat de Valencia, 2005).
10. Pilar Ballarín Domingo, Maestras, innovación y cambios,” Arenal 6 (1): 95 (1999).
See also: Helena Establier Pérez, “La evolución del pensamiento feminista en la obra
de Carmen de Burgos Seguí,” in Pensamiento, imagen, identidad: a la búsqueda de la
definición de género, María José Jiménez Tomé (Málaga, Spain: Atenea-Universidad
de Málaga) pp. 187-206; and Concepción Núñez Rey, Carmen de Burgos Colombine,
en la Edad de Plata de la literatura española (Madrid: Fundación José Manuel Lara,
2005).
11. Véase: Gloria Espigado Tocino, “La mujer en la utopía de Charles Fourier,” in Dis-
cursos, realidades, utopías. La construcción del sujeto femenino en los siglos XIX y XX,
María Dolores Ramos and María Teresa Vera, coords. (Barcelona, Spain: Anthro-
pos, 2002); and María Dolores Ramos Palomo, “Herederas de la Razón Ilustrada:
Feministas librepensadoras en España (1880-1902),” in Femenino Plural, Palabra y
memoria de mujeres, (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 1994) pp. 85-104.
12. Karen Offen, “Definir el feminismo: un análisis histórico comparative,” Historia
Social 9: 103-136 (1991); Mary Nash, “Federica Montseny: dirigente anarquista,
feminista y ministra,” Arenal, Revista de historia de las mujeres 1(2): 259-271 (1994);
and Susana Tavera, “Federica Montseny y el feminismo: unos escritos de juventud,”
Arenal, Revista de historia de las mujeres 1(2):307-329 (1994).
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 191

13. See: Shirley Mangini, 1999. Las modernas de Madrid…op., cit. and Concepción
Fagoaga “La herencia laicista del movimiento sufragista en España,” in Las mujeres
entre la historia y la sociedad contemporáne, a Anna Aguado, ed. (Valencia, Spain:
Generalitat Valenciana, 1999). For latter years: Sofía Rodríguez,“Mujeres perversas,
La caricaturización femenina como expresión del poder entre la guerra civil y el
franquismo,” Asparkía, Revista de Investigación Feminista 16: 177-199 (2005).
14. See: Anne-Marie Sohn, “Las mujeres entre la madre en el hogar y la “garçonne,”
in, Historia de las mujeres. Vol. 5. Siglo XX, Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot,
eds. (Madrid: Grupo Santillana de Ediciones, 2000) pp. 128-130; Miren Llona
González, Entre señorita y garçonne, Historia oral de las mujeres bilbaínas de clase
media (1919-1939) (Málaga: Atenea, 2002); and Rebeca Arce Pinedo. “De la mujer
social a la mujer azul: la reconstrucción de la feminidad por las derechas españolas
durante el primer tercio del siglo XX,” Ayer, Revista de Historia Contemporánea 57:
247-272 (2005).
15. Dolors Ricart I Sampietro, “La Iglesia y el mundo femenino,” Historia 16 145
(1988).
16. Cf. Mónica Moreno Seco. “Mujeres y religiosidad en la España contemporánea,” in
Reflexiones en torno al género, La mujer como sujeto de discurs, Silvia Caporale Bizzini
and Nieves Montesinos Sánchez, eds. (Alicante: Publicaciones de la Universidad de
Alicante, 2001) pp. 27-45.
17. Celia Viñas Olivella, Viento Levante (Almería, Spain: IEA, 1991 [1st ed. 1946]) p.
118.
18. Mónica Moreno Seco, Conflicto educativo y secularización en Alicante durante la
II República (1931-1936) (Alicante, Spain: Institut de Cultura “Juan Gil Albert,”
1995) pp. 28-57. See also: Mary Vincent, “Gender and Morals in Spanish Catholic
Youth Culture: A Case Study of the Marian Congregations 1930-1936,” Gender &
History 13(2): 273-297 (2001).
