El patronato de protección a la mujerprostitución, moralidad e intervención estatal durante el franquismo

Abstract

The study of Francoist repression in all its areas has been a recurring theme in the historiography of recent decades. Executions, imprisonment, physical violence, exile or debugging of civil servants represent the most tangible forms practiced by the new State to perpetuate itself in power and, perhaps, for that reason are also the topics most addressed in recent publications. However, there was another type of less visible but equally coercive repression that, although it suffered from the whole population, was revealed as a specific and constant harassment against the female collective. We refer to the sexual repression carried out in order to implement a model of moral behavior determined, which triggered the application of a strict rule in social habits, ranging from the way of dressing up to the forms of relationship between genders. Once the civil war was over, the synergy of the new regime was imposing its ideology through the use of force, propaganda or indoctrination; but on the moral plane, the most effective and lasting repressive apparatus would be the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer. This institution was created in 1941 with the priority objective of redeeming "fallen women" and helping those who were in danger of "falling". In a broader sense one could say that its general function was linked to the dissemination of a rule of conduct where decency prevailed, modesty or chastity, while its most specific function was focused on the redemption of prostitutes. To implement this work, the board developed a surveillance system that applied prison therapy in order to free women from all those social practices that came into conflict with the austere rules of the regime. In addition to the aforementioned preventive functions, the board of trustees would also be responsible for carrying out periodically a set of statistics and reports that evaluated public morality and that will ultimately be the documental basis of this thesis. They show all the edges of the moral question that, in Francoist terms, include very heterogeneous elements such as the atmosphere in dances, cinemas and beaches, homosexuality, the use of narcotics, prostitution or abortions and nuptiality; issues that the institution controlled until its final end, in the middle of the eighties. Of all of them, prostitution will constitute the central problem and the axis on which most of the reports are concerned. For this reason, the study of prostitution in the Franco regime is inseparable from the analysis of the Patronato and must always be carried out jointly. For all the above, the purpose of this thesis, have a double side: on the one hand, highlight the importance of the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer in the Francoist society as a key element in the construction of the feminine moral behavior and, on the other hand, to elaborate a study of the prostitution during the Francoism, emphasizing the sexual repression suffered by the women in that stage and especially in the considerable differences with the masculine sexuality. Certainly, the Patronato de Proteccion a la Mujer represents the cornerstone of our analysis, while the issue of prostitution is always addressed through the oppressive view of this institution and, in fact, its protagonism as an analytical object in the thesis is defined by the own relevance that it has within the reports of the Patronato.