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Mykal Bayne

Prof. Catherine Jaffe

Honors Humanities II

4 April 2019

Pilar Primo de Rivera’s Fascist and Communist Thoughts

The Political climate in Spain, at the time of Pilar Primo de Rivera’s 1961 Women’s Section

Speech, is fiercely controlled by the Franco Regime. However, in spite of the of the intense focus by the

government on Traditionalism within Spanish culture, the late 1950s found Spain at the precipice of the

Women’s Movement. Based on Ingel Ofer’s account in The History of Modern Spain, women during this

time “grew up against the background of the Rif War in the early 1920s and came into their own during the

years of the Second Republic”. Within the confines of this period, political activists, such as Rivera,

appropriated ideas from both the Communist-based Republican Party and the Fascist-based Falangist Party.

This duality allowed Rivera, above others, to not only relate to both the traditional and progressive ideals of

her audience, but to further ingrain a sense of Nationalism toward the emerging modern women of Spain that

had been heavily silenced up to the mid-1950s. This stems from the military-based tactics used by the

Franco regime, in which, “rebel violence was targeted against the socially, culturally, and sexually

different” (Graham 29). Through Rivera’s understanding of the conservative political system within

Spain, she is able to display an increasingly palpable argument for women’s liberation to the masses. By

first looking at the political background of Pilar Primo de Rivera, we can further trace the complex

mixture of Fascist and Communist ideology within the Women’s Movement of Spain.

Rivera, throughout her career, routinely cites her father as garnering her interest politics, however

it is her mother who acts as the primary inspiration behind her beliefs concerning Spanish gender roles.

Growing up in an upper-middle-class military family in Madrid, Rivera lost her mother at the child birth

of Rivera’s 6th sibling. In the time that her mother was still alive, Rivera accounts that “she [her mother]

lived the only way a good wife and a good Christian was to live” (Ofer 466). She continues by saying that

her mother “very possibly knew she was going to die if she gave birth to that baby, but she no doubt felt
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she was abiding by her duty as a married woman”. (Ofer 466) These very traditional, conservative values

in turn manifested themselves into a strong connection with ideological similarities of Fascism. Rivera

infuses her understandings of Fascism, in her explanation of modern gender roles. In her 1961 speech,

“On the Rights of the Working Women”, she asserts that “it is by no means a feminist law” and that “in

no way do we [the Women’s Section] wish to make men and women equal beings”. Rivera initially

begins her doctrine by appealing to the very core of the Spanish Falangist Party; However, it is in her

interaction between Fascism and Communism that Rivera subtly imposes that the traditional role of

women is a foundation for establishing more educational opportunities and political benefits.

When analyzing Rivera’s connections between the Communist and Fascist themes in her 1961

speech, it is important to look at her relation to the Falange Students’ Union. As the primary start to her

political career, the influence of being apart of the first set of young women to be allowed to participate in

the founding ceremony of the Spanish Falange greatly imparted, in Rivera, an appreciation for women in

the workforce. This is present in her 1961 speech as she asserts that a woman’s “fundamental virtue, self-

sacrifice, can be developed much more consciously and efficiently if she has an educational foundation”

(Rivera 239). Through her speech “On the Rights of Working Women”, Rivera mainly utilizes Fascist

ideology in association with Domestic life, while Communist ideology is used to examine the social and

cultural aspects of female livelihood. Each political parties’ interpretation of Feminism equally invoke a sense

of Nationalism for women in the hopes of serving the Fatherland, however it is in their method of rallying

women that Rivera employs her sense of Communist gender-theory. Overall, Rivera’s more progressive

beliefs throughout her speech contend that women and men are equal in work ability, yet are, in turn,

treated inherently different. Through Rivera, these Communist thoughts paired with the conservative

values of Spanish Fascism interact to argue for the advancement of job opportunities for women, while

also highlighting the importance of the traditional women’s place in the household.

Works Cited

Cowans, Jon. Modern Spain: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2003.

Print.
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Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction. London: Oxford University Press,

2005. Print.

Ofer, Inbal. The History of Modern Spain. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. Print.

Word Count: 591