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1) A thread on war veterans’ masculinity, fascism and post-fascism in modern Spain...
2) Hundreds of thousands of victorious rebel soldiers from the Spanish Civil War embodied the archetype of masculinity in the Franco regime. As war veterans, they represented the ideal of fascist manliness in the early 1940s
3) The fascist vision of masculinity and gender relations was based on Nietzsche’s dictum: “Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior”.
4) Returning from a fascist war, Francoist veterans who exemplified this hegemonic masculine ideal tended to be more successful in marriage and social life. Post-war weddings with grooms wearing fascist uniform & medals were common.
4) However, Spanish postwar experiences and the defeat of fascism in Europe transformed the fascist masculinity model. Sportsmen and toreros gradually displaced veterans as ideal males.
5) Yet militarism and politicization of masculinity persisted: Football matches were described in battle terms. Toreros hailed Franco with the fascist salute. The trope of women as the “solace of the warrior” remained.
6) The veterans’ postwar experience of parenthood, ageing and professional life gradually transformed masculinity models after 1945. The influence of American male ideals with a veteranhood element was crucial.
7) Yet the resulting hegemonic masculinity was a hybrid between the fascist warrior model and the American model of the successful businessman. In the 1950s, Spanish fascist ideologues like E. G. Caballero represented businessmen as medal-deserving heroes.
8) There are many examples of this transformation of masculinity models that combined fascist values with the new American-inspired businessman ideal. Spanish fascist José Antonio Girón (Franco’s Labor Minister and Falangist Veterans' Chief) became a real state entrepreneur.
9) Ageing transformed the old model of fascist-military masculinity into one characterized by socio-professional success and ‘male’ pleasures (liquor, tobacco) in the 1950s. But veterans’ elites retained their hegemony.
10) Only in the 1960s, with the reception of new American masculinity models that re-emphasized youth, did Francoist veterans see their hegemonic masculinity challenged. The Francoist "Generation of 1936" mobilized politically only in the mid-1960s.
11) In the 1970s, Transition to democracy implied the demise of old hegemonic masculinities with fascist roots. Old veterans became ridiculed with tropes such as the “abuelo cebolleta” (the grandad with his war tales that nobody wanted to hear).
12) The history of Francoist veterans' masculinity shows how fascist ideals lived on and transformed through transnational influences in the decades after the 1930s.
13) This thread is based on this article (open-access!):
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/HPOL/article/view/58580
https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/HPOL/article/view/58580
