Becoming Visible and Real: Images of Republican Women during the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Following Donna Haraway’s (1988) doctrine of embodied objectivity, I analyze the construction of the notion of woman in the visual culture produced during the Spanish Civil War, by considering different women’s roles as militiawomen, political leaders, nurses, and workers in the munitions factories. A selection of photographs of the Republican women during the Spanish Civil War reveals how the modern wars of the first half of the 20th century should not be considered exclusively a male domain because women became publicly visible and a political power in their fight against fascism. As it occurred with other North American and European women during World War I and World War II, Spanish women joined the labor forces with the outbreak of the Civil War, becoming aware of their subjugated position for the first time in history. Therefore, the images depicting Republican women mirrored not only the legal and social rights conquered by women since the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, but they also embodied their emancipation and, furthermore, the roots of Spanish Feminism, a movement which has been repressed for a long-time by Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975).