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Abstract
In this essay, I argue that the historical evolution of physical education under the Francoist regime was affected by the transition from autarky to consumerism through the modernization process initiated in the late 1950s. In 1961 the government issued the Law of Physical Education to validate itself internationally by showing a modern prone regime. After the civil war physical education had been a political instrument of the state to rebuild the New Spain, that guaranteed more effective political, civic and patriotic control. Physical education, hence, only had a meaning within the context of the ‘reconstruction of the fatherland’ on its foundations. The female body became an ideological weapon against the regime's moral/sexual politics that changed the whole fabric of society and led eventually to the collapse of the Francoist ideological system, an ideological system based on National-Catholic values. In the midst of American-friendly anti-communist modernization Spanish women's bodies turned into more than vessels of Christian motherhood, at least in the anteroom to marriage.
Notes
1 See CitationRámos, La modernización de España, 147; Citationde Grazia, The Culture of Consent; CitationGori, Italian Fascism; CitationMangan, Superman Supreme; CitationLinke, German Bodies; CitationVertinsky, Disciplining Bodies in the Gymnasium.
2 CitationPastor Pradillo, Definición y desarrollo del espacio profesional, 39.
3 CitationZagalaz Sánchez, Fundamentos Legales De La Actividad Fisica En Espana, 77.
4 See CitationCasero, La España que bailó con Franco.
5 ‘Se dirá que estos son quijotismos trasnochados. Benditos quijotismos si ellos nos deparan la occasion de que una porción, más o menos elevada..tengan medios y posibilidades para conseguir la salud corporal que en la unidad y mutua permanente influencia del cuerpo y del espíritu sera salud del alma; porque educar el cuerpo en sanos y cristianos principios de la educación física y el deporte implica necesariamente educar el alma.’ CitationDelegación Nacional de Educación Física y Deportes, ‘Discurso de Excmo.Sr. Don José Antonio Elola-Olaso’, 19.
6 CitationPius XII, ‘Alocución a las formaciones deportivas de Italia—20 Mayo de 1945’, 1.
7 ‘Si lograis, gracias a la actividad deportiva, conseguir que el cuerpo sea más dócil, más sumiso el espíritu y a vuestras obligaciones morales; si en fin, vuestro ejemplo contribuye a dar a la actividad deportiva moderna una forma, más en relación con la dignidad humana y los preceptos divinos, entonces vuestra cultura física adquiere un valor sobrenatural’. CitationPius XII, ‘Alocución a las formaciones deportivas de Italia—20 Mayo de 1945’, 4.
8 CitationFoucault's explanation of ‘docile bodies’ in his work Discipline and Punish takes us to the great book Man – the Machine (1748) by Julien Offrey de La Mettrie (1709–51). La Mettrie argued in L'Histoire naturelle de l'âme (1745) the Epicurean notion that the only pleasures are those of the senses, an idea further developed in L'homme machine (Man–Machine, 1748). As Foucault points out: ‘La Mettrie's L'Homme-machine is both a materialist reduction of the soul and a general theory of dressage, at the centre of which reigns the notion of ‘docility’ which joins the analysable body to the malleable body.’ Foucault highlights that this work is written in two registers. On the one hand the anatomic-metaphysical, and on the other hand on a techno-political register. The former approach discerned by physicians with a preface by Descartes and the latter presenting the reader with a set of regulations and calculated methods as applied by the army, the school system, the hospital and so on, with the only purpose of correcting the body's operational abilities. Foucault, ‘Docile Bodies’, 180.
9 Foucault, ‘Docile Bodies’, 181.
10 CitationPius XII, ‘Deporte y Gimnasia’, 4.
11 CitationPius XII, ‘Deporte y Gimnasia’, 5.
12 CitationPius XII, ‘Deporte y Gimnasia’, 6.
13 CitationPius XII, ‘Deporte y Gimnasia’, 2.
14 That same year the Law for Political and Professional Rights of Women was approved.
15 See CitationRichards, A Time of Silence.
16 Delegación Nacional de Educación Física y Deportes, ‘Discurso de Excmo.Sr. Don José Antonio Elola-Olaso’, 19.
17 ‘En el deporte pueden, en efecto encontrar desarrollo las verdaderas y sólidas virtudes cristianas, que la gracia de Dios hace más tarde estables y fructuosas; en el espíritu de disciplina se aprenden y se practican la obediencia, la humildad, la renuncia; en las relaciones de equipo y competición, la caridad y el amor de fraternidad, el respeto recíproco, la magnanimidad, a veces incluso el perdón; en las firmes leyes del rendimiento físico, la castidad, la modestia, la templanza, la prudencia.’ CitationJohn XXIII spoken on the occasion of the Olympic Games celebrated in Rome in 1960. ‘Preamble’. Ley de Educación Física.
18 The creation of the Escuela Central de Educación Física in the early 1920s responded to a militaristic concept of physical fitness and therefore antithetical to classic notions feminine frailty.
19 ‘We think’, said the Pope, ‘competitive athletics demands some qualities completely opposite to feminine constitution – Muscular strength, speed control, considerable resistance to fatigue’. CitationPius XI, ‘Dobbiamo Intratenerla’, 2.
20 CitationPius XI, ‘Dobbiamo Intratenerla’, 2
21 Casero, La España que bailó con Franco, 60.
22 Casero, La España que bailó con Franco, 60
23 CitationDelfino, ‘Los deportes más propios para la mujer’.
24 Sección Cultura, Photograph Women's Section, Archivo General de La Administración.
25 CitationLjunggren, ‘The Masculine Road Through Modernity’, 86–111.
26 Sección Cultura, Photograph Women's Section, Archivo General de La Administración.
27 Seccion Femenina, ‘CitationMetodo, planes y objetivos de la educación’, 6.
28 CitationGutiérrez, ‘Comunicación del trabajo de Carlos Gutiérrez.’
29 CitationGutiérrez, ‘Educación Física Femenina. Enseñanza Primaria’.
30 The Women's Section created the Secretariat of Culture in 1938 in charge of training music instructors and collecting traditional folklore. At the time dance instruction was under their Secretariat of Physical Education. Coros y Danzas per se was united in 1944. Casero, La España que bailó con Franco, 39–48.
31 Casero, La España que bailó con Franco.
32 Citationde Mirandade Huelin, ‘Informe’, 1.
33 Citationde Mirandade Huelin, ‘Informe’, 4.
34 Citationde Mirandade Huelin, ‘Informe’, 7.
35 Correspondence, Sección Cultura, Sección Femnina's Papers (Archivo General de la Administracion).
36 CitationTobalina Espiga, ‘Regidora Provincial de Administración de la Sección Femenina de Valladolid’.