Uno, don, tres, cuatro: modern women docile bodies

This article was downloaded by: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] On: 9 March 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 903562493] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Sport in Society

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713634841

Uno, don, tres, cuatro: modern women docile bodies

Aurora G. Morcillo a a Women's Studies Center, Florida International University, Miami, USA

To cite this Article Morcillo, Aurora G.(2008) 'Uno, don, tres, cuatro: modern women docile bodies', Sport in Society, 11: 6,

673 — 684

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17430430802283930 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430430802283930

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Sport in Society Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2008, 673–684

Uno, don, tres, cuatro: modern women docile bodies Aurora G. Morcillo*

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

Women’s Studies Center, Florida International University, Miami, USA In this essay, I argue that the historical evolution of physical education under the Francoist regime was affected by the transition from autarky to consumerism through the modernization process initiated in the late 1950s. In 1961 the government issued the Law of Physical Education to validate itself internationally by showing a modern prone regime. After the civil war physical education had been a political instrument of the state to rebuild the New Spain, that guaranteed more effective political, civic and patriotic control. Physical education, hence, only had a meaning within the context of the ‘reconstruction of the fatherland’ on its foundations. The female body became an ideological weapon against the regime’s moral/sexual politics that changed the whole fabric of society and led eventually to the collapse of the Francoist ideological system, an ideological system based on NationalCatholic values. In the midst of American-friendly anti-communist modernization Spanish women’s bodies turned into more than vessels of Christian motherhood, at least in the anteroom to marriage.

In the interwar years the strong virile body epitomized the power of rising totalitarian regimes throughout Europe. In a highly militarized context, political, religious and medical debates regarded women’s bodies as conduits of biological and spiritual purity and national regeneration.1 Racial hygiene focused on a highly gendered conception of the ideal body type and corporeal beauty. The emphasis of these political discourses was to create a virile state for the safekeeping of the nurturing Motherland. In Spain, under Francoism, traditional Catholic principles on womanhood guided women’s physical education: to be fit mothers for the fatherland. In this essay, I examine religious discourse that inspired the 1961 Law of Physical Education which illustrates the ideological adjustments the regime undertook in the transition from autarky (1939 –53) to consumerism (1953 – 75). Modernization meant a shift in gender relations. This Law of Physical Education was one of several legal documents the regime enacted to catch up with the times and withstand international scrutiny. National-Catholicism informed the regime’s institutional adjustments that included in 1958 the reform of the Civil Code and the enactment of the Fundamental Laws of the State; the Stabilization Plan in 1959; and the Law of Political and Professional Rights for women in July 1961. A close reading of the Law of Physical Education from a gender perspective helps us understand Francoist nationalization of women’s bodies. The modernization of the country led to a new rationalization of the docile female body that the regime sought to maintain. From the legal perspective, physical education experienced from the establishment of the regime an institutional fragmentation that the Law of 1961 intended to resolve. Physical education represented a means to rebuild the New Spain after the civil war and guarantee more

*Email: [email protected] ISSN 1743-0437 print/ISSN 1743-0445 online q 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17430430802283930 http://www.informaworld.com

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

674

A.G. Morcillo

effective political and social control. Hence, it only had a meaning within the context of the ‘reconstruction of the fatherland’.2 In the 1940s, the Falange regulated both physical education and sports through the Youth Front and the Women’s Section with a negligible state legal articulation. Physical education and sports developed in four facets in early Francoism. First, through the extracurricular activities of youth organizations controlled separately for each sex by the Women’s Section since 1938 and the Youth Front since 1940. Second, the National Delegation of Sports, under General Jose´ Moscardo´’s leadership (1878 – 1956), organized the physical education and sports of the population at large. Third, the Ministry of Education established physical education as mandatory in all levels of schooling, drawing instructors from the rank and file of the Falangist Youth Front, Women’s Section and the SEU (University Student Union). Finally, the Ministries of the Army, Navy and Air Force regulated military physical education. The army and the Ministry of National Education were marginal in the implementation of a centralized physical education. Even when the regime established a National Junta of Physical Education by Order of 5 June 1944, true centralization never ensued. An Order of 24 January 1945 established segregation of physical education by sex. This norm recognized the independence of the Women’s Section National Secretariat of Physical Education created in 1938. Candida Ca´denas was head of the agency and worked with Dr Luis Agosti, a medical advisor. In 1952 the organization reiterated its foundational purpose emphasizing the spiritual value of physical education: ‘Our main objective was, and still is, that our physical education has a spiritual base . . . Thus, this is the goal of our physical education: perfecting the body, to better serve the interests of the soul that it encloses’ (my emphasis).3 Falange’s Youth Front and the Women’s Section fulfilled three state functions: first, the mobilization and control of the masses in support of the regime; second, a strong nationalist popular education; and finally, the supervision of social and labour relations.4 Jose´ Antonio Elola-Olaso, the head of the recently established National Delegation of Physical Education and Sports, presented to the Cortes a new Law of Physical Education on 20 December 1961. Olaso’s appointment meant a departure from military physical education to a civilian model under the supervision of Falange’s youth, labour and women’s subdivisions. The Falangist National Movement drafted the law with the prime goal of accomplishing ‘a more comprehensive instruction of Spaniards’. Catholic traditional values as prescribed by papal encyclicals permeate the text along with Falangist nationalism. In his presentation to the Cortes, Jose´ Antonio Elola-Olaso described physical education as one of the ancient classics’ most ‘gallant’ legacies, but also, as the means for any Christian man to achieve spiritual fulfilment: It might be regarded as a quixotic craze. Blessed be those quixotic ways if they take us to achieve that a number of Spaniards, large or not, have the means to get a physical health that in mutual and lasting union with the spirit will lead to the health of the soul; because to improve the body in robust and Christian principles of physical education necessarily leads to the enlightenment of the soul.5

