There have been numerous studies on women ' s prisons in recent years. Ricard Vinyes, Fernando Hernández, Giuliana di Febo and among us, among others, Xabier Basterretxea, Arantza Ugarte, María González or Eduardo Barinaga have been involved in this. Of particular note is the multidisciplinary research carried out at the Institute of Criminology of the UPV/EHU, supported by Emakunde. The works written by these authors, some documentaries and some film or other have been very helpful in revealing this reality. These testimonies have been hidden for many years. Women’s silence has often been blamed, but they are clear: “We’ve always talked, but no one listened.”

Crimes charged with

To withstand the effects of Franco’s repression, if you were a woman, you did not need to be imprisoned or arrested. There were many, such as widows who did not have the opportunity to work, condemned to live in misery because they were relatives of a “red”. Many others formed itinerant families, moving through the geography of Spain following their husband, son or father in the continuation of their penitential trajectory. In these cases, they often had to take up undignified jobs (including prostitution) in order to provide their family members with what they needed inside the prison. It was the women and only the women who carried out this external assistance. The reverse case is not known. The lack of freedom in the case of women prisoners is compounded by loneliness. “We only had ourselves inside the prison,” they say.

Among those arrested, if we look at the crime charged, we can distinguish two large groups. In the first, there were those who, according to the Francoist regulations, committed a legal breach. These, like the men, were prominent militants in the struggle for the republic or against fascism: patriots, communists, socialists, anarchists, feminists... They fought and because of their level of commitment, they knew that they had great opportunities for harsh repression. They accepted the dark fate that had befallen them in coherence with their ideology and explained their intention to continue the struggle inside the prison, in one way or another.

The second group of victims of direct repression was much broader and more diverse. They were not accused of a specific crime, but of being “next to” them. Being the wife, daughter or mother of a Republican was enough to be a member of this unfortunate group. There are many testimonies about this situation. The phrase of a woman in the Saturraran prison makes this clear: “how they didn’t find my husband, they took me”, or the case of a teenager from Larraga, who we will see later, arrested together with his father. The purpose of this kind of repression was to punish, through their wives or daughters, the men who had fled, using Franco’s logic, attacking their “property”.

The penalties

From the beginning, Freemasonry made clear what their system of justice would be. The Navarrese historian Jimeno Jurio proposed the term political cleansing to refer to the repression carried out. The II. All the reforms in force in the Republic were annulled and, through a series of special laws, the new model, totally punitive, was implemented. In this way, the intention of correcting the offender was no longer applied. The culprits had to know clearly what their future was. “There will be winners and losers.” “They will pay for their mistakes in blood.” These were the phrases written by the winners during the initial post-war period. There was no moral impediment to the use of the death penalty in order to achieve the goal. Víctor Mañu, a Navarrese priest, said: “The fifth commandment is, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but there are exceptions.”

Shootings were not very common among women and no publicity was given to the shootings. They are known, however, the murders of the “13 Roses” or the 17 of Guillena. In the cases of convicted pregnant women, the woman waited until she gave birth to be shot. The child would be taken care of by the state after his mother was killed.

The prison was, therefore, the most common punishment for women. The pre-existing prisons were quickly filled by the large number of prisoners captured by Franco’s troops. New Spain began to adapt any building to serve as a prism. Warehouses, bull squares, convents, movie theaters... Any place was worth it. On the coast of Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, between Ondarroa and Mutriku, the former luxury hotel, later the seminary and the complex of buildings that ended up being the headquarters, became the largest women’s prison in the State: Central Prison of Saturraran. There, and according to the period, an average of 2,000 women were locked up between 1938 and 1944.

In addition to this prison, in the Basque Country there have been two prisons in Amorebieta, Bilbao, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Pamplona that have been documented as women’s prisons. It is a well-known fact that many women were held in other detention centres or prisons, but the above-mentioned prisons are only intended for women. One of the main characteristics of these prisons was the presence of nuns. After being banned during the Republic, they returned to do surveillance, but not so much to the prisms that had preceded them, but to the new ones created in convents or seminaries, such as Saturrarán or Zornotza. This, in addition to political control, guaranteed ideological and moral control so that these “lost” women could be closely followed. They benefited greatly both the State and the Church. The Francoists were getting new buildings and cheap labor. A large group of lost women to be drawn to the path of God by Catholic institutions. They're all winners.

Without forgetting the harsh life in the prisons, many of the punishments were carried out outside the prison walls. Some of these were imposed only on women. This sexual differentiation and the frequency of such acts preclude the theory of spontaneity of special punishments. There were revenges planned and promised from above.

