PalmDuring the Franco regime, women had their own form of military service through the Women's Social Service (SSF). This was a request made in 1937 by the Women's Section of the Falange to Franco to obtain more volunteers for the service.Social AssistanceIt was a public assistance organization created by the insurgent side during the Civil War. In 1939, with the fascist victory, the Women's Social Service (SSF) was decreed a 'national duty' presented as the perfect complement to the Home Economics Schools. Under the auspices of National Catholicism, these schools were dedicated to instructing young women in the tasks considered proper to a 'good woman and mother' (cooking, childcare, sewing, nursing, etc.). Curiously, the head of the Women's Section, Pilar Primo de Rivera, sister of José Antonio, founder of the Falange, never married nor had children.
The Women's Social Service was inspired by welfare programs in Nazi Germany. It was aimed at single women between the ages of 17 and 35, who, depending on the period, were required to serve the cause for six months. During the first three months, they typically received training at the Home Economics Schools, and for the remaining three, they volunteered at charitable organizations for six hours a day. Initially a voluntary service, it eventually became mandatory for young women who wanted to work in the civil service, obtain professional qualifications, a passport or driver's license, or be affiliated with an association. Exemptions included those with health problems, married women, widows with children, the eldest of eight siblings, the eldest daughters of widowers or widowers, nuns, domestic servants, and the sisters and daughters of fallen soldiers on whom they were financially dependent. Women from wealthy families who did not see the need to work were also exempt.
"The nuns were worse off."
María de Pilar Juan Ferrer, from Palma, is 83 years old. In 1961, she was 18 when she signed up for Social Service. "I did it," she recalls, "so I could get my driver's license. My father told me that once I had it, he would buy me a car. Since I had already received the appropriate Falangist indoctrination in high school, I was only required to spend a month, in July, helping out at a soup kitchen on the Avenidas." [The text abruptly shifts to a seemingly unrelated topic:] "The vulnerability that existed in Mallorca at the time..." boom tourist. It was also an opportunity to spend more time with friends."
For Juan, the women in charge of the Women's Section who oversaw the Social Service had nothing to do with the directors of his school, Madre Alberta. "The nuns were worse, worse people and classist. They paid more attention to the daughters of doctors than to those of us from humble families. They only knew how to instill fear in us with the idea of sin." The fear reached almost paranormal levels. "In 1959 they told us that the world would end in 1960 and that, therefore, we had to get along. I had a terrible time on New Year's Eve because I thought I would go to hell for having danced."
Núria Forteza-Rey, 84, also has very bad memories of the nuns. "I went to Pureza in Palma. If they heard us speaking Catalan, they made us pay five pesetas as punishment." Her Social Service was different. "In 1959, at 17, my mother wanted me to go and do my religious training at a Women's Section hostel on the outskirts of Valencia, where the volunteers stayed for three months. My father was against it. He had been sent to fight in the war on the Peninsula and couldn't see anyone from the regime."
A good example of those 'lies' was the script Domestic Economics for High School and Teacher Trainingwhich the Women's Section published in 1958. "If your husband," it stated, "asks you for unusual sexual practices, be obedient and don't complain. It's likely your husband will then fall into a deep sleep." That mantra would be repeated even more at the hostel in Valencia. "I left," says Forteza-Rey, "by boat alone. It was the first time I'd left the island. There weren't any Mallorcan women there. Half of the residents were Falangists and the other half, volunteers like me from the Social Service. In the morning we did gymnastics and they made us sing the Facing the SunThe rest of the day we had Formation of the national spirit and sewing classes. But the center's director was very kind. On Sundays, she'd let us go for a group walk to the capital." At the time, the young woman from Palma wasn't aware of being indoctrinated. When it came time to get married, though, at 27, her rebellious spirit emerged. "At the ceremony, the priest, whom I trusted, had to tell me I had to make a commitment. I warned him that if he read that part to me, I wouldn't get married. And he did me the favor of not reading it."
Controlling Chaplains
Another 'victim' of that alienating atmosphere was Antònia Torrens Bestard, a 77-year-old woman from Alcúdia. In 1966, she was 17 and had already completed her teaching degree through the fast track of the advanced baccalaureate. "For the students," she says, "who had completed this degree, the Social Service consisted of spending the month of July at a summer camp, in my case at La Victoria, in Alcúdia. We played sports and participated in talks, in which priests gave us guidelines for being exemplary women and mothers in the future. Back then, I was a complete puppet. On weekends, a man from Inca would come to see me, with whom I was already partying."
Two years later, Torrens had to attend premarital courses with other couples in order to get married. "A doctor and his wife told us about the Ogino method for identifying fertile days because we weren't getting pregnant. They also insisted that respect was the foundation of a good relationship." Once married, the woman felt even more controlled. "One day I went to confession and the priest asked me about aspects of my private life. They were compromising questions that bothered me a lot. I got up and left him standing there. Now I don't want anything to do with the Church."
