logo
‘It's not a genuine apology': Spanish women reject Catholic attempt to redress Franco incarceration

‘It's not a genuine apology': Spanish women reject Catholic attempt to redress Franco incarceration

The Guardian15-06-2025
As the members of the Catholic organisation wrapped up their speech with an appeal for forgiveness, the auditorium in Madrid exploded in rage. For decades, many in the audience had grappled with the scars left by their time in Catholic-run institutions; now they were on their feet chanting: 'Truth, justice and reparations' and – laying bare their rejection of any apology – 'Neither forget, nor forgive'.
It was an unprecedented response to an unprecedented moment in Spain, hinting at the deep fissures that linger over one of the longest-running and least-known institutions of Francisco Franco's dictatorship: the Catholic-run centres that incarcerated thousands of women and girls as young as eight, subjecting them to barbaric punishments, forced labour and religious indoctrination.
The centres operated under the direction of the Women's Protection Board, a state-run institution revived in 1941 and helmed by Franco's wife, Carmen Polo. They aimed to rehabilitate 'fallen women', aged 15 to 25, as well as others deemed to be at risk of deviating from the narrow path marked out for women during the dictatorship.
Survivors, however, describe a reality that was far more brutal. 'It was the greatest atrocity Spain has committed against women,' said Consuelo García del Cid, who was drugged by a doctor at her home in Barcelona and taken to a centre in Madrid at the age of 16.
In her case, her family had branded her rebellious after she attended rallies against the dictatorship. 'In Franco's Spain, a fallen woman could be anyone. If you were poor, an orphan, if your family faced hardship, if you were a bad student or wore a miniskirt or kissed your boyfriend in a cinema or danced too close – anything was enough.'
Many women were hauled into the centres in handcuffs after being singled out by priests, neighbours or relatives. Others were reported by state employees known as the 'guardians of morality', who patrolled the streets and venues such as movie theatres, swimming pools and gardens, calling the police any time they spotted a woman they believed to be in moral danger, said García del Cid, who has written five books on the centres.
'It was a covert prison system for minors,' she said. 'You couldn't go out, your mail was censored, visits were supervised by a nun. They had us working all the time, scrubbing and praying. We worked for free; sewing, embroidery, knitting, doll-making. We weren't allowed to speak freely to each other, we couldn't have friends. They were watching us all the time.'
The centres, which are believed to have held more than 40,000 young women and girls at their peak, were not closed until 1985 – 10 years after Franco's death.
Amid pressure from survivors and after more than a year investigating their claims, Confer, a Catholic body representing more than 400 congregations, including many with ties to the centres, said it was ready to seek forgiveness for what had happened.
The ceremony, the first of its kind in Spain, got under way on Monday with the chair of Confer explaining that the organisation was ready to break its decades of silence over what had happened.
'We acknowledge this page in our history,' said Jesús Díaz Sariego. 'This is an exercise in moral and historical responsibility, an opportunity to acknowledge what we did not do well in the past and express our empathy and deep sorrow to all these women.'
He contextualised the centres within the narrow norms of a dictatorship that had rolled back the rights of women, requiring them to obtain the permission of male guardians to work, travel or open a bank account. It was a 'time of severe educational, social, political, and religious restrictions', he said.
His remarks were followed by an audio compilation of survivors' testimonies. Some spoke of wrestling with abuse by nuns when they were just eight or 11 years old, others told of punishments that ranged from rubbing nettles on the vulvas of those who wet the bed, to forcing people to eat their own vomit or draw crosses on the floor with their tongues.
'In the name of what God was this done?' one woman asked. 'What kind of religious women could carry out such evil against children who had committed no crime?'
Most remembered the centres as places of beatings, verbal abuse, gnawing hunger and cold. Some spoke of the decades it had taken them to learn to live with their experience, while others hinted at those who had been consumed by the trauma and had turned to drugs or suicide.
Sign up to This is Europe
The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment
after newsletter promotion
By the time the three members of Confer stood up to ask formally for forgiveness, emotions were high. As many survivors, flanked by their families and historical memory campaigners, began chanting, brandishing signs that read 'No' and raising their voices as organisers tried to drown them out with music, Confer suspended the event.
Survivors were swift to explain their reaction. 'It's not a genuine apology,' said Dolores Gómez, who was sent to a centre at 13 after she told a psychiatrist her father was sexually abusing her. 'This is just a facelift.'
The audio that had played during the ceremony had been edited to omit some claims, including those of women who said they had been pressured to give up their babies for adoption, said Gómez. 'They're not asking forgiveness for all that happened, they're only asking forgiveness for the actions they are willing to recognise.'
After a few months at the centre, Gómez escaped, choosing to return home and risk her father's abuse over the nuns' treatment. At 15 she was sent back after her father raped her, leaving her pregnant. The following year, the nuns granted her father permission to take her out during the Easter holidays, allowing him to again rape and impregnate her. It took Gómez years to track down her children and start the painstaking process of building a relationship with them.
While Confer had been clear in asking the women for forgiveness, there was little sign they had delved into their own consciences and how they had allowed this to happen, said Paca Blanco, whose conservative family institutionalised her at 15 after she returned home from a party.
'They need to ask forgiveness of themselves first,' she said. 'How do you apologise to teenage girls that you have tortured, mistreated, disrespected and exploited for labour? You've stolen their babies. How do you apologise for that?'
Some survivors, however, disagreed. 'I would have liked if we could have made it to the end of the event,' said Mariaje López who was eight when she was sent to live with the nuns. 'I think so many women needed to hear this apology to understand that the shame is on the other side. Particularly the tens of thousands of women who remain silent and ashamed over what happened.'
What was clear to everyone, however, was that Monday's apology – accepted or not – was the tepid beginning of a much longer journey. 'This is one step forward in the ongoing battle,' said García del Cid.
She had requested a meeting with Spain's minister of justice, hoping to have survivors formally recognised as victims of the dictatorship and potentially paving the way for a response along the lines of Ireland's 2013 apology and reparations for the abuses that took place in its Magdalene Laundries. In Spain, there has been little fallout from the role that church and state played in operating the centres; the congregations had never faced any kind of reckoning, with many of them continuing to receive public funding, said García del Cid.
Hovering over all of this was the question of just how these centres were able to continue operating after the death of Franco, leaving young women incarcerated even as Spain transitioned to a democracy. 'They forgot about us, we didn't matter,' said García del Cid. 'They need to explain a lot to us. Democracy owes us 10 years of life.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

