Survivors of Spain's Franco-era 'fallen women' centres seek apology, recognition

Straits Times

12 hours ago

Headquarters of the Adorers nuns, still in operation, where numerous women were imprisoned against their will during Franco's regime and the transition to democracy by the 'Patronato de la Mujer', in Valencia, Spain, April 25, 2025. REUTERS/Eva Manez
The picture shows photos, from Provincial Historical Archive in Sevilla, from the 1940's to 1970's of women in centers belonging to the Women's Protection Board, in Madrid, Spain, April 23, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran
MADRID/VALENCIA - Consuelo Garcia del Cid was 16 when the family doctor came into her bedroom in Barcelona, Spain with her mother in 1974, grabbed her left arm and pushed a needle into a vein.
She blacked out then woke up in a strange room a day's drive away in Madrid - one of thousands of girls and young women who were accused of a range of perceived moral failings and taken to state-run Catholic rehabilitation institutions during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
On Monday, a Catholic body that includes most of the communities of nuns that helped operate some of the centres, will hold a ceremony to formally ask the women for forgiveness, the first event of its kind in Spain, announced in April but delayed by the death of Pope Francis.
A start, but not enough, say campaigners who want a national apology for what they went through in the network of Patronato de Proteccion a la Mujer (Board for the Protection of Women) institutes - along the lines of Ireland's 2013 apology for the abuses in its Magdalene Laundries.
"It's just the tip of the iceberg," said Pilar Dasi, 73, who spent several months at a centre in Valencia in 1971. "The event is good for the Church as it cleans its own image, but the government must also act."
She said she was held after her cousin, a police officer, reported her for keeping "bad company", a reference to left-wing boyfriends.
The operation was set up in 1941 by Franco's Justice Ministry, overseen by the board chaired by his wife Carmen Polo. It was active until 1985, 10 years after Franco's death.
Spain's Democratic Memory Ministry - a body set up to tackle the legacy of Spain's civil war and Franco's regime - told Reuters it applauded the decision by the Spanish Confederation of Religious Entities (CONFER) to ask for forgiveness.
The ministry said in a statement it hoped to hold its own ceremony later this year that would recognise the women as victims of the Franco regime.
"They will be considered victims and will be given a declaration of recognition and reparation," it said, without going into further detail on the timing or substance of any event.
Garcia del Cid said her family had called in the doctor in 1974 because they were worried about what they saw as her rebelliousness after she attended a number of demonstrations against the dictatorship.
The centre where she went was "a sinister place, with extreme religious indoctrination, and life was reduced to working, scrubbing and praying," said the now 66-year-old who has written five books on the subject.
"If you are told all day long that you are crazy, a slut, a lost cause, on the wrong path, there comes a point when you might start to believe it if you don't have a strong inner core." She said she was held until 1976.
'HORROR OF HORRORS'
The institutes took girls and women aged up to 25, including single mothers, children of prisoners, and those reported by priests, neighbours or their families for deviating from strict Catholic moral standards. The centres sought to rehabilitate them, survivors say, through work and instruction.
"A bad woman could be a girl who smoked, a girl who talked back like me, a girl who skipped school, wore miniskirts, kissed her boyfriend in the back row of the cinema," said 67-year-old Mariaje Lopez, who was placed in a centre from 1965 to 1970.
"Girls who got pregnant were also considered bad girls, and often no one asked who the father was."
One of the most feared centres was Penagrande maternity centre on the outskirts of Madrid, where many young women were pressured to give up their babies for adoption, campaign group Banished Daughters of Eve says.
"Penagrande was the horror of horrors. It was scary to have a child there. Any child who went up to the infirmary never came back. They were given to other families, or sold, or whatever. We were told they died," said Paca Blanco, 76, who was in and out of several board centres between 1967 and 1969.
CONFER - representing 403 Catholic congregations - announced in April it would hold a forgiveness ceremony, saying it took the step after listening to the experiences of survivors and conducting its own research.
"It helps (the survivors) to live that moment of healing and liberation and... us as congregations also to improve our way of dealing with these realities," CONFER chairman Jesus Diaz Sariego told Reuters.
The Spanish Conference of Bishops referred questions to CONFER, saying the Confederation was an independent body. The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Garcia del Cid said she would be at the CONFER event that she saw as a step towards her and the thousands of others being recognised as victims of Franco's regime. But more was needed.
"I will be buried with this," she told Reuters. "It was the greatest atrocity Spain has committed against women." REUTERS
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