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‘Let's get laid because it's the end of the world!’: sexuality, gender and the Spanish Left in late Francoism and the Transición

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13507486.2014.983433

1469-8293

Kostis Kornetis,

History of Education in Spain

AbstractThis article sets out to look at the ways in which gender relations and sexuality became politicised over time and especially during the 'long 1960s' in Spain during what is often called 'late Francoism'. It analyses the gradual change to more liberal mores that coincided with the so-called apertura, or opening-up of the regime, that began in the early 1960s and was intensified by the 1970s. The way in which progressive students – the so-called progre – experimented with sexuality and the ways in which their alternative aesthetics were used as codified elements of a rebelling identity marked the limits of the anti-regime community. The article ends with the final period of the Transición and the emergence of a new kind of sexual explicitness which started being promoted through alternative channels, coinciding, however, with a growing disenchantment from politics.Keywords:: sexualitygenderTransicióntardofranquismoaperturaprogre Notes 1. See, for example, the column in the daily Madrid with the semi-invidious, semi-condescending title "Ellos son Jovenes" ('These are Young'). 2.CitationDelgado, "Saura's Los golfos (1959; Released 1962): Heralding a New Cinema for the 1960s," 39. 3.CitationFoucault, The History of Sexuality in CitationHatzaroula, "Public Discourses on Sexuality and Narratives of Sexual Violence of Domestic Servants in Greece," 124. 4. Medina, Ciencia y sabiduría del amor, 202. 5. Later on in the same year the Ley Orgánica del Estado, which confirmed the state's succession to the monarchy, was ratified by a rigged referendum (December 1966) which acquired an 88% "yes" vote. 6.CitationCisquella, Erviti, and Sorolla, La represión cultural en el franquismo, 20. 7.CitationJosé Álvarez Junco, Movimientos Sociales en España: Del modelo tradicional a la modernidad post-Franquista. With the insertion of the technocrats and an on-going inner struggle between aperturistas within the regime, namely people prepared to contemplate some "opening up", over the so-called inmovilistas, namely the intransigent conservatives, on whether the regime needed to make some democratic concessions in order to guarantee support from the changing Spanish society, the Francoist power system was no longer a monolithic block. Growing disturbances, including workers' strikes in 1962 and university turmoil involving both students and professors in Madrid and Barcelona in the spring of 1965, had greatly contributed to a certain primacy of the group of evolutionists over the hard-core elements, the so-called bunkers. CitationPreston, Franco. A Biography, 718. Also see CitationKornetis, "Student Resistance to the Colonels' Dictatorship: Subjectivity, Memory and Cultural Politics (1967–74)." 8.CitationGracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco. 9. Ibid., 308.10.CitationTorres, El amor en Tiempos de Franco, 187.11.CitationMorris and Hofer, The Presence of Spain.12.CitationPack, Tourism and Dictatorship, 60.13. Torres, El amor en tiempos de Franco, 184. For an analysis of the representations of the "sueca" and of the "macho ibérico", see CitationCrumbaugh, Destination Dictatorship. For a humorous contemporary account of how both men and women were influenced by this "wave of eroticism" see CitationAcevedo, Cartas a los celtíberos desposados.14. See, CitationKornetis, Children of the Dictatorship, 12, 177.15. See, in this respect, CitationMichael Taussig's analysis in Mimesis and Alterity (p. 13) whereby mimesis is not sheer replication, but empowerment over what is considered to be the "original". CitationHomi Bhabha's idea of a "strategic mimicry" in postcolonial contexts in The Location of Culture, which destabilises