The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, Government, Civics, History, Spain & Portugal
ISBN: 9781789202366
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2019-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

Part III

The Twentieth Century

Chapter 7

New Women for the Public Space

Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira and the Eugenic Mother (1879–1956)

Alba González Sanz

Although there is a longstanding belief that Spain lacks a feminist movement comparable to those of neighbouring countries, particularly compared to England and its suffragette movement, the truth is that from the second half of the twentieth century, many women began to organise and protest their status in society (Díaz 2012: 52–53). The right to work and to an education were supported by broad sectors of writers and thinkers from different political cultures, who advocated for equal opportunities. There were even pre-twentieth century calls for political rights and the right to vote, though these were not without controversy (Arkinstall 2014: 19).

In the 1920s and 1930s, a new kind of Spanish woman came to prominence. The term ‘modernas’ encompassed a large group of writers, artists, intellectuals and politicians. Largely based in Madrid, these modern women represented a generation associated with the breakdown of traditional femininity and its three pillars: home, motherhood and silence. Beyond the aesthetic clichés1 of the movement, such as short hair, smoking, driving, sports and changes in fashion, what we find is the prominent access of middle-class Spanish women to the public sphere. Professional women, students, political representatives, journalists and writers were gaining a presence in Spain’s urban centres. Female citizenship acquired a heretofore-unknown relevance throughout the state and, during the years of the Second Republic, was protected by fundamental changes in law. The 1931 Constitution and the legislation derived from the Magna Carta included, for the first time in Spain, true universal suffrage, civil marriage and divorce, the preservation of citizenship after marriage to a foreigner, the elimination of the crime of adultery and paternity testing, among other advances that made both sexes equal, at least on paper.

Among all the individual stories that tell of the large-scale change to women’s place in the Spanish cultural imaginary and day-to-day life, the one analysed in this chapter treads the border between genius and madness. It is the story of a longing to create women capable of redeeming, once and for all, all others. Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira (1879–1955), an upper middle-class woman from Ferrol in Galicia, conceived, both physically and intellectually, a ‘eugenic child’ (Sinclair 2011: 24), whom she called Hildegart and trained from infancy in the study of sexual education and the problems related to inheritance, genetics, sexuality and eugenics. The child prodigy astonished Madrid in the early 1930s, but, by 1933, not yet nineteen years old, she was killed by her own mother after attempting to extricate herself from the relationship. The ensuing social scandal lasted until the trial in 1934 and was then forgotten until the second half of the twentieth century, when the psychologist’s report on Aurora (Rendueles Olmedo 1989) was discovered and Spain’s new democracy made it possible to revisit the story.2 My proposal is to look at the peculiarities of Aurora’s reformist plan, which was supposedly inspired by socialist utopias (de Guzmán 2014: 93), and at

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