American convicted of triple murder in Spain now free in US after Venezuela prisoner swap
American convicted of triple murder in Spain now free in US after Venezuela prisoner swap

The Independent

time6 hours ago

  • The Independent

American convicted of triple murder in Spain now free in US after Venezuela prisoner swap

Donald Trump's administration hailed a prisoner exchange with Venezuela as a diplomatic success that brought home 10 Americans who were 'wrongfully detained" there. The men there were 'hostages,' according to a statement from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shared by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Those Americans are 'now free and back in our homeland,' Rubio said. But one of those men is an American-Venezuelan dual citizen who was convicted of murdering three people in Spain in 2016, according to Venezuelan court records and statements from officials in Madrid. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, 55, was sentenced in Venezuela in January 2024 to 30 years in prison after he was convicted of killing three people in Madrid in 2016. He was accused of escaping to his home country, where he was arrested and prosecuted in 2018. Venezuela prohibits the extradition of its citizens, and Venezuelans can be tried for crimes committed outside the country. Images shared by the U.S. State Department show Ortiz with other Americans who were imprisoned in Venezuela smiling together and waving small American flags as they returned to America on July 18. A spokesperson for the State Department refused to confirm his identity. 'The United States had the opportunity to secure the release of all Americans detained in Venezuela, many of whom reported being subjected to torture and other harsh conditions,' the spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent. 'For privacy reasons, I won't get into the details of any specific case.' Ortiz, a former U.S. Marine who served in the Iraq War, reportedly killed three people in Usera, a working-class district in the south of the Spanish capital in 2016. His alleged target was Víctor Salas, a lawyer who was in a relationship with his ex-wife who he had threatened to kill, according to records reviewed by El Pais. Ortiz is accused of killing two female employees at the firm and a client he mistakenly believed was Salas. According to Argentinian outlet Infobae, Ortiz used a combat knife and an iron bar to stab and bludgeon the victims, then set the lawyer's office on fire. Following their deaths, Ortiz returned to Germany, where he was living at the time, and then travelled to Latin America, where he was arrested. 'We all feel like we've been deceived, betrayed and let down,' Salas told Spanish program Vamos a Ver on Tuesday. 'We feel deceived because Dahud Hanid Ortiz was never a political prisoner. He was a murderer who was convicted and sentenced by the Venezuelan authorities. The case record makes it quite clear that he's a criminal.' He told TeleMadrid that 'the governments of Donald Trump and Maduro have just handed a killer his freedom — someone who's a real danger to society — without anyone bothering to provide a real explanation.' The prisoner exchange also saw the release of dozens of Venezuelans that the Trump administration had deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador after accusing them of being 'alien enemies' deployed by that country's government to 'invade' the U.S. Under the deal, 252 Venezuelans — including men who were accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members and summarily deported to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT — were returned to their home country. Those deportees were imprisoned at the facility for more than four months. Trump officials had labelled those men the 'worst of the worst' criminals, and 'alien enemies' who committed 'warfare' on U.S. soil — yet they were released in Venezuela, and could be brought back to the United States under court orders.

