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AM I THAT BODY? SECCIÓN FEMENINA DE LA FET AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE INSTITUTION OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND COMPETITIVE SPORTS FOR WOMEN IN FRANCO'S SPAIN
| By Inbal Ofer |
Tel Aviv University |
"One must fight against preexisting mentalities based on backward and all too theoretical ideas and mistaken concepts. We must also fight against the attitude of women, who found themselves isolated and inactive... and that of the iberoceltic man"1
"The activity of physical education instructors and professors in the discussed period played a decisive role in eradicating the taboos imposed on women who wished to participate in sporting activities."2
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The Feminine Section of the Spanish Falange (Sección Femenina de la FET - SF), founded in June 1934, was for almost four decades the official women's organization of Franco's Spain, reaching at its height a total of 680,000 members. Yet despite its impressive size and diverse activities, the organization received little attention from historians. A number of new works have been published recently, which attempt to redress the balance. This was done mostly through an in-depth examination of the experiences of a small number of SF members at a local level, and the relations of those members with the larger women population in their provinces.3 Yet an analysis looking at the formulation and implementation of policy at a macro level is still missing. When issues of policy were addressed at such a level in the past, this was done for the most part through an examination of legislation and formal rhetoric.4 The current paper will look at one such aspect of national policy, namely, the promotion of physical education and competitive sport for women. This will be done by combining the aforementioned sources with an analysis of the workings of the National Department of Sport and Physical Education (departamento nacional de deporte y educación física) and the everyday experiences of the SF's representative in the field—its physical education instructors. |
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Women's physical education was a field over which the SF gained almost exclusive control starting the late 1930's (both within the school system and as a leisure activity), and which it viewed, and used, as a powerful recruitment tool throughout its existence. The interest in physical activities and body perceptions as part of a general effort to shape and supervise gender relations is not specific to Spanish society under Franco. Processes similar to the ones I will discuss in this article took place under most of the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, and to a lesser extent in democratic societies.5 The interest of the Franco regime, and that of the SF specifically, in issues concerning gender and the female body, far exceeded the field of physical education. Such an interest manifested itself in a long list of family laws; relentless references to demographic problems; and the attempt to create popular models of female beauty and aesthetics. But of all these issues that of female physical education stands out due the tensions it generated within the different sectors of the regime. The journalist Carmen Alcalde defined female physical education as a "national Catholic scandal", a view propagated by the church's representative Cardinal Segura, who saw physical education as "scandalous and lewd."6 The decision to center my analysis on the issue of female physical education results, then, not only from the immense importance accorded to this field by the SF's leadership, but also because it can be singled out as an important crossroads in a heated public debate over sexuality, social class, political ideology and religious perceptions. |
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