19. According to María Pilar Salomón Chéliz, “Mujeres, religión y anticlericalismo en
la España contemporánea: ¿para cuándo una historia desde la perspectiva de género?
in El Siglo XX: balance y perspectivas (Valencia, Spain: Fundación Cañada Blanch,
2000) pp. 241-243.
20. Vid., Mónica Moreno Seco, “De la caridad al compromiso: Las mujeres de Acción
Católica (1958-1968),” Historia Contemporánea 26; pp. 239-265 (2003).
21. Cf., Mercedes García Basauri, “La mujer y la Iglesia. El feminismo cristiano en Es-
paña (1900-1930),” Tiempo de Historia 57; pp. 22-33 (1979).
22. Mercedes García Basauri, “Beneficencia y caridad en la crisis de la Restauración, La
mujer social,” Tiempo de Historia 59; pp. 28-43 (1979).
23. Opinions written in the pioneer works of Margarita. Nelken, La Condición Social de
la Mujer en España, 1919; María Cambrils. Feminismo Socialista,1925; or Carmen
de Burgos Seguí, La mujer en España, 1927, edited by Sempere; and, above all La
mujer moderna y sus derechos, 1927.
192 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

24. Mary Nash, “Ideals of Redemption: Socialism and Women on the Left in Spain,”
in Socialism and Women on the Left in Interwar Europe, Gruber H. and P. Graves
(Oxford: Berghahn, 1998) p. 354.
25. Vid. Inmaculada Blasco, “Tenemos las armas de nuestra fe y de nuestro amor y
patriotismo; `pero nos falta algo´ La Acción Católica de la Mujer y la participación
política en la España del primer tercio del siglo XX,” Historia Social 44: 3-20 (2002);
and Paradojas de la Ortodoxi, Política de masas y militancia católica femenina en Es-
paña (1919-1939) (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2003) pp. 144-
163.
26. Vid. Mary Nash, “El mundo de las trabajadoras: identidades, cultura de género y
espacios de actuación,” in Cultura social y política en el mundo del trabajo, J. J. A.
Piqueras Paniagua and V. Sanz, eds. (Valencia: Fundación Instituto Historia So-
cial, 1999) pp. 47-67. According to Temma Kaplan, “union leaders and its members
openly disapproved of the women’s ‘ungovernable’ behavior,”they showed contempt for
the women’s unusual ways of participating in the worker’s struggles (Ciudad roja,
periodo azul. Los movimientos sociales en la Barcelona de Picasso (1888-1939) (Barce-
lona: Península, 2002) p. 196.
27. Aurora Morcillo Gómez, True Catholic Womanhood, Gender ideology in Franco´s
Spain (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000) pp. 130-140.
28. Cf. María Ascensión Martínez Martín,”Las organizaciones femeninas en el País Vas-
co: una doble Guerra Civil,” en Las mujeres y la Guerra Civil Española. III Jornadas
de estudios monográficos. Salamanca (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales, 1989)
p. 249. Vid., Leandro Álvarez Rey, “El Carlismo en Andalucía durante la II Repú-
blica (1931-36),” en Congreso sobre la República, la Guerra Civil y el Franquismo en
Andalucía (Málaga, febrero 1989).
29. VV. AA.,“La mujer tradicionalista: las Margaritas,” Las mujeres y la Guerra Civil
Española. III Jornadas…op. cit.; pp. 188-202.
30. Rosa Cobo Bedia, Fundamentos del Patriarcado Moderno, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Ma-
Ma-
drid: Cátedra, 1995).
31. Helen Graham, “Mujeres y cambio social en la España de los años treinta,” Historia
del Presente 2: 9-24 (2003). See also: Danièle Bussy Genevois, “El retorno de la hija
pródiga: Mujeres entre lo público y lo privado (1931-1936),” in Otras visiones de Es-
paña, Pilar Folguera, comp. (Madrid: Editorial Pablo Iglesias, 1993) pp. 111-138.