Francisca Truyol Truyol, 76, from Inca, also did her Social Service at a camp as a complement to her teacher training studies. "In the summer of 1965 I was in Son Serra de Marina (Santa Margalida). We seemed like we were part of the Boy Scoutswearing a red skirt and a white shirt. In order to obtain the title ofElementary instructor of home and youth "We had to hand in a layette, which is the first set of clothes a baby wears." Truyol accepted that training naturally. After a year, the scales fell from her eyes. "I had the opportunity to go to Bordeaux (France) to visit a friend. There I saw books that were banned in Spain. It was then that I realized I was living in a dictatorship." The woman from Inca married at 22 and, unlike some of her classmates, continued working as a teacher when she became a mother of three. Her ID card, therefore, was different from most, which had 'SL' (About work) under the heading 'Profession'. This information was kept on identity documents until 1985.
Unsubmissive
Miquela Vidal Joan, a 66-year-old resident of Felanitx, was part of one of the last graduating classes of the Social Service program. "In 1976," she recalls, "I had to do it to get my passport so I could go on my university entrance exam trip to Paris. Some of my classmates did it after they returned from the trip. Before leaving, their parents had to sign a sworn statement committing to this." In her case, the service was also different. "For about three months, every day, after leaving the Felanitx high school at five in the afternoon, we went for a few hours to the village's Home Economics School. They made us do..." baskets"...some sets of baby clothes that we distributed a small amount of each week to the most needy people."
Those activities were complemented by the relevant lessons. "Some single women would talk to us about our obligations to our future husbands. It was all very absurd, but I had a great time. It was like a kind of recreation club." One of the few rebels in the Social Service was the poet Antonina Canyelles from Palma. "It was enough for me," she recalls today at 83, "to do it for a week. The leaders of the Women's Section seemed like they were from the Gestapo. I refused to continue with the service and renounced the rights it afforded. Thus, I had to wait for its abolition in 1978, 35 years later, with the reinstatement of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal of the dismissal. I never wanted to drive. And I wasn't interested in working in the civil service either." In total, the SSF was in effect for 41 years. In 2022, the inclusion of military service in the calculation of retirement benefits for women was approved, allowing them to access early retirement. This was a right already granted to men who had completed military service or alternative civilian service.
The Women's Institute of Palma
During the Franco regime, girls from working-class families studied for their baccalaureate at the General and Technical Institute, near the well-known Plaça del Tubo in Palma. In September 1936, once Mallorca was under the control of the insurgents, the school was renamed IES Ramon Llull to erase the liberal values of the French lycées that had inspired it in 1916. The coeducational policies of the Second Republic were then abandoned, and the school was reinstated during the Third Republic, with a wall separating the two sections. The building that housed the Girls' Institute was later rebuilt. In 1966, the girls moved to the building across the street, the former Teachers' Training College, which would eventually become IES Joan Alcover.
In 1945, Antònia Rosselló Perelló was 10 years old when she began studying at the Girls' Institute. "It was," she recalls today in her nineties, "an oasis in the midst of the dictatorship. Its headmaster appointed Bernat Suau Calders, a Latin teacher, and he wasn't as strict as the headmaster of the Ramon Llull High School, Father Bartomeu Bosch Sansó, who was also a Latin teacher, specifically a full professor." There was a strong rivalry between the two headmasters. Suau was a Falangist, while Bosch was a Francoist and president of the commission for purging secondary and vocational education.
Rosellón was the daughter of a teacher who, at the beginning of the war, spent nearly a year imprisoned in Can Mir. "Through my father, I learned that many teachers at the Girls' Institute came from the mainland, where they had been persecuted. I also had teachers from Mallorca, like Eusebi Riera, father of the writer Carme Riera. There were only three female teachers." That young student was not immune to the influence of the Falangist women either. "We had a subject where they taught us to sew and do other 'crafts.' In general, however, despite the conservative atmosphere, I was very satisfied with the education I received."
In 1953, after graduating from the Girls' Institute, Rosselló married at 18. "There was a young man on my street who was courting me, Miquel Àngel Llauger Llull. He was nine years older than me and already working as a civil engineer. He went to my father to ask for my hand in marriage [until the 1978 Constitution, the age of majority was 21, not 18]." Because she was married, the Palma native didn't have to perform community service. However, her plans didn't involve being a submissive 'angel of the house'. "Despite having six children, I didn't want to stop studying. With my mother's help, I earned a degree in Philosophy and Literature at the old Son Malferit center, which at that time was part of the University of Barcelona. In my forties, when my children were grown, I started teaching History. I was the headmistress. I held that position for nine years." Marked by her family history, Rosselló is not about to talk to her students about historical memory while Franco is still alive. She was also one of the first teachers at the school to teach in Catalan. "Graffiti against Catalan often appeared on the walls of the department as a form of protest."
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