My history class this semester concentrated on the ancient history of Spain, from the Pre-Romanic tribes up through the end of the Hapsburg kings. There were people in my class who were a little disappointed that we didn't study modern history since we would have learned about Franco's dictatorship and life in Spain under his rule. Luckily I have Lidia here at home who was born right at the beginning and has lots of stories and opinions to share about it. Today after lunch, I got an interesting lesson about the involvement of the Catholic church in the dictatorship, and the suppression of women under it.
Lidia is Catholic and goes to mass almost every Sunday, but she still has a lot of criticisms of the church, specifically bout the hypocrisy of the higher officials regarding the money it rakes in while defying Jesus's message to give away all your possessions to the poor. I didn't really know that much about the Franco dictatorship before coming to Spain (or really anything about Spain) but the church was an ardent supporter of his regime and allowed his power to continue until his death, despite the fact that he killed and imprisoned thousands of people. Lidia was saying that she has a friend who is a priest, and that he became a priest since his parents wanted a layer of protections from the regime, and that's exactly what you got when there was a priest in the family. Additionally, Franco extended his power through the priests of the smaller towns. Lidia said that back in the day, the pueblos basically did what the priests told them to do, including spying on each other. A while ago, I saw a really great movie called La Voz Dormida that you should really watch if you get a chance, that also dealt with church's involvement in the running of the prisons that held the political prisoners. It's very well done, but also incredibly sad, I cried for almost the entire movie. It just came out in Spain last month, but I'm sure eventually it will be available in the US.
Other aspects of life were also strictly controlled by the regime, including the treatment of women in society. It sounded a lot to me like how places in the Middle East are today. Apparently, women basically had no rights: they couldn't open a bank account, they couldn't travel without their husband or father, their passport was in the name of their husbands, etc. Also, they had to take the last name of their husband. This was interesting to me, for I don't really agree with the default taking of the husband's last name that is typical to our American culture. In my opinion, it should be just as easy for the husband to take the wife's last name. But as Lidia was saying, everyone has two last names, and the norm in Spain is for every to keep their family names. The children then take the first part of each parent's last names, first the father's then the mother's. Here's an interesting link that explains it better: http://perez.cs.vt.edu/twolastnames. But under the Franco regime, women had to give up their family name, which is an integral part of their identity. This treatment of women partially stemmed from the very patriarchal church system and partially from Franco's opinions. Additionally, the first name of every girl had to be Maria followed by their actual name. That's why you see a lot of women from a certain generation that are Maria Angeles or Maria Jose, etc., of course named after Maria in the Bible.
It's very interesting to see how a society that was so repressed just forty years ago rebounded so quickly and today it totally modern in all aspects. It gives me hope that all the revolutions that occurred in the Middle East this Spring, will have a positive outcome and result in a more open society like Spain did. The circumstances of the changes were different, but there are some similarities so I guess we'll see.
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