Olaso echoed the Vatican precepts on physical education in his statement. The attention paid to the body in the context of a modernizing industrial society was of great importance for the Vatican. Since Pius XI, every Pope had emphasized the significance of physical education to safe keep man’s soul rather than for the sake of corporal health exclusively. But the Catholic establishment could not ignore the modern approach to the body as a precise machine, as an object of medical study. Mens santa in corpore santo In a speech to Italian sports clubs on 20 May 1945, Pius XII pointed out how ‘far from the truth were those who accused the Church of not taking into account the body or physical culture’. According to the Pope ‘our body is temple of the Holy Spirit who resides in ourselves by God’s

Sport in Society

675

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

will and so we are no longer just matter’ (my emphasis). Modernity turned the faithful into bodies that mattered to the church for spiritual guidance. The Pope urged the community of Christians to ‘glorify God through their bodies’.6 By moderately practicing sports one would achieve the Christian aspiration of a complete human education. ‘Sports fortify the body’, Pius XII held, ‘turning it into a healthy, new, operational organism’. But the Pope also affirmed the need of making the educational process ‘rigorous and disciplined, routinely gruelling, a process that tries to shape a true docile body’ (my emphasis). It is important, according to the Pope, to get our bodies used to exhaustion, to endure pain, to create in us a habit of stern continence and self-control, all of these regarded by the Holy Father as indispensable conditions to conquer spiritual victory. ‘Sport is a school of loyalty and valour, of fortitude and resoluteness, of universal fraternity; all of them material virtues, which supply the supernatural qualities a solid foundation and prepare man to handle the hardest responsibilities without failure. ‘If you are able, through sports activity, to build a more docile body and a more submissive spirit to your moral obligations; if in the end your example contributes to endow modern physical activity with a more dignifying relation to the human life and divine precepts, then your physical culture will acquire a supernatural value.’7

In this light the practice of physical exercise is the means to generate the docile body in the purest Foucauldian fashion.8 Pius XII’s notion of physical education as a conduit to spiritual perfection furthers the Foucauldian argument on disciplining the body to reach spiritual salvation. The Pope’s words demonstrate the Church’s genuinely modern concern with bio-power. The Vatican dictum followed the Enlightenment notion of the body as a useful object of control. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries’ techniques of disciplining the body are new first on the scale of control; second, on the object of control; and third, on the modality. The Enlightenment treated the body as a unique entity, reduced to a machine whose activity, gesticulations, posture and swiftness had to be finely tuned. Consequently, as Foucault puts it, ‘the only truly important ceremony is that of exercise’ and the modality implies an ‘uninterrupted and constant coercion’.9 Religious discourse bestowed this Enlightenment notion of the body-machine with a soul. The dictum mens sana in corpore sano turns thus into mens santa in corpore santo, making health and holiness inseparable in religious discourse. Pius XII addressed the International Scientific Congress of Sport and Gymnastics in 1952 to explain the religious and moral principles of physical exertion. The ultimate goal according to the Pope was to bring man closer to God. ‘The body is the instrument and the artist is the soul. Both of them are fused in natural unity.’ He emphasized how, from the religious perspective, the body ‘has a sacred character that natural sciences and art do not consider’.10 God elevated matter to the service of the spirit. The human body, elevated thus to the honour of being the host of the spirit, must be prepared to receive the dignity of being God’s temple, a building consecrated to God. The body belongs to God. As a result of original sin there must be complete subordination of our corporeality to the glorification of God. The quotidian drama of modern man is the struggle to avoid temptation falling pray of the body’s instincts. Pius XII reminds us of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans: ‘I see in my members another law opposed to my spirit – A law that enslaves me to the law of sin latent in my flesh’. Pius XII warns us about the danger of certain forms of sports and exercise that ‘awaken [the senses] through violent strength or through sensual seduction’.11 The Church is clear: the goal of physical exertion must be to refrain, to discipline the body for the glory of God. The spirit invigorates us; our flesh is good for nothing.12 Therefore, the aims of sports according to the Vatican are twofold: ‘[T]o develop and strengthen the body from the dynamic and aesthetic point of view. [And] the soul’s utilization of the fit body. [The fit body] will expand the interior and exterior life of the individual, contribute to his perfection, and at last bring man closer to God.’13

