Memories of repression and resistance: narratives of children institutionalized by Auxilio Social in Postwar Spain.

Auxilio Social became the main welfare institution in Franco's Spain in which poor women and children, mostly belonging to the "vanquished" in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), were assisted by a new class of social workers composed of Falangists, priests and professionals. The narratives and memories of the institutionalized children demonstrate their attempt to build an alternative identity to the one promoted by the regime. Although fragmented, this identity became an instrument for resisting the imposition of the regime's monolithic discourse. This particular case sheds light on the extent to which the Francoist elite succeeded in achieving its goals, as well as on the power relations between "victors" and "vanquished" in postwar Spain.

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In the last two decades, Franco's "politics of revenge" has been widely analyzed by scholars. Local and regional studies have proliferated, documenting the killings that took place from July 1936 through to the end of the 1940s. Statistics for the number of deaths and details of the identity, profession and political affiliation of the victims, as well as profiles of the killers, have been compiled in various comprehensive surveys. Insights into the mechanisms for continued reprisals against the defeated, such as the Law of Political Responsibilities (February 9, 1939), or the concentration camp and prison system, have added to our understanding of the various methods used by the victors to secure the submission of the defeated after the civil war's official end on April 1, 1939. The concept of victimhood has been reconsidered, taking into account the "non-quantifiable effects" of violence noted by Conxita Mir--such as fear, isolation or the breakdown of solidarity and family links at a local level. The implications for civil society of informers' denunciations have also been explored. These studies have provided new approaches to an understanding of the repressive apparatus's workings and consequences. (1)

Despite this impressive research output, historical studies of postwar Spain have neglected the subject of the Francoist welfare system. Scholars have implicitly accepted the regime's discourse, whereby widows, orphans and the needy had a place in the Francoist "New State" insofar as it decreed specific measures to relieve the suffering caused by harsh living conditions in the 1940s. (2) Although it was a far from adequate response to the needs of the disadvantaged, the Francoist welfare apparatus has been seen as the acceptable face of a bloody regime, and the common perception among Spaniards is that it is one of the areas where the dictatorship enjoyed a measure of consensus. This article is based on the assumption that repression, autarky and welfare were closely connected in postwar Spain. The military rebels not only provoked the civil war--which resulted from the failed coup of July 18, 1936 and military and civilian resistance to it--but also carried out reprisals resulting in 150,000 deaths and, once the war was over, set up a "legal" framework for continuing the repression against the defeated. The economic policy of autarky (self-sufficiency and isolationism), which lasted till the late 1950s, helped to consolidate victory on the battlefront by preserving the interests of the financial, industrial and agrarian elites through economic speculation and severe exploitation of the labor force. Workers and the popular classes in general, and broad social groups such as prisoners' families, orphans, and the widows of republicans killed in combat or as a result of reprisals, were condemned to penury. The aim was to ensure their acceptance of, obedience to and dependence on the Francoist "New State." A Catholic discourse of national regeneration through submission and expiation provided the rhetorical framework for legitimizing the social exclusion of the defeated. In this context, the creation of a new welfare bureaucracy contributed to the development of a subculture of dependence, which in turn became a cornerstone of the reconstruction of power relationships in postwar Spain. (3)

Welfare emerged as one of the most useful tools for social control. Although some charitable activities remained in the hands of the Church or of municipal or provincial councils that subsidized hospitals and asylums, welfare constituted one of the clearest forms of state intervention during the dictatorship. From May 1937, the Falangist organization Auxilio Social (Social Aid) became the most important institution in charge of social work. (4) It played a crucial role in the consolidation of the Francoist state for several reasons. First, its offer of welfare was conditional on the receipt of indoctrination and propaganda. Second, it sought to neutralize the working classes' potential rejection of the regime by creating a basic, cheap welfare infrastructure. And third, it fulfilled a proselytizing function by insisting that all "good Spaniards" should contribute to care of the needy through donations, thus building the "national community" or "New Spain." According to this totalitarian scheme, welfare sought to incorporate the masses into the state; individuals were not conceived as subjects entitled to social rights but as members of a hierarchically ordered, state-controlled "national community." (5)

The recent explosion of historiographical research on the Francoist repression has been followed, in the last six years, by the emergence of a widespread social mobilization for what has become known as the "recovery of historical memory." It has crystallized in the appearance of hundreds of local/regional associations, the excavation of mass graves, and the compiling (by activists working in the associations and by historians) of oral testimonies of victims' relatives. This social phenomenon has been fully reported in the mass media, widening its social impact.

In this new context created by civil activism, I considered it necessary, for several reasons, to add to the corpus of testimonies the memories of people who had been institutionalized in Francoist welfare centers. Oral history allows a "bottom up" approach to the topic of Francoist welfare, providing knowledge about everyday life in Auxilio Social children's homes. Hence, it can shed light on the extent to which this totalitarian project--as it was carefully defined by Auxilio Social's leaders and advisors in lectures, publications and pamphlets--was fulfilled. I also sought to determine whether these memories would fit the dominant discourse that has emerged in the last few years, thanks to the mobilization for the "recovery of historical memory." Although this dominant discourse tends to speak of "historical memory" in the singular, seen as something that has been lost and is now being recovered thanks to civil activism, for the first time in seventy years, victims of the Francoist repression and their relatives are articulating their diverse memories in the public sphere; these memories had not in fact been "lost," but silenced in public.