the "authentic", is also pertinent to the Spanish case, despite the different setting), 87–8. This idea has been convincingly applied by CitationDimitris Papanikolaou to the Greek context of the Colonels' Junta (1967–74) and the realm of cultural resistances in his Singing Poets, 110.16. Manuel María, "La alegre realidad de las chicas 'ye-ye,'" Madrid, 30 March 1967.17. "Auténtica noche 'ye-ye'. Casacas azules, minipantalones y un desfile de la nueva moda a la una de la madrugada," Madrid, 31 March 1967.18. Juby Bustamante, "Lo cuenta Íñigo," Madrid, 19 October 1968.19.CitationGracia García and Ruiz Carnicer, La España de Franco, 296.20. Ibid., 297.21. "Micro-Encuesta. Opiniones sobre …," Madrid, 8 February 1967.22.CitationCook, The Long Sexual Revolution, 243.23.CitationRomeu Alfaro, El Silencio Roto … Mujeres contra el Franquismo, 203.24.CitationHistoria del Franquismo, 699.25. Antoni Batista and Josép Playá Maset, "Un mayo del 68 en marzo del 66. La Caputxinada fue uno de los primeros éxitos del antifranquismo," La Vanguardia, 27 February 1996.26. See CitationFusi, "La reaparición de la conflictualidad en la España de los Sesenta," 160–9.27. See the Communist paper Mundo Obrero, May 1967.28. "Incidentes en Barcelona," Madrid, 1 February 1967, my emphasis.29.CitationMedina Domenech, Ciencia y sabiduría del amor, 159.30. Romeu Alfaro, El Silencio Roto. One such publication was the clandestine journal Las mujeres y la lucha (Women and Struggle) in Madrid. The Franco regime's Female Section was up to that point praising women for calming down their husbands and raising their children.31. Ibid., 91.32.CitationDella Porta, Valiete, and Kousis, "Sisters of the South," 7.33. Ibid. Eventually, contraception became liberalised in Spain in 1978 and in Greece in the early 1980s. Abortion, however, was legalised in Greece only in 1986 and in Spain in 1985, though restricted to cases of preventing medical emergencies.34. Romeu Alfaro, El Silencio Roto, 222.35. Preston, Franco, 727.36.CitationDe Riquer i Permaner, "Social and Economic Change in a Climate of Political Immobilism," 265.37.CitationMarcuse argued in 1971 that: "What is at stake is not the cult of instinctual and sexual release which would simply mean a private and personal liberation, but a sensibility which in itself is geared to a new rationality. In other words… what is at stake is not the relationship between sensibility and reason, but between sensibility and a repressive and destructive rationality. And the harmonisation of sensibility with a new rationality, namely, the collective effort to reconstruct society and nature, to use all available resources with the goal of eliminating misery, inequality, and repression." From "The Jerusalem Lectures," 156.38.CitationMaravall, Dictatorship and Political Dissent, 9.39. Isaac Montero, "El debate Marat-Sade en la calle," Madrid, 29 May 1968.40. Preston, Franco, 727.41.CitationDe Riquer i Permaner, "Social and Economic Change in a Climate of Political Immobilism," 265.42.CitationPereda, Contra Franco, 111.44.CitationRibas, Los '70 a destajo. Ajoblanco y libertad, 179. Ribas offers an impressive panorama of the Barcelona underground scene during the tardofranquismo.45. The similarity with Gilbert Adair's literary representation of the French '68 in The Holy Innocents – later on adapted for the big screen by Bernardo Bertolucci in The Dreamers (2003) – as primarily an era of sexual experimentation within closed circles is more than evident.46. Ibid., 242.47.CitationHerzog, "Between Coitus and Commodification," 281.48. Romeu Alfaro, El silencio roto, 217.49. The Greek thinker CitationPanagiotis Kondylis also makes this point when talking about "grotesque forms of aestheticism" in several left-wing political "heresies" in H παρακμη´ του αστικον´ πολιτισμον´. Aπο´ τη μοντϵ´ρνα στη μϵταμοντϵ´ρνα ϵποχη´ και απο´ το ϕιλϵλϵυθϵρισμο´ στη μαζικη´ δημοκρατι´α, 271.50.CitationÁlvarez Junco, Movimientos Sociales en España.51.CitationHerzog, "Pleasure, Sex