The Franco regimés female prisons repression: the women imprisoned in Valencia

Abstract

The universe of Franco regime’s female prisons is one aspect of the investigation on repression that is mostly invisible. The investigations and works carried out by the history of women and gender, together with the testimonies of these selfsame repressed women have made it possible to recuperate and know the historical experience of the militant anti Franco regime. Starting from the female prisoners’ files from the Provincial Woman’s Prison and Santa Clara’s Convent Prison in the city of Valencia we can begin to rescue some of the political female prisoners of the Franco regime in “El Pais Valenciano”. They are women who were members of different organisations; some were councillors and mayors in their towns. They were doubly punished for being republicans and for being women, for having challenged the traditional role of their gender, defended and imposed by the Franco regime. It is a first try to recuperate women committed to the defence of the II Republic, giving them protagonism and historical significance before the invisibility of the traditional historiography, being able to write down their imprisonment and resistance experiences. To rescue them from the dark area in which the historical investigation of this subject finds itself.