The re-Catolicisation of sexual morality in post-war Malaga

Abstract

This work studies the efforts of the Spanish civil and ecclesiastical authorities to achieve greater conformity of men and women with Catholic sexual morality in postwar Málaga. The author argues that the recatholicisation project, despite its repressive effects upon women, had a very limited success. To a greater extent, this was due to the fact that the project was based on a false premise of national-catholic ideology, which affirmed the consubstantiality of hispanic culture and Catholic orthodoxy. The author employs cultural anthropology in order to demonstrate how the traditional cultural code of Andalusian population limited the recatholicisation process.