and Politics Belong Together," 430.52.CitationLaín Entralgo, El problema de la Universidad. Reflexiones de urgencia, 47.53.CitationSalgado-Araujo, "Mis conversaciones privadas con Franco," in Preston, Franco, 708.54. Carrero Blanco to Franco, 16 October 1969, reprinted in CitationRodó, La larga marcha Hacia la Monarquía, 654–9. Here I am using Preston's translation from Franco, 745–6.55. For an excellent study of the mobilisations following Franco's death, the political amnesty and the memory of this period see Paloma CitationAguilar, "Collective Memory of the Spanish Civil War: The Case of the Political Amnesty in the Spanish Transition to Democracy."56.CitationÁlvarez Junco, Movimientos Sociales en España.57.CitationBermeo, "Sacrifice, Sequence, and Strength in Successful Dual Transitions: Lessons from Spain," 604–5.58. Ibid.59. For the notion of micro-nationalism see CitationPayne, "Nationalism, Regionalism and Micro-Nationalism in Spain."60.CitationAguilar, "Collective Memory of the Spanish Civil War," 5.61.CitationDella Porta, Valiete, and Kousis, "Sisters of the South: Paths to Women's Rights in Southern Europe," 30; CitationDurán and Gallego, "The Women's Movement in Spain and the New Spanish Democracy," 208–9; and CitationFolguera, "De la Transición Política a la Democracia. La Evolución del Feminismo en España durante el Período 1975–1988."62.CitationCrumly, "Gender, Basque Nationalism and Women's Associations: The Case of Lanbroa," 44–60.63. This interpretation was widely shared by the extreme Left and ETA. See CitationCeberio, "Recuperar la Memoria," 9.64. Fusi in La pelota basca. La piel contra la piedra. Directed by Julio Medem. Spain, 2004.65. As Bermeo points out in her thorough analysis of the economic implications involved in an elite-driven transition to democracy, current scholarship also supports this point. See CitationBermeo, "Sacrifice, Sequence, and Strength in Successful Dual Transitions," 603.66. Ibid., 606.67. In his Eurocommunism and the StateCitationCarrillo quotes Marx and Engels saying that "all are free and equal – including the women," 89.68.CitationBoggs and Plotke, Politics of Eurocommunism, 111–12.69. See CitationTο KK Iσπανι´ας για το Γυναικϵι´ο Zη´τημα (The Spanish Communist Party on the Women's Issue). Historian Nikolaos Papadogiannis reports that the Greek left-wing newspaper Avgi hosted an interview with José María Corpas, member of the executive committee of the central council of the UJCE, the youth organisation of the Communist Party of Spain in 1979. Corpas maintained, among other things, that the fact that contraceptive pills were not yet popular among Spanish women was a problem that needed to be tackled. "I anergia odigei tous neous sti via" (Unemployment leads the youth to violence), Avgi, 1 June, 1980. See CitationPapadogiannis, "Greek Communist Youth and the Politicisation of Leisure, 1974–1981," 303–4.70. Bogs and Plotke, Politics of Eurocommunism, 111–12.71.CitationBermeo, "Sacrifice, Sequence, and Strength in Successful Dual Transitions," 619.72. See on this CitationMontalban, Crónica sentimental de la Transición.73.CitationSmith, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, 16.74. Ibid.75.CitationMarl, A Spanish Labyrinth. Films of Pedro Almodóvar, 185. On this issue, also see CitationKornetis, "Post-Authoritarian Counterculture in the European Periphery."Additional informationNotes on contributorsKostis KornetisKostis Kornetis is Assistant Professor at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in History and Civilization from the European University Institute, Florence. From 2007 to 2012 he taught in the History Department at Brown University. His research focuses on the history and memory of the 1960s, the methodology of oral history and the use of film as a source for social and cultural history. His book "Children of the Dictatorship. Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece" was published by Berghahn Books in 2013.