676

A.G. Morcillo

The Francoist Law of Physical Education of 1961 clearly typifies the Vatican’s prescriptive notion of sports and exercise. Furthermore, the religious overtones reveal the Foucauldian concept of bio-power exercised through the discursive constitution of the body.14 This legal document exemplifies the notion of docility afforded by the Enlightenment and the Catholic Church precepts on physical education and sports. Spaniards’ political docility remained at the centre of the dictatorship’s stability and longevity in the transition from autarky to consumerism. Docility was no strange concept to Catholicism and in the Falange’s hands the Catholic element acquired nationalist connotations.

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

Gendered physical education National-Catholicism, the fusion of Falangist principles with Catholic doctrine, became the ideological key that opened the international door to the regime in the context of the Cold War.15 No longer perceived as part of the Axis powers, Western democracies welcomed the Francoist dictatorship which now proclaimed itself as ‘the sentinel of the West’ against Soviet Communism. National-Catholicism informed the 1961 Law of Physical Education that eased Spain’s entrance in the international sports scene through the Spanish Olympic Committee. The 1961 law defines physical education as the ‘school of virtues and an indispensable part of man’s complete instruction within the principles of the National Movement’. Mr Elola clearly stated the main goal of the law was to renew the Christian values informing the NationalCatholic agenda since the regime’s induction: ‘because to improve the body in healthy and Christian principles of physical education necessarily implied enlightening the soul’. Precisely what it was most important, ‘in the end’ he declared16 was the taming of the Spaniards’ souls. Their bodies represented the conduit into their spirit that had to be entirely devoted to the Francoist national project. Modernity and the advent of consumerism eroded the stability of the regime, a regime invested in the preservation of the eternal Christian values in every aspect of every day life. The challenge was to preserve tradition in the face of unavoidable modernization. Modernity and democratization meant a redefinition of gender relations and the implementation of equal rights between the sexes. How the Francoist regime accomplished modernization can better be understood when examining its gender ideology. In its preamble the law emphasized the religious spirit with the following quote from Pope John XXIII: Sports can certainly develop true and sound Christian virtues, that God’s grace makes later more fruitful and stable. The spirit of discipline encourages obedience, humility, renunciation; team interaction and competition foster charity and fraternal love as well as respect and magnanimous attitude, even forgiveness. The firm laws of physical endurance elevate chastity, temperance, and forethought.17

The Church regarded sports as a means to discipline modern man’s body, an individual faced with constant temptations. Modern women had to be protected from modern materialism as well. The moral double standard prevalent on Christian values meant a dual problem with women as both subjects and objects of temptation in modern society. Women’s modesty and physical preparation for motherhood were at the core of any physical instruction making competitive sports problematic. The historical participation of women in sports and the practice of physical education in general had been at best problematic. When John XXIII addressed the world at the celebration of the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960, a total of 5,346 athletes from 83 countries participated and only 610 of those were women. In Spain, women’s physical education had been historically neglected because physical education had been closely related to military affairs since the turn of the twentieth century.18 Women’s physical education was supposed to prepare them for motherhood and never subject

Sport in Society

677

their body to strenuous exercise. Francoism charged the Women’s Section with the responsibility to shape women’s bodies for their maternal duty. The Women’s Section medical advisor, Dr Luis Agosti, echoed Pius XI’s document Dobbiamo Intratenerla (1931):19

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

Our desire to educate women to equate them physically with men is in conflict with universal biology laws. This is not the result of the imposed division of labour of modern civilized life since even in the most primitive communities women are biologically weaker than men. The same thing happens, with rare exceptions, in the zoological scale in which females are weaker than males. This means that the origin of physical differences between the sexes is not phenotypic but genotypic. Hence, it is ridiculous to alter them in light of the recent discoveries in biology and genetics on this matter.20

