“Mutilated gentlemen” and “dishonoured” women: Body, gender and privilege in the Spanish postwar

Abstract

This article analyses the bodily experiences of Spanish men and women in order to broaden our understanding of the Spanish postwar. Drawing on the examples of war disability and rape, this research outlines the limits of the privilege which came along with being associated with the winning side in the Civil War, and questions the extent to which this affiliation functioned as a guarantor against the challenges of life under early Francoism. Within the context of generalised postwar hardship, important hierarchies and relative privileges emerged between men and women, and individuals from different social backgrounds. Men, for example, benefitted to a greater extent from «victor privilege» than their female counterparts. Meanwhile, there were also significant hierarchies between men from different classes with different kinds of disabilities. For ordinary Spaniards, the postwar period can be considered a continuation of the war, though not one between combatants, but rather a struggle against unemployment and hunger, a growing colonisation of women´s bodies, and the meagre or inexistent social benefits provided by the dictatorship.