Education, social class, political activism: Divergent attitudes toward sexuality among communist prisoners and Carlota O’Neill in the early Francoist regime

Abstract

The majority of female political prisoners in Franco’s times that have left their testimonies kept themselves apart from common-law prisoners, usually prostitutes, because of their rejection of non-normative sexuality. Their position, however, was not homogeneous. In this article we try to delve into the reasons for the divergence among the prisoners themselves: the communists taking one side, and the political prisoner and republican writer Carlota O’Neill separating her opinion from theirs. The position of the latter reveals a much more open-minded approach to sexuality. Within the context of the current attempt to recuperate our historical memory, a biographical study of her figure allows us to claim her as one of the great republican exiles.