Agosti tried to dispel any ideas of equality between the sexes in a convoluted mix of biology, genetics and religious values. This effort became urgent to maintain a hold over the docile bodies of Spaniards by the late 1950s and 1960s when consumerism, migration and tourism exposed the average citizen to new models of femininity. Spanish women dared to remake themselves through a new cult of their bodies. New magazines and Hollywood movie stars presented a new and glamorous female image. The female body became an ideological weapon against the regime’s moral/sexual politics that changed the whole fabric of society and led eventually to the collapse of the Francoist ideological hold based on Catholic values. In the midst of Americanfriendly modernization Spanish women’s bodies turned into more than vessels of motherhood at least in the anteroom to marriage. Women’s bodies were once more nationalized with the enactment of the 1961 Law of Physical Education reaffirming the Women’s Section’s absolute control over Spanish women. The National-Catholic spirit of the law intended to maintain a draconian normalization and disciplining of Spaniards’ bodies – bodies that were conduits to their political consciences. The Women’s Section tried to keep alive the docile Christian mother model that consumerism threatened to destroy. The transition to consumerism posed a continuous tension between the centripetal forces of change and the centrifugal pull of the regime’s continuity. In imparting the political and civic instruction of girls, the Women’s Section textbooks offered clear orientation about how a girl and young woman had to treat their bodies. Appearance and careful containment of movements was of the essence. ‘Avoid swinging your hips’, read one text. ‘Naturally you have to move your legs when you walk, but avoid any swinging that is so vulgar.’21 It was very important to keep one’s composure because this was a reflection of a disciplined soul.22 To better fit the docile female model proposed by Church and State the domestication of gymnastics became the safest option. Sport, in the view of the Women’s Section, should not be considered as an opportunity to gain independence from family obligation or license to indecent display. Some of the sports recommended for women included tennis, swimming and neo-Swedish gymnastics. In an article entitled ‘Los deportes ma´s propios para la mujer’ published in Blanco y Negro on 29 November 1958, the author Carlos Delfino added golf, basketball and skating to the list. According to Delfino, sports were the monopoly of ‘the stronger sex’. Latin women preferred in his view to seek entertainment from indoor activities: movie theatres, dance halls or simply staying home. However, there are a few more sports he adds to the list: fishing, diving and climbing were a few of them.23 The state made physical education mandatory at all school levels and at university. By decree of 29 December 1939, Women’s Section instructors became the legal guardians of Spanish schoolgirls and young college women’s physical education, supplementing mandatory home economics. Both subjects fell exclusively under the responsibility of Falangist women instructors trained at the Escuela Superior de Profesoras ‘Julio Ruiz de Alda’ in Madrid from 1956 until the collapse of the organization in 1977.

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

678

A.G. Morcillo

Figure 1. Spanish gymnast posing with castanets, a symbol of Spanish folklore Seccion Femenina promoted.24

Women’s Section instructors followed a curriculum based on the methods proposed by Dr Agosti which included gymnastics, aptitude tests, rhythm, games and sports, outdoor activities, traditional folk dances and arts and crafts. The Women’s Section applied the neo-Swedish method of gymnastics of Per Henrik Ling (1776 –1839). Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, the Swedish method competed internationally with the German and English methods. The Swedish method had an important role in spreading and establishing fixed concepts of gender and body.25 Because the pedagogical goal of Ling’s method was to harmoniously develop the body, the Women’s Section wholeheartedly adopted it. Ling conceived the body as the temple of the spirit and paid close attention to detail by targeting each body part individually. A severe control, surveillance and order characterized the Ling method, creating in the process a docile body to hold harmoniously the individual’s soul and emphasizing women’s duties as mothers. It was Hjalmar, Ling’s son, who developed female gymnastics. Women were regarded as physically slower and weaker than men and hence the exercises were designed in quantitative terms rather than qualitative. After the First World War a more militaristic manliness arose and competitive sports were regarded as more appropriate for

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

Sport in Society

Figure 2.

679

Seccion Femenina regional dance performed by Coros y Danzas members.26

men than gymnastics. Therefore, Ling’s gymnastics became more suitable for the new woman of the 1920s and 1930s and naturally the fascist femininity advanced by organizations like the Women’s Section found the neo-Swedish method appealing. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War women had to toughen up yet remain feminine. The frailty myth was not viable in post-war times, but at the same time the Women’s Section regarded the feminist alternative as an aberration of the natural gender order of things so the Women’s Section adapted neo-Swedish methods to Spanish idiosyncrasy: Gymnastics rooted in neo-Swedish method add modern techniques of rhythm, coordination and relaxation to the purest Spanish tradition. We accomplish this objective through the movement, stimulating exercises and the music based in our cultural heritage. Our gymnastics, being absolutely modern . . . has characteristics that gives it a Spanish seal.27