32. Inmaculada Blasco Herranz, Paradojas de la Ortodoxia...op. cit.; pp. 207-248.
33. Mónica Moreno Seco, La quiebra de la unidad...op. cit.; p. 168.
34. Michael Seidman, “El giro cultural,” Revista de Libros 122: 14-15 (2007).
35. Antonio Cazorla Sánchez, “Patria Mártir: Los españoles, la nación y la Guerra Civil
en el discurso ideológico del primer franquismo,” in Construir España, Nacionalismo
español y procesos de nacionalización, Javier Moreno Luzón, (Madrid, 2007) pp. 289-
302.
36. Rafael Cruz, En el nombre del pueblo: república, rebelión y guerra en la España de 1936
(Madrid, 2006) Siglo XXI.
13. SECULARIZATION VS. THE WEIGHT OF CATHOLIC TRADITION AMONG SPANISH WOMEN 193

37. Vid. Julián Sanz Hoya, “Catolicismo y anticlericalismo en la prensa falangista de

posguerra,” in El Franquismo: El Régimen y la Oposición (Toledo, Spain: MECD-
Comunidad Castilla-La Mancha, 2000) pp. 907-923; Santos Juliá, “¿Falange liberal
o intelectuales fascistas?” Claves de razón práctica 121: 4-13 (2002).
38. Helen Graham, “Mujeres y cambio social...”, op. cit.; p. 14. See also: Geraldine M.
Scanlon, “El movimiento feminista en España, 1900-1985: Logros y dificultades,”
in Participación política de las mujeres, Judith Astelarra, comp. (Madrid: CIS, 1990)
pp. 83-101; and Danièle Bussy Genevois, “El retorno de la hija pródiga...”, op. cit.;
p. 127.
39. Mary Nash, 2004. Mujeres en el mundo, Historia, retos y movimientos (Madrid: Alian-
za, 2004) p. 163.
40. See: Giuliana Di Febo and Marina Saba, “La condición de la mujer y el papel de la
Iglesia en la Italia fascista y en la España franquista: ideologías, leyes y asociaciones
femeninas,” Ordenamiento Jurídico y realidad social de las mujeres, siglos XVI-XX. Act-
as de las IV Jornadas de Investigación Interdisciplinari (Madrid: Seminario de Estudios
de la Mujer de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1986) pp. 439-452. About
the symbolism of the spiritual reserve of Spanish women: Aurora G. Morcillo, “The
Orient Within. Women’s Self-empowering Acts under Francoism” (in press).
41. Cf. Michael Richards, Un tiempo de silencio (Barcelona: Crítica,1998); and Giuliana
Di Febo, La Santa de la Raza: El culto barroco en la España franquista. Barcelona:
Icaria, 1988).
42. María Teresa Vera Balanza, “Un modelo de misioneras seglares: las mujeres de Acción
Católica durante el franquismo,” La mujer en Andalucía. I Encuentro Interdisciplinar
de Estudios de la Mujer en Andalucía (Granada: Feminae-Seminario de Estudios de
la Mujer de la Universidad de Granada, 1990) pp. 521-532; and “Literatura reli-
giosa y mentalidad femenina en el franquismo,” Baetica: Estudios de Arte, Geografía e
Historia 14: 362-372 (1993). We also have an “insider’s” perspective: Emilio Enciso
Viana, “Cincuenta años al servicio de la Iglesia, Sucinto historial de las mujeres de
Acción Católica,” Ecclesia 1432: 21-22 (1969).
43. Cf. Mónica Moreno Seco, La quiebra de la unidad...op. cit.; pp. 78-79. See also:
Enrique González Duro. El miedo en la posguerra, Franco y la España derrotada: La
política del exterminio (Madrid: Oberon, 2003) pp. 219-239.
44. There is a recent article about everyday resistance in the Franquist period by Ana
Cabana Iglesia, “La Galicia Rural durante el Primer Franquismo, Resistencia o sum-
isión. Elementos para un debate,” de Investigadores del Franquismo (Albacete: Uni-
versidad de Castilla la Mancha (CD-Rom), 2003).
