The Birds and the Bees...Belong in the Woods
My grandmother had two children. By two different fathers. Whom she never married. Automatically, I know what most will think. The same as most will think of a woman these days who passes through the same circumstances. But my aunt was born in 1918 and my father in 1931, and at that time, though not quite kosher, it was considered absolutely normal. The close your eyes, turn off the lights mentality toward sex really came into being when Franco came into power. At least in Galicia. Franco was a misogynist who imposed his and the Church's viewpoint that sex is only to be used within the marriage for procreation. That became the imposed viewpoint of the then emerging middle class, which is why for many years it's been considered a shame if a young woman gets pregnant out of wedlock, and why when that happens, she always has to marry the father to erase any dishonor, even if the couple are teenagers. Now things are changing, and though you're still considered loose if you sleep around, it's not a dishonor to have a child out of wedlock and not marry the father.
Until middle class respectability and Church doctrine became the norm, sex before marriage was not seen as something diabolical, especially not in rural areas. Even then it wasn't demonized, as long as there was no pre-marital pregnancy. And if that occurred, a single woman was also seen as capable of raising her child alone. The only problem she would encounter was earning a livelihood. My grandmother was the child who remained home and eventually inherited the family home, along with a few fields. Her other ten siblings were content with that (except for the eldest son, who had emigrated to Cuba and had never been heard from again). She faced the problem of making a living by becoming a midwife. She never lost any of the babies or the mothers, because if she noticed a problem, she would tell the family to call a doctor. No one looked down on her for being a single mother. Instead, she was respected for her job of helping to bring children safely into the world.
The problem arose when she started a dalliance with my grandfather. More than anything because he was over ten years younger than her. Also, because his father had been a brigand, but most importantly because my grandfather was a "Red" who tried to help unionize a nearby tungsten mine. In fact, after the Civil War he was jailed for a few years for that reason. But the problem was not that she was in a non-marital relationship, but rather with whom. After my father was born and the Civil War sent my grandfather into hiding in the hills, my grandmother was as respected as ever. She was simply criticized for lack of good judgment in choosing a man.
In Spain's northwest, women have been treated more freely than in areas that come under Mediterranean influence. Even though women still had little or no legal independence, especially married women, they had a standing in the community. In many families the men emigrated for months or years, and the women stayed behind to raise the children, take care of the fields and livestock, and care for the house. It was normal for a wife to make a decision that required an immediate answer and could not wait the weeks it would take to inform her husband and have him send back an answer. Sometimes the husband would also come back and find a new member of the family. While people would probably laugh at him, it wasn't considered the enormous attack on his honor that it would be considered in other areas of Spain, especially in the south and along the Mediterranean shore. What the Church taught and what the parishioners practiced in this regard were completely disparate.
Now, after forty years of totalitarianism and enforced sexual respectability, we are beginning to reawaken and accept as normal in public life what we had already accepted long ago in private. When the democratic process began after Franco's death, magazines with topless photos on the cover began to hit the newsstands. It was normal to buy pornographic magazines along with the daily newspaper. Whereas, before, photos of boxers were blacked over in newspapers to "avoid offending sensitivities", now scenes were being included in popular movies that would send those movies to a triple x cinema in the United States. Yet children were allowed into all movie theaters no matter what was showing. (They still are.) Prudes still exist (most congregate in the right-wing political party now ruling), but most people are open-minded and accept things they may not think of doing, but which they see as harming no one. But all this is nothing new. Spain was never as sexually repressed as Franco pretended it to be or the Church had always fought for since before the Inquisition. The common people have always accepted sex as just another part of life.
After all, we were one of the first European countries to legalize same-sex marriage in the twenty-first century. And one of the major figures of the Galician Rixurdimento in the nineteenth century, Rosalía de Castro, was the illegitimate daughter of a priest. And she was known for what she wrote and did rather than stigmatized for her origins.
Until middle class respectability and Church doctrine became the norm, sex before marriage was not seen as something diabolical, especially not in rural areas. Even then it wasn't demonized, as long as there was no pre-marital pregnancy. And if that occurred, a single woman was also seen as capable of raising her child alone. The only problem she would encounter was earning a livelihood. My grandmother was the child who remained home and eventually inherited the family home, along with a few fields. Her other ten siblings were content with that (except for the eldest son, who had emigrated to Cuba and had never been heard from again). She faced the problem of making a living by becoming a midwife. She never lost any of the babies or the mothers, because if she noticed a problem, she would tell the family to call a doctor. No one looked down on her for being a single mother. Instead, she was respected for her job of helping to bring children safely into the world.
The problem arose when she started a dalliance with my grandfather. More than anything because he was over ten years younger than her. Also, because his father had been a brigand, but most importantly because my grandfather was a "Red" who tried to help unionize a nearby tungsten mine. In fact, after the Civil War he was jailed for a few years for that reason. But the problem was not that she was in a non-marital relationship, but rather with whom. After my father was born and the Civil War sent my grandfather into hiding in the hills, my grandmother was as respected as ever. She was simply criticized for lack of good judgment in choosing a man.
In Spain's northwest, women have been treated more freely than in areas that come under Mediterranean influence. Even though women still had little or no legal independence, especially married women, they had a standing in the community. In many families the men emigrated for months or years, and the women stayed behind to raise the children, take care of the fields and livestock, and care for the house. It was normal for a wife to make a decision that required an immediate answer and could not wait the weeks it would take to inform her husband and have him send back an answer. Sometimes the husband would also come back and find a new member of the family. While people would probably laugh at him, it wasn't considered the enormous attack on his honor that it would be considered in other areas of Spain, especially in the south and along the Mediterranean shore. What the Church taught and what the parishioners practiced in this regard were completely disparate.
Now, after forty years of totalitarianism and enforced sexual respectability, we are beginning to reawaken and accept as normal in public life what we had already accepted long ago in private. When the democratic process began after Franco's death, magazines with topless photos on the cover began to hit the newsstands. It was normal to buy pornographic magazines along with the daily newspaper. Whereas, before, photos of boxers were blacked over in newspapers to "avoid offending sensitivities", now scenes were being included in popular movies that would send those movies to a triple x cinema in the United States. Yet children were allowed into all movie theaters no matter what was showing. (They still are.) Prudes still exist (most congregate in the right-wing political party now ruling), but most people are open-minded and accept things they may not think of doing, but which they see as harming no one. But all this is nothing new. Spain was never as sexually repressed as Franco pretended it to be or the Church had always fought for since before the Inquisition. The common people have always accepted sex as just another part of life.
After all, we were one of the first European countries to legalize same-sex marriage in the twenty-first century. And one of the major figures of the Galician Rixurdimento in the nineteenth century, Rosalía de Castro, was the illegitimate daughter of a priest. And she was known for what she wrote and did rather than stigmatized for her origins.
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| From 10th century church in Cantabria. |
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