Preserving Spanish national idiosyncrasy in the face of unavoidable modernization guided the Women’s Section’s work in the late 1950s and early 1960s. According to Dr Carlos Gutie´rrez, gymnastics consultant for the Women’s Section in this period, the most important contribution in Spain was the introduction of the popular folklore to girls and women’s gymnastics. Hence almost in an intuitive way we incorporated Spanish music to Gymnastics. There is an important contribution of popular instruments, mainly percussion, instruments utilized by our people to mark the rhythm of their dances and which we now use in our Gymnastics: The popular castanets, sticks, shells or simply whistling and clapping with fingers and hands.28

With these words as part of his allocution to the World Conference for Physical Education in 1963 Dr Gutie´rrez explains how inseparable the national spirit was from the design of a gymnastic method for women. In order to reach the mind and soul of girls and women Dr Gutie´rrez proposed the fusion of popular folklore and gymnastics. The groups of dancers

680

A.G. Morcillo

from the different regions of Spain incarnated the organic parts of the nation’s body. Through their bodies’ performance of these regional dances women were to maintain the unity of the organic nation. Gutie´rrez presented this as a modernizing method to design female physical education in a way that departed from making it a mere imitation of male gymnastics.

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

Women’s physical education should not and must not be a poor imitation of men’s physical education. We must, consequently, typify it and look for those qualities that we must emphasize for the psychosomatic affirmation of their femininity. We must reject entirely the wrong idea that girls become manly with the practice of exercise.29

Popular folklore’s traditional national values imbued the Women’s Section’s modernizing discourse on female physical education in the 1960s. Through the establishment in 1944 of exclusively female groups of Coros y Danzas (Choirs and Dance)30 the Women’s Section reinvented women’s bodies, making them living enactments of Spanish cultural and national heritage31 The annual massive gymnastic displays on 1 May provided the regime with an opportunity to turn power into spectacle. Each individual on the Santiago Bernaveu stadium field was part of a whole – a clear materialization of the symbiosis of the one and the many: the national body and its members. Women partook in the collective spectacle of power through Coros y Danzas. Their performances of national folklore turned women into small embodiments of the motherland. The regime utilized the Women’s Section Coros y Danzas as international cultural emissaries. The most important period in the history of Coros y Danzas was 1948 to 1962 under the leadership of Marı´a Josefa Herna´ndez Sanpelayo. During this period they visited Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, France, Belgium, Italy, FDR and Cuba. The most important trip from a political point of view was to the United States. The trip began on 3 June 1953, a couple of months before the signature of the Pact of Madrid between the US and Spain. The Women’s Section dancing group signed a contract with Harry L. Sokol to tour the United States for four months. Although Falangists officials considered the tour a tremendous success, on 20 July 1953 the San Francisco Chronicle reported protests against them. Although Coros y Danzas offered women the opportunity to be ambassadors of Spanish nationalism around the world, the regime continued to emphasize domesticity as central to Spanish womanhood. By dancing and singing regional folk songs, women fulfilled their role as cultural reproducers of the Francoist nation’s spirit in the world. But travelling abroad as individuals allowed young women to view themselves outside the straightjacket of marriage and motherhood and enjoy an ephemeral independence of sorts.

Women’s physical education in crisis Consumerism posed serious problems to the safekeeping of a docile domesticity. The Women’s Section acknowledged the serious lack of interest in physical education among young women at college level. Marı´a de Miranda de Huelin, national vice inspector for college physical education, submitted a detailed report on 15 December 1959 about the state of affairs at the University of Sevilla. Miss Huelin paid a three day visit early that month that left her with the worst possible impression. Saturday, December 5 I start the inspection at half past three in the afternoon. According to the schedule submitted by the local instructor, Marı´a Josefa Barreto, on Saturdays there is practice class from eight to nine in the morning, from three thirty to four thirty and from four thirty to five thirty.

Sport in Society

681

I go to the college stadium. There are many young men practicing and playing basketball only they are not college students but members of the Youth Front, according to the field security guard. No female in sight. We make further inquiries. There has been no competition in the morning either.33