The most feminine symbol of the women of the time was the long hair, which separated them from men and was often a sign of beauty. One of the most common punishments was haircut, bald. To remove this was to remove the condition of woman, almost to undress. It was also an insult that lasted a long time, since it took months until the hair regained its previous state. Sometimes they were left with two fillets in the form of horns to look like demons, making the connection “red-inferno”. In addition, these haircuts were often public; for example, in September 1936, after the capture of San Sebastián by Franco’s troops, they were carried out in the Plaza Easo in Amara.

Denial of hygiene was the goal of the second type of punishment. The effects of drinking Rizino oil were intended to show a double impurity: on the one hand the body and on the other the soul. The antithesis of the exemplary woman of New Spain. The Catholic Isabella or those located inexorably beyond the purity of the Teresa of Jesus. According to some scholars, these actions link it to the idea of extracting internal demons, again uniting the ideas of hell and Marxism.

Most women did not secretly suffer from the above-mentioned punishments. We can place in denial of dignity public parades, haircuts or drinking ricin oil and subsequent public demonstrations in the town squares. The testimonies collected in the villages of La Ribera include numerous references to these events. They had a double purpose. Humiliating women and their families on the one hand and terrorizing neutral or vague citizens on the other, making potential enemies see what could happen to those who were not in favor of the regime.

Rape deserves a special section. They were common in police stations, barracks or prisons. Used as an instrument in all wars, rape was no exception in the Civil War. However, direct testimonies about this are not too much. Many women, out of shame, have kept such dark passages in themselves. Most of the cases we know are reported by another woman who has not been a victim of rape, always making it clear that they did nothing to her. We've heard of other cases where they were killed after being raped. One of the most dramatic examples of this is the well-known case of Maravillas Lamberto in Larraga, Navarra. Vicente Lamberto, II. When the UGT militant was arrested during the Republican era, in August 1936, his 14-year-old daughter, Maravillas, wanted to accompany him. The Civil Guard and the falangist and the rocket who accompanied them agreed. Arriving at the town hall, his father was locked up and his daughter was raped again and again, while Vincent listened to everything from the cell. The next day they killed their father and daughter. The naked body of Maravillas was thrown away for the dogs to eat.

Being a mother in prison

The husbands or partners of most of the women who were incarcerated were either in prison, escaped or dead. The situation of the other relatives was not easy either and sometimes they did not have anyone to help them. As a result, women prisoners had a hard time leaving their children in the care of a trusted person. For many mothers, the only option was to keep them in jail with them. Children endured a life of confinement in harsh conditions more than their mothers. Hunger, cold, punishment or disease were the daily bread. Death as well. Carmen Riera, a former prisoner, explained how in one week, in August 1940, about 30 children, including her daughter Aurora, died in the prison of Saturrarán due to an unknown virus.

While some died, others were born in prison. An example of this is the baptisms of children published in various numbers by the press of the Regime. These children were accompanied by their grandfather and their grandmother – usually well-known Francoists from the Mutriku area – in many of the photographs. In view of the propaganda and the testimonies of the mothers, it seems that the Francoists were more concerned with the baptism of children than with the provision of food or health care.

In the Official State Gazette of 6 April 1940, the Order of 30 March was published to regulate the situation of children in prisons. It stated that children over the age of three should be released from prison. The Order also stated that if no family were found, the State would assume them. From that moment on, they began to look for a solution. No one wanted to leave their children in the hands of the State, as the chances of not seeing them again were high. Those who had no relatives asked for help from one of the released members. In other cases, families living near the prison received children until the mother was released from prison. Many such cases are known both in Ondarro and in Mutriku, where many families were willing to receive one of the children from the Saturraran prison. When the mother was released from prison, she recovered the child in most cases. At other times, however, in the face of a bleak future, the former prisoners preferred to leave the child once and for all in the foster families they trusted, rather than give him or her an unhappy life with them.

Children who could not find a family were taken to special boarding schools. In it, the theories of Lieutenant Doctor Antonio Vallejo-Nágera came into force; that is, the use of “eugenics” was favored. According to this theory, red mothers had the disease of communism and the only way to avoid infecting children, in order to avoid physical contact, was to distance themselves from them. These ideas brought unbridled bitterness. There were many tears shed for this theory. Many of the children who fell under this law never saw their mother again. Through the Falangist organization Auxilio Social, children were given up in unregulated adoptions among pro-Franco families. Some, the children they took to educate them as children they could not have, others, were only looking for cheap servants.

For many women this was the last punishment, the robbery of their children. Although some attempts have been made, these events are currently far from being clarified in 2011. In 1942, 9,059 children were in the care of the State. In 1943, 12,042. The whereabouts of many of these children are still unknown today.