Transnational learning and the weight of the national sphere: the women of the Spanish Falange in the universe of interwar fascism

Abstract

Women played a key role in the rise and (re)shaping of Spanish fascism from 1936 onwards. Organised in the Sección Femenina, they not only undertook the recruitment and indoctrination of a growing number of Spanish women. They also carried out intense cross-border activity and became agents of fascist internationalism. Incorporating the gender perspective into the transnational turn in fascist studies, this article focuses on Spanish Falangist women in the fascist universe in the 1930s and 1940s. The article not only analyses their contacts with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but also the influence that the national context had on these transnational relation.