Caring for the children, dedicating themselves to housework, obeying their husbands… These premises were some of the main tasks of women, invariably, during the decades of the Franco dictatorship.
How do its protagonists remember those moments
Some women who had moments of prominence in those years will now be able to see those images in color for the first time. Today DMax offers the second epilogue of Francoism in color with the special documentary Cria, reza, ama, starting at 10:30 p.m.
Brutal Media is the Catalan production company that for the past four years has been incorporating different series from the recent history of Spain from The Civil War in color to this channel.On this occasion, the colored images recount the role of women throughout the dictatorship and the version of the female world transmitted by the official news program of the regime such as the Node, in addition to other historical documents from fifty archives.
Like the rest of the series, it will be seen in more than 80 countries.
Structure of the documentary
‘Cria, reza, ama’ begins its review of post-war women’s lives with unpublished color images of a concentration of the Women’s Section in Medina del Campo. This institution, led by Pilar Primo de Rivera,stood as a key element of Francoism to spread among women their ideals and traditional values ​​defended by the regime. In addition, this objective was complemented, as the documentary will show, with other instruments such as the influence developed by the magazines of the time. The images of the Women’s Section acquire a higher value as it is a material rarely seen to date.
Among other moments, the documentary collects the words of Pilar Primo de Rivera during one of her speeches in which she stated that “true feminism does not consist in wanting for women the functions that are considered superior today, but in surrounding them with greater human dignity And social”. Some slogans that the writer and journalist Carmen Alcalde
closely followedand the instructor Cristina Chico de la Llave , who offer their testimony to this new DMAX format. Although both recognize that their membership in the Women’s Section allowed them an unusual empowerment thanks to sports and travel, Carmen still feels a weight in acknowledging that she was part of this institution. The paths of both will fork diametrically. While Carmen joined the Communist Party and was one of the founders of the magazine ‘Vindicacion Feminista’, Cristina retired from the Women’s Section and even today recognizes that it has been her school, her ‘everything’. Motherhood was undoubtedly one of the central axes of the role of women during the Franco regime
. So was obedience to the husband through some guidelines that he advisedthe famous ‘Consultorio de Elena Francis’ (which ended its broadcasts in 1984) and that some of the women of the time would listen to and comment on ‘Cria, reza, ama’. Married women needed the legal authorization of their husbands to carry out numerous procedures. In the case of single women and widows without children, the regime had another institution dependent on the Women’s Section that was a kind of compulsory service called Social Service where they learned trades.
The documentary Cria, reza, ama will also revive in full color other key moments for women, such as her arrival at university. The director Cecilia Bartoloméwill recount her return to Spain to study cinema and how some of her first creations, such as ‘Carmen de Carabanchel’, were censored by the regime for reflecting the situation of women in a country where abortion and separation were prohibited and punished by law . The fight against this reality was embodied by women like Ana Maria Perez del Campo , who created the first Association of Separated Women in 1973 and who contributed her experiences to the documentary.
With the celebration in 1975 of the International Year of Women promoted by the General Assembly of the United NationsNew winds will also arrive in Spain and we will finally be able to see women competing in sports such as rugby, jumping into bullfighting rings or developing other trades previously intended only for men. It was the year of the creation of the Feminist Party of Spain led by Lidia Falcon and the Conference for the Liberation of Women in Barcelona and Madrid, events that will bring this special DMAX format to a close.