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

Huelin’s report shows the frustration of the Seccio´n Femenina’s officials. After several hours of waiting for the instruction to start she was informed the reason there ware no classes that particular day might be because the local head of SEU was getting married that very day. After witnessing the classes and a couple of basketball games, Huelin remarks: ‘Here everything is improvised: the referee, the scorer, the uniforms; all in all, low class in everything although there is a cordial environment.’33 The report concludes with several major issues to address: 1. The reality of what we witnessed does not correspond in the least with the information submitted by this district and it is very deficient. 2. I believe short three day visits are not sufficient to determine what part of the information submitted is truthful. 3. The President of the university is dissatisfied with the men’s Physical Education faculty and does not know professor Marı´a Josefa Barreto.34 The lack of commitment on the part of the female physical education faculty may be the result of their dissatisfaction with salary and facilities. During the academic year 1965 –66 the faculty at the universities of Vigo, Sevilla, Murcia, Valladolid and Madrid had not been paid. Several complaint letters were sent to Rafael Cha´ves, General Secretary of the National Junta of Physical Education.35 Rosa Tobalina Espiga, head of Seccio´n Femenina Physical Education in Valladolid sent the acknowledgement of a total of 45,000 pta (about $450 today) for the payment for the salaries of six women’s section SEU physical education instructors: Marı´a Lo´pez Delgado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,000 Carmen Tejeiro Nu´n˜ez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,000 Marı´a Pilar Conejo Ruiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,000 Julia Mayo Castellanos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000 Mercedes Guerras Loras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000 Carmen Guerras Loras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,00036 The economic context of these figures is one of crisis. Since 1962 there had been great dissatisfaction amid the economic power centres due to the slow results the 1959 Stabilization Plan delivered. The escalating discontent in the working class was the result of the blockade on salaries, and the rise in unemployment and cost of living. Finally, the emergent liberal opposition to the regime was also dissatisfied because the political opening-up they expected with the advent of economic liberalization did not take hold. Certainly 1962 was an important year in political terms because it showed the main traits that prevailed until 1973: labour protests and the democratization push of the more liberal forces within the regime. Thus, 1962 is a key date in the transformation of the political nature of the regime. Gender relations were profoundly affected by the economic turn of events. The Law of Political and Professional Rights of Women, approved in July 1961, began to impact those young women who managed to enter university classrooms. The 1960s transformed student relations within the university with the establishment in March 1962 of the so called Free University Assemblies with the central coordination established in Barcelona. Physical education was certainly not a priority for the student movement. On 3 June 1965, the Women’s Section regional delegate on Physical Education in Murcia wrote a lengthy letter delineating the problems (not only in Murcia but at the national level) and

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

682

A.G. Morcillo

immediate solutions to improve the conditions of what she considered a severe crisis in the physical education of Spanish university women. A concern of most university districts was the lack of appropriate facilities. In addition to the infrastructure problems the letter highlighted the hostile attitude among students toward physical education, which was considered a burden rather than a serious subject. In many instances students would try to forge medical certificates to evade their Physical Education classes.37 No doubt, by the mid 1960s university students were not interested in the mandatory subjects: Religion, Political Instruction and Physical Education known derogatorily as the ‘Three Marı´as’. Most students saw no intellectual or personal value in these subjects and sought ways to avoid them as best as they could without damaging their Grade Point Average (GPA). In addition, these are the years that followed the big university crisis of 1956 leading to a timid democratization and loss of control on the part of the Falangist university student union, the SEU. The University regulatory law of 1943 had established absolute control of Falange over the University. Every student had to join the student union when they paid their tuition fees, but the Falange lost its effective power in the academic establishment in favour of Opus Dei, which took the lead in the Francoist apparatus after the mid 1950s. Consequently the students’ lack of interest and almost mockery of the Falangist hierarchical structure is not surprising. Conclusion The 1950s and 1960s brought fundamental changes to gender relations under Francoism. Physical Education became the means by which the regime kept domesticity alive among Spanish women. National-Catholicism informed the text of the 1961 Law of Physical Education. This law revitalized the Vatican dictum of the disciplined body as a conduit to the salvation of the soul. The Women’s Section of Falange continued to carry out the task of indoctrinating women for the glory of the Fatherland. They were charged with the responsibility of imparting physical education among women in three contexts: the school system, the Social Service and the organization Coros y Danzas. The latter was the star of the regime and the young women who participated in it travelled abroad as goodwill ambassadors and incarnations of the Motherland. Physical Education became the means of disciplining and controlling bodies and souls in the transition to consumerism and modernization. Notes 1

