Solidarity and silence: motherhood in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

The subject of this article, the role of mothers in several Nationalist Castilian pueblos during the Spanish Civil War, provides insight into the impact of war on families. Regrettably, there has been little historical attention paid to gender in the pueblos during the Spanish Civil War. Due to the paucity of written records of the experience of motherhood during the war, this project makes use of oral sources. The pueblos under consideration here lie outside of the city of Salamanca, in the region of Castilla and León. The men and women of these pueblos recall vivid images of their mothers during the war, memories of overwhelming fear and onerous labor; in so doing, they reveal the inherent value of their daily life during the war. The perception of mothers, as portrayed in the prescriptive literature of the 1930s in Spain, conflicts with the experience of motherhood during the Spanish Civil War. An examination of the impact of this war on mothers in this region of Spain reveals that they, whether through silence or solidarity, developed a culture of coping, a vigorous motherhood shaped by the specific social and historical circumstances in which these women found themselves. A close look at Castilian pueblos during the Spanish Civil War suggests that the war altered more than the economic and political life; instead, as historians of other areas of Spain have argued, it shook the very foundations of the Spanish family.

Keywords:

• Castilla
• pueblo
• motherhood
• oral history
• Civil War
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Mustafah Dhada, Carmen García Guerras, Maria Rocío Carmen García Guerras, Cliona Murphy, and Matthew Woodman. This project would not have been possible without their tireless effort and support!

Notes on contributor

Brett Schmoll earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1998. Trained as an Americanist and historian of gender, his dissertation examined the confluence of gender and death. Dr Schmoll now spends each summer in Spain where he is researching a larger project on constructions of the gendering of time and historical consciousness. He currently holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of History at the Bard College MAT Program and Lecturer in History and English at CSU Bakersfield. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1. These interviews are cataloged in the Public Library of Cantalapiedra as the Memorias de la Guerra Civil: Colección de Historia Oral de los Pueblos de Castilla, Biblioteca Pública Municipal de Cantalapiedra, Cantalapiedra, Castilla y León. When referring to these interviews, I will mention the name of the interview subject. The interviews are unpaginated.

2. This quote comes from a newspaper called Azul, published in Córdoba, January 9, 1938, n.p.

3. These images are gleaned from the author's 10-year annual journeys throughout this part of Spain.

4. Interviews are peppered with this sort of colloquialisms. See, for instance, Garcia Guerras, Interview A-C24.

5. Many sources mention this. For instance, see Manzano, Interview A-C3.

6. In addition to Kaplan, see also Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo, Guerilla y Resistencia campesina: La Resistencia armada contra el franquiso en Aragon, 1939–1952 (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2003) and Claudia Cabrero Blanco, Mujeres contra el franquismo (Asturias, 1937–1952): Vida cotidiana, represión, y resistencia. (Oviedo, Krk Ediciones, 2006).