Voices of the vanquished: Leftist women and the Spanish Civil War

Herrmann, Gina

doi:10.1080/1463620032000058659

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…There is already a phenomenal (and growing) body of work on women and the Spanish Civil War (including Box, 2017b; Graham, 1995a; Herrmann, 2003; Ryan, 2009; Sole, 2017). Whilst this scholarship is highly attentive to gender, features of the mass grave paradigm still resist this turn.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unrecovered objects: Narratives of dispossession, slow violence and survival in the investigation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War

Renshaw

2020

Journal of Material Culture

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The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was triggered by a military uprising against the democratically elected Popular Front government. Away from the battlefield, this war was characterized by the politically-motivated murder of thousands of civilians, many of whom were buried in clandestine graves throughout Spain. Following Franco’s victory and subsequent dictatorship, there were strong prohibitions on commemorating the Republican dead. A radical rupture in Spain’s memory politics occurred from 2000 onwards with the founding of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory and other similar pressure groups that have organized the exhumation and reburial of the Republican dead. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in communities in Castile and León, and Extremadura as they underwent mass grave investigations. It examines the experience of theft and dispossession that occurred as part of the Francoist repression of Republicans. Accounts of these episodes focus on stolen and looted objects robbed from the dead during the killings, from the graves’ post-mortem, or from surviving relatives as part of the systematic dispossession of Republican households that occurred during the war and immediate post-war period. These narratives surface with frequency during the investigation and exhumation of mass graves. Despite the fact that many are lost forever, these stolen possessions can function as powerful mnemonic objects with a strong affective and imaginative hold. The narratives of dispossession explore themes of survival, the experiences of women and children, and the impact of slow violence. By invoking theft and stolen objects, these stories highlight forms of trauma and forms of memory that may not be represented fully by the dominant investigative paradigm of the mass grave exhumation with its inherent focus on death, cataclysmic violence and the tangible, physical traces of the past.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Women were actively engaged in politics before and during the Civil War. Republican women were on the battlefield in both combat and support roles (Herrmann, 2003; Lines, 2009). Francoism also mobilized its female supporters, primarily through the Sección Femenina (Richmond, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unrecovered objects: Narratives of dispossession, slow violence and survival in the investigation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War

Renshaw

2020

Journal of Material Culture

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“…During the war, an abortion law was approved first in Catalonia 5 and later in the rest of Republican Spain, when the Catalan anarchist Federica Montseny was the Minister for Health (Rodrigo 2014). The images of milicianas fighting in the streets and the battlefronts became a symbol of the mobilisation of women against fascism, having endured as one of the main icons of the revolution (Herrmann 2003; Martin Moruno 2010). Several thousand women fought in the battlefronts during these months, but as the war progressed, they were increasingly relegated to care work and rearguard needs (Berger 2018; Berger and Balló 2021; Herrmann 2003; Nash 1989; Taillot 2011).…”

Section: Women’s Struggles Food and The Spanish Civil Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The images of milicianas fighting in the streets and the battlefronts became a symbol of the mobilisation of women against fascism, having endured as one of the main icons of the revolution (Herrmann 2003; Martin Moruno 2010). Several thousand women fought in the battlefronts during these months, but as the war progressed, they were increasingly relegated to care work and rearguard needs (Berger 2018; Berger and Balló 2021; Herrmann 2003; Nash 1989; Taillot 2011). 6 Women were also called to provide health and welfare services both at home and on the front lines, and directly to workshops and factories.…”

Section: Women’s Struggles Food and The Spanish Civil Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As in North America and Europe during the two World Wars, there was a massive mobilisation of the female workforce, occupying jobs traditionally held by men and developing new skills and aptitudes previously inaccessible to women. Moreover, women took more active roles in the public sphere, for example, occupying positions of responsibility in the unions or seeking out vocational training (Herrmann 2003; Lines 2011).…”

Section: Women’s Struggles Food and The Spanish Civil Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Feeding the City and Making the Revolution: Women and Urban Agriculture in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

2022

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The everyday difficulties faced by working‐class women, including access to food, are aggravated in critical periods, such as wars and economic crises. However, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was accompanied by a revolution, in the Republican zones, where women opened spaces for their emancipation. By examining social reproduction practices surrounding food in Barcelona during the years 1936–1939, we contribute to critical research on food sovereignty in the urban contexts. Our core findings inform the role of women in food provision and production, through individual subsistence agriculture, involvement in Barcelona’s anarcho‐syndicalist agricultural collective, as well as in agriculture education and training programmes. Our research is based on original archival data, historical press and interviews with witnesses of the war. We conclude that revolutionary and transformative actions, including current food sovereignty practices, need to make gender justice a central goal.

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Warrior Women

Fell

2023

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This Element examines women warriors as vehicles of mobilisation. It argues that women warrior figures from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War are best understood as examples of 'palimpsestic memory', as the way they were represented reflected new contexts while retaining traces of legendary models such as Joan of Arc, and of 'travelling memory', as their stories crossed geographical borders and were re-told and re-imagined. It considers both the instrumentalisation of women warriors by state actors to mobilise populations in the world wars, and by non-state actors in resistance, anti-colonial and feminist movements. Fell's analysis of a broad range of global conflicts helps us to understand who these actors were, what motivated them, and what meanings armed women embodied for them, enabling a fresh understanding of the woman warrior as an archetype in modern warfare.

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Voices of the vanquished: Leftist women and the Spanish Civil War

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Unrecovered objects: Narratives of dispossession, slow violence and survival in the investigation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War

Unrecovered objects: Narratives of dispossession, slow violence and survival in the investigation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War

Feeding the City and Making the Revolution: Women and Urban Agriculture in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

Warrior Women

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