Resistance and Survival: Deconstructing the Narratives of Women Political Prisoners after the Spanish Civil War

This thesis offers a comparative reading of life writing by female political prisoners who were imprisoned after the Spanish Civil War, studying six texts in particular: the two volumes of Cárcel de mujeres by Tomasa Cuevas; Desde la noche y la niebla by Juana Doña; Réquiem por la libertad by Ángeles García Madrid; Abajo las dictaduras by Josefa García Segret; and Aquello sucedió así by Ángeles Malonda. The representation of women’s imprisonment in Spain has been dominated by Communist narratives, while texts by non-Communist women have largely been ignored. Situating these life writing accounts during the Transition when they were published allows us to analyse them as responses to the process of democratisation and as constructions, rather than as simple factual representations of life under the dictatorship. A comparative reading of Communist texts demonstrates the high degree of similarity between them, highlighting that they offer ideologically-driven depictions of imprisonment as a collective experience. Reading them alongside non-Communist life writing shows that the Communist narrative foregrounds resistance at the expense of exploring the individual, emotional, and intellectual struggle for survival that many women faced as political prisoners in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.