45. Cit. Temma Kaplan, Ciudad roja, periodo azul...op. cit.; pp. 70-135 and 269. In fact,
Lt. Gen. Camilo Alonso Vega, who was in charge of the Ministry of Security and
was general director of the Civil Guard in 1950 predicted then that “If we set the
precedent that those who take to the streets to agitate will be welcomed with police
shooting, the agitation will end.” (TUSSELL, Javier, Carrero, La eminencia gris del
régimen de Franco (Madrid, Temas de Hoy) pp. 192-205.
194 SECULARISM, WOMEN & THE STATE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

46. Vid. Gemma Piérola Narvarte, “Antes morir virgen que vivir mancillada, Aspectos
del discurso moral de la Iglesia sobre la población femenina navarra en el fran-
quismo,” Revista Gerónimo de Uztáriz, 16: 43-55 (2000); Jorge Uría et al., La cul-
tura popular en la España contemporánea: doce estudios (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva,
2003).
47. Vid. Mónica Moreno Seco, La quiebra de la unidad...op. cit.; pp. 196-203 and 266-
281. See also, from the same author: “La maldición de Eva. Mujer, Iglesia y práctica
religiosa en los años sesenta, La diócesis de Orihuela-Alicante,” en II Encuentro de
Investigadores del Franquismo, Tomo II (Alicante: Instituto de Cultura “Juan Gil-
Albert”-Diputación Provincial de Alicante, 1995) pp. 59-65.
48. See: María Salas, De la promoción de la mujer a la teología feminista (Cantabria: Sal
Térrea, 1993); Pilar Bellosillo, “La mujer española dentro de la Iglesia,” en BOR-
REGUERO, Concha et alii, La mujer española: de la tradición a la modernidad
(1960-1980) (Madrid: Tecnos, 1996) pp. 109-126; or Feliciano Montero, “El giro
social de la Acción Católica Española (1957-1959)” in V Encuentro de Investigadores
del Franquismo, José Babiano et al., coords. (Albacete: Universidad de Castilla la
Mancha (CD-Rom), 2003).
49. Cf. Asociación Mujeres en la Transición Democrática, Españolas en la Transición, De
excluidas a protagonistas (1973-1982)\ (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1999) pp. 29-
35.
50. Vid. Revista Vindicación Feminista 4 (1975): Vigil, Mariló, “La pornografía y el
sadismo antifemenino,” pp. 18-20; or Soledad Balaguer, “Publicidad: El machismo
a flor de piel,” Vindicación Feminista 5: 54-57 (1976).
51. Vid. Lola Gavira, “La mujer es una clase” y Soria, Assumpta, 1977 “Posición del
movimiento obrero tradicional en relación al movimiento feminista,” Vindicación
Feminista 7 (1977).
52. Mónica Moreno Seco, 2005. “Religiosas y laicas en el franquismo: entre la dictadura
y la oposición,” Arenal. Revista de historia de las mujeres 12(1): pp. 61-89 (2005);
“Mujeres en la transición de la Iglesia hacia la democracia: avances y dificultades”
Historia del Presente. 10: 25-40 (2007).
53. Beatriz Caballero Mesonero, “Algo viejo, algo nuevo y algo azul: Vallisoletanas en
el Franquismo (1959-1975),” in V Encuentro de Investigadores del Franquismo…op.
cit.
54. Vid. José Babiano, “Los católicos en el origen de CC.OO,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma,
8: 277-295 (1995); Enrique Berzal de la Rosa. “Católicos en la lucha antifranquista,
Militancia sindical y política,” Historia del Presente 10: 7-24 (2007).
55. Manuel Guerra Gómez, El laicado masculino y femenino…op. cit.; p. 136.
56. For the evolution of vocations: Estadísticas de la Iglesia Católica (Madrid: Edice,
1989) p. 154. y http://www.redescristianas.net/2007/09/20/aumenta-la-apostasia-
en-espana/ (The available data mention 150 complaints only for 2007).
57. Words by Valencia’s Cardinal Agustín García-Gasco on December 12,
2008 addressing the crowd in `Por la Familia Cristiana´ (http://www.elpais.
com/articulo/espana/Ataques/politicas/Gobierno/acto/Familia/Cristiana/
elpepuesp/20071230elpepunac_1/Tes).