Nosotras, las refugiadas: Dr Alba Martínez on her new book

The refugee crisis is currently flooding our screens and newspapers. The media convey a story where people are reduced to statistics devoid of content, history and memory, as well as sharing stereotypical images, often of women and children, which seek our compassion, but to which viewers are sadly becoming desensitised.

In Spain, more than eighty years ago, as a result of the Civil War and Franco's rise to power, nearly half a million people were forced to leave the country, seeking refuge mainly in France. This phenomenon has traditionally been interpreted as an exile of intellectuals and politicians, mostly male, in which women occupied a secondary place, embodying the categories of "victim" and "companion".

I wanted to write this book for two reasons: to show, on the one hand, that the so-called Spanish Republican Exile was mainly led by "ordinary people", and particularly by women with plural and complex experiences, and with the capacity to make life in exile possible with the means at their disposal; and, on the other, to understand the mechanisms, relationships and spaces through which gender inequalities were perpetuated in exile, feeding the "woman-companion" binomial that continues to the present day.

At the beginning of the research, I predicted that exile would be a particularly favourable context for gender inequalities to be challenged.

However, during my research, I was surprised to realise that the context of Spanish exile – in administrative, political and social terms – placed women in an inferior position that they nevertheless negotiated and transgressed in different ways, but also nurtured when it benefited them.

One of the central facts uncovered in the course of my research is the way in which gender shaped the process of applying for refugee status. This was a crucially importance administrative process for Spanish refugees in France, since their ability to stay in France depended on it. However, this process had not previously been studied from a qualitative or gendered perspective. 

When I began to analyse the applications in which Spaniards had to explain the reasons that had led them into exile, I observed that the women's files were very brief compared to those of the men. Methodologically, this posed a challenge, but instead of assuming that the women had nothing to tell, I started from the premise – based on previous studies – that there were reasons that they were not telling their story in these documents. I used the files in which women’s experiences were prominent, but also tried to understand what prevented them from appearing prominently in so many of these. I turned my attention to the administrative process itself and what the authorities valued in order to recognise someone as a “refugee”.

In the book I try to show that women's applications were not subject to the same scrutiny as men's: men's applications were judged on their political and military experiences, while women's were judged primarily on their gender roles. I believe that scrutinising the power relations between women refugees and the state is crucial to exposing the gender biases of these seemingly innocent administrative processes and thus problematising the story that the archival sources seem to tell.

I would like readers to remember that the Spanish women who sought refuge in France at the end of the Civil War were protagonists of their own history. This brought contradictions, as they made use of the resources that were available to them, sometimes challenging gender inequalities, and sometimes using these inequalities to their own advantage.  This female agency, however, has to be understood through analysis of the mechanisms of subordination and hierarchisation that exist in all historical contexts, and of which the so-called "Spanish Republican Exile" was by no means exempt.