Spain's People's party hit by alleged multimillion cash-for-favours scandal
Spain's People's party hit by alleged multimillion cash-for-favours scandal

The Guardian

time5 days ago

  • The Guardian

Spain's People's party hit by alleged multimillion cash-for-favours scandal

Just when Spain's opposition People's party thought it had the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez on the ropes over a series of corruption scandals, it has been hit by a controversy of its own over alleged trafficking of influences by Cristóbal Montoro, the former finance minister. It's alleged that Montoro established the so-called 'economic team', a lawyer's office linked to the finance ministry, which took kickbacks from gas and other energy companies in return for favourable government policy. It's claimed that between 2008 and 2015 Montoro and 27 other accused, among them senior treasury officials, were paid at least €11m (£9.5m) by major energy companies. According to the police investigation led by the judge Rubén Rus 'the economic team received large commissions in return for its capacity to influence legislative and executive powers' under the government of the then president, Mariano Rajoy, adding that 'the office was merely a vehicle to access the finance ministry'. In his report the judge comments that gas companies 'tried to influence legislation in accordance with their interests by using various lobbies but without success' and were only successful when the go-between was Montoro's economic team. 'Within a short period of time and for no apparent reason they obtained the desired legislative reforms,' principally in the form of lower tax liabilities, it concluded. It's also alleged that Montoro personally accessed the confidential tax records of political rivals in his own party, among them Esperanza Aguirre, the former president of Madrid, as well as several journalists and celebrities, including tennis star Rafa Nadal, the art collector and socialite Carmen Thyssen and Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, the son of former Catalan president Jordi Pujol, who was under investigation for corruption. It is said that Rajoy was warned about Montoro's activities but no action was taken. Montoro resigned from the PP on Thursday, and issued a statement saying 'there is no proof of any of the accusations'. The allegations are a blow to the strategy of PP leader Alberto Feijóo which has consisted of a relentless attack on Sánchez whose party is being investigated over a series of corruption charges. Feijóo said the revelations don't change his view that corruption must be rooted out, whoever is involved. 'What needs to be investigated must be investigated,' he said. 'This gives Sánchez a breathing space but it's not the end of it as more is likely to emerge from the judicial investigations,' said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. 'This levels the playing field and it's also a blow to Feijóo's strategy as it puts him on the defensive.' Simón said the latest scandal would reinforce the view of many voters that Spain's political parties, both left and right, were irredeemably corrupt. The only beneficiaries, he said, would be the far-right Vox party which, having never been in power, could claim to have clean hands. 'It's analogous to what happened in Portugal after the scandals involving the socialist and then the conservative governments which benefited the far-right party there,' Simón said.

Mohammed Mahfuz Ahmed: Man jailed after TikTok threats sparked terror alert at football stadiums
Mohammed Mahfuz Ahmed: Man jailed after TikTok threats sparked terror alert at football stadiums

Sky News

time16-07-2025

  • Sky News

Mohammed Mahfuz Ahmed: Man jailed after TikTok threats sparked terror alert at football stadiums

A man has been jailed after posting threats on TikTok that sparked an international alert that ISIS was planning attacks on football stadiums hosting Champions League games. The Spanish interior ministry announced an "extraordinary" security response for the match featuring Real Madrid and Manchester City. More than 3,500 police officers, four separate rings of security, and snipers were posted on the roofs of buildings overlooking the stadium. Mohammed Mahfuz Ahmed, 26, from Cleethorpes, north Lincolnshire, was running multiple TikTok accounts, including one which he was using to share pro-ISIS propaganda making calls to behead and shoot dead disbelievers. On 4 April last year, he posted an image of fans at a football ground with targets on their heads. The image was posted days after an attack at a concert at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow by four men claiming allegiance to Islamic State, who opened fire killing at least 145 people including six children. Another image was posted on 8 April, by a media channel linked to ISIS in the same black and red colours, featuring a gunman in a balaclava with the message: "Kill them all." It pictured the Emirates Stadium in London, Parc des Princes in Paris, as well as the Santiago Bernabeu and Metropolitano Arena stadiums in Madrid, which were due to host UEFA Champions League football matches the next day. Ahmed was arrested on 18 April at his home and police seized an iPhone, a Samsung laptop and two USB memory sticks. On his phone was an image of the Bernabeu with a red target circle at the entrance to the stadium where people are entering. Katherine Robinson, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court: "We say that this is a statement of direct encouragement to commit acts of terrorism. "The defendant had an extensive following on TikTok. He also used hashtags which accompany each of his posts. This enables the user to significantly widen the reach of their posts." Ahmed was found guilty of three counts of disseminating terrorist material and one count of encouraging terrorism. The judge, Jeremy Richardson KC, said Ahmed had "utterly revolting scenes of cruelty and savagery relating to a variety of terrorist outrages" on his computer. Sentencing him to 10 years in jail with an extended licence of five years, the judge added: "I have a duty to protect the public. I sincerely hope that this sentence serves as a deterrent to others."

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store