2 3 4 5

6 7

See Ra´mos, La modernizacio´n de Espan˜a, 147; de Grazia, The Culture of Consent; Gori, Italian Fascism; Mangan, Superman Supreme; Linke, German Bodies; Vertinsky, Disciplining Bodies in the Gymnasium. Pastor Pradillo, Definicio´n y desarrollo del espacio profesional, 39. Zagalaz Sa´nchez, Fundamentos Legales De La Actividad Fisica En Espana, 77. See Casero, La Espan˜a que bailo´ con Franco. ‘Se dira´ que estos son quijotismos trasnochados. Benditos quijotismos si ellos nos deparan la occasion de que una porcio´n, ma´s o menos elevada..tengan medios y posibilidades para conseguir la salud corporal que en la unidad y mutua permanente influencia del cuerpo y del espı´ritu sera salud del alma; porque educar el cuerpo en sanos y cristianos principios de la educacio´n fı´sica y el deporte implica necesariamente educar el alma.’ Delegacio´n Nacional de Educacio´n Fı´sica y Deportes, ‘Discurso de Excmo.Sr. Don Jose´ Antonio Elola-Olaso’, 19. Pius XII, ‘Alocucio´n a las formaciones deportivas de Italia—20 Mayo de 1945’, 1. ‘Si lograis, gracias a la actividad deportiva, conseguir que el cuerpo sea ma´s do´cil, ma´s sumiso el espı´ritu y a vuestras obligaciones morales; si en fin, vuestro ejemplo contribuye a dar a la actividad deportiva moderna una forma, ma´s en relacio´n con la dignidad humana y los preceptos divinos, entonces vuestra cultura fı´sica adquiere un valor sobrenatural’. Ibid., 4.

Sport in Society 8

9

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

683

Foucault’s explanation of ‘docile bodies’ in his work Discipline and Punish takes us to the great book Man – the Machine (1748) by Julien Offrey de La Mettrie (1709 – 51). La Mettrie argued in L’Histoire naturelle de l’aˆme (1745) the Epicurean notion that the only pleasures are those of the senses, an idea further developed in L’homme machine (Man – Machine, 1748). As Foucault points out: ‘La Mettrie’s L’Homme-machine is both a materialist reduction of the soul and a general theory of dressage, at the centre of which reigns the notion of ‘docility’ which joins the analysable body to the malleable body.’ Foucault highlights that this work is written in two registers. On the one hand the anatomic-metaphysical, and on the other hand on a techno-political register. The former approach discerned by physicians with a preface by Descartes and the latter presenting the reader with a set of regulations and calculated methods as applied by the army, the school system, the hospital and so on, with the only purpose of correcting the body’s operational abilities. Foucault, ‘Docile Bodies’, 180. Ibid., 181. Pius XII, ‘Deporte y Gimnasia’, 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 2. That same year the Law for Political and Professional Rights of Women was approved. See Richards, A Time of Silence. Delegacio´n Nacional de Educacio´n Fı´sica y Deportes, ‘Discurso de Excmo.Sr. Don Jose´ Antonio Elola-Olaso’, 19. ‘En el deporte pueden, en efecto encontrar desarrollo las verdaderas y so´lidas virtudes cristianas, que la gracia de Dios hace ma´s tarde estables y fructuosas; en el espı´ritu de disciplina se aprenden y se practican la obediencia, la humildad, la renuncia; en las relaciones de equipo y competicio´n, la caridad y el amor de fraternidad, el respeto recı´proco, la magnanimidad, a veces incluso el perdo´n; en las firmes leyes del rendimiento fı´sico, la castidad, la modestia, la templanza, la prudencia.’ John XXIII spoken on the occasion of the Olympic Games celebrated in Rome in 1960. ‘Preamble’. Ley de Educacio´n Fı´sica. The creation of the Escuela Central de Educacio´n Fı´sica in the early 1920s responded to a militaristic concept of physical fitness and therefore antithetical to classic notions feminine frailty. ‘We think’, said the Pope, ‘competitive athletics demands some qualities completely opposite to feminine constitution – Muscular strength, speed control, considerable resistance to fatigue’. Pius XI, ‘Dobbiamo Intratenerla’, 2. Ibid. Casero, La Espan˜a que bailo´ con Franco, 60. Ibid. Delfino, ‘Los deportes ma´s propios para la mujer’. Seccio´n Cultura, Photograph Women’s Section, Archivo General de La Administracio´n. Ljunggren, ‘The Masculine Road Through Modernity’, 86 – 111. Seccio´n Cultura, Photograph Women’s Section, Archivo General de La Administracio´n. Seccion Femenina, ‘Metodo, planes y objetivos de la educacio´n’, 6. Gutie´rrez, ‘Comunicacio´n del trabajo de Carlos Gutie´rrez.’ Gutie´rrez, ‘Educacio´n Fı´sica Femenina. Ensen˜anza Primaria’. The Women’s Section created the Secretariat of Culture in 1938 in charge of training music instructors and collecting traditional folklore. At the time dance instruction was under their Secretariat of Physical Education. Coros y Danzas per se was united in 1944. Casero, La Espan˜a que bailo´ con Franco, 39 –48. Casero, La Espan˜a que bailo´ con Franco. de Mirandade Huelin, ‘Informe’, 1. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 7. Correspondence, Seccio´n Cultura, Seccio´n Femnina’s Papers (Archivo General de la Administracion). Tobalina Espiga, ‘Regidora Provincial de Administracio´n de la Seccio´n Femenina de Valladolid’. Delegada Provincial de Seccio´n Femenina.

