Emotions for a shared identity. The Sección Femenina of FET-JONS between the war and the “grey years”

Abstract

This paper focuses on the work of the Sección Femenina de Falange during its first decade, addressing to the academic open debate about the nature of the educational project carried out by the Falangist organization. The purpose is to argue that the Sección Femenina tried to promote a common emotional style or regulation among Spanish women; an emotional style whose invention is completely connected to the history of the female organization in its former period. To prove this hypothesis, this research starts from a theoretical framework that combines history of emotions with gender theory and analyses educational and propaganda materials generated by Sección Femenina as primary sources. The emerged conclusions allow to understand the significance of this affective education and to place the emotional construction of subjects in the centre of the reflexion about gender identities during the Francoism.