684

A.G. Morcillo

Downloaded By: [Morcillo, Aurora G.] At: 23:35 9 March 2010

References AGA. Archivo General de la Administracio´n, Alcala´ de Henares, Spain. Casero, Estrella. La Espan˜a que bailo´ con Franco: coros y danzas de la Seccio´n Femenina. Madrid: Editorial ENE Nuevas Estructuras, SL, 2000. Delegacio´n Nacional de Educacio´n Fı´sica y Deportes. ‘Discurso de Excmo.Sr. Don Jose´ Antonio Elola-Olaso Delegado Nacional de educacio´n Fı´sica y Deportes ante el Pleno de las Cortes espan˜olas’. Madrid: Estades, 1962. Delegada Provincial de Seccio´n Femenina de FET y de las JONS. Seccio´n cultura, Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Murcia: Typescript, 1965 (AGA). Delfino, Carlos, ‘Los deportes ma´s propios para la mujer’. Blanco y Negro 2, 29 November 1958: 430. FET del Las JONS. La Seccio´n Femnina historia y organizacio´n, 1952. Foucault, Michel. ‘Docile Bodies’. In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, 179– 85. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Gori, Gigliola. Italian Fascism and the Female Body: Submissive Women and Strong Mothers (Sport in the Global Society). New York: Routledge, 2004. Grazia, Victoria de. The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Gutie´rrez, Carlos. ‘Educacio´n Fı´sica Femenina. Ensen˜anza Primaria’. Seccio´n cultura, Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Typescript. (AGA). Gutie´rrez, Carlos. ‘Comunicacio´n del trabajo de Carlos Gutie´rrez para el Congreso Mundial de Educacion Fı´sica.’ Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Typescript. (AGA). John XXIII. ‘Preamble’. Ley de Educacio´n Fı´sica. Rome: The Vatican, 1961. Linke, Uli. German Bodies: Race and Representation After Hitler. New York: Routledge, 1999. Ljunggren, Jens. ‘The Masculine Road Through Modernity: Ling Gymnastics and Male Socialization in Nineteenth Century Sweden’. In Making European Masculinities: Sport, Europe, Gender, edited by J. A. Mangan, 86– 111. London: Frank Cass, 2000. Mangan, J. A., ed. Superman Supreme: Fascist Body as Political Icon - Global Fascism (Sport in the Global Society). New York: Routledge, 2000. Miranda de Huelin, Marı´a, ‘Informe que presenta la Subinspectora Nacional de Educacio´n Fı´sica Universitaria, Don˜a Marı´a de Miranda de Huelin, acerca de la inspeccio´n realizada a la Universidad de Sevilla los dı´as 5, 6, y 7 de diciembre de 1959’. Seccio´n cultura, Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Typescript, 1959 (AGA). Otero, Luis. La Seccio´n Femenina. Madrid: EDAF, 1999. Republished from Seccio´n Femenina. Economı´a dome´stica para Bachillerato, Comercio y Magisterio. 1958. ———. La Seccio´n Femenina. Madrid: EDAF, 1999. Republished from Teresa. March 1961. Pastor Pradillo, Jose´ Luis. Definicio´n y desarrollo del espacio profesional de la educacio´n fı´sica en Espan˜a (1961 – 1990). Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Alcala´, 2000. Pius XI. ‘Dobbiamo Intratenerla’. Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers, 1931 (AGA). Pius XII. ‘Alocucio´n a las formaciones deportivas de Italia – 20 Mayo de 1945’. Seccio´n Femenina’s Secretary of Physical Education. Typescript. (AGA). Pius XII. ‘Deporte y Gimnasia: Principios Religiosos y Morales’. Seccio´n cultura, Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Typescript, 1952. (AGA). Ra´mos, Dolores. La modernizacio´n de Espan˜a (1917 – 1939): cultura y vida cotidiana. Madrid: Colecio´n Sı´ntesis, 2002. Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936– 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Seccion Femenina. ‘Metodo, planes y objetivos de la educacio´n’. Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Typescript. (AGA). Tobalina Espiga, Rosa. ‘Regidora Provincial de Administracio´n de la Seccio´n Femenina de Valladolid’. Seccio´n cultura, Seccio´n Femenina’s Papers. Typescript, 1965. (AGA). Vertinsky, Patricia. Disciplining Bodies in the Gymnasium: Memory, Monument, Modernism (Sport in the Global Society). New York: Routledge, 2003. Zagalaz Sa´nchez, Marı´a Luisa. Fundamentos Legales de la Activad Fisica en Espana. Jae´n: Universidad de Jae´n, 1998.