Talk:Feminists and the Spanish Civil War

In writing about the Spanish Civil War, there is an inherent issue of bias in the sourcing as any source in Spanish needs to be thoroughly checked to know if it is written from a Republican and Nationalist perspective, as both can exaggerate or make false claims to support a position. Even within these source perspectives, that are often additional perspectives such as Falangists versus Carlists, Stalinist Communists versus Trotskyite Communists. Where possible, after consulting with librarians at other Spaniards I know, I made the decision to try to use English language sources first as they are viewed as the least potentially biased. From this root of English sources, I then tried to fill information in using Spanish sources with awareness that things may not read as neutrally as I would like because reality of sourcing issues. --LauraHale (talk) 07:51, 8 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

One of the major challenges in writing this article and others in the series is that, for the most part, the perspectives of women involved were sometimes not directly put forward. Perspectives put forward about women could also be by people trying to actively deny them agency. The articles had this challenge of how do you provide women agency and do that in the context of sources that are written with inherent bias to deny them agency? There are two large examples that come to mind when more broadly writing about women during the Spanish Civil War period. The first involves militiawomen serving on the front line, and how many were prostitutes. Most of the sources talking about this issue are reporting people's accounts that women were prostitutes as this fed into both Republican and Nationalist narratives about the role of women. Few sources provide substantial detail regarding this, with women not being named or more detailed information on prostitution during the Spanish Civil War. There are sources that make clear that in many cases, this was a slander... and then in some cases repeat the slander as a fact. When this happens, to try to give women agency and resolve broader source conflict, I decided to go with "were slandered with the accusation of being prostitutes" or something to that effect. The other big example involves babies being taken from new mothers by Nationalist forces against the will of the mother. This is not described by sources as kidnapping, but the stolen babies cases make clear this was what was happening. These were not unwanted babies put up for adoption, but babies taken by the state to prevent mothers from ideologically infecting their children. To give women agency here, when this sort of thing is being described, I have tried to use the word kidnapped to describe the initial act. In many places, I have struggled with this by an over-reliance on passive voice, so any assistance in improving the articles by switching to more active voice appreciated. --LauraHale (talk) 08:02, 8 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

The articles in this series got long very fast, with content being moved around from one to another, or copied and pasted inside the same article. Hence, there was some cases where there is internal text duplication on the same article. Major ooops on my part. Ipigott‬ did a fabulous job in tackling some of this but what remains is on me. I tried to reread articles before moving to the main space to further eliminate this problem, so hopefully is isn't as bad as it was in the drafting. Also, I occasionally have a tendency to drop words and make typos. Again, these are not on purpose. Tried to fix up as many of these as possible before main spacing but as the articles tend to be from the 3,000 to 10,000 word range... that isn't always as easy as I would like it. Any assistance in improving the writing of the article, the flow, and dealing with what remains would be appreciated. :) Trying my hardest but no one can be perfect. :( --LauraHale (talk) 08:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

On first reading of this page, I was surprised by the complete absence of the name of Federica Montseny (by contrast, Dolores Ibárruri' name appears 6 times), one of the first female government ministers in Europe through her role during the revolutionary period. Ronald Fraser’s "Blood of Spain", one of the reference sources in the article, included two large block quotes from Montseny (pages 285-6 of the 1981 Penguin edition) and she sought to remove policing of abortion and prostitution work. The nearest that the present text comes is in mention of the “anarchist-dominated Health Department”.

I thought to insert some such text, but then realised that it could contradict the existing article text ("On the whole, the anarchist movement's male leadership deliberately excluded women and discouraged them from seeking leadership positions. Women were effectively locked out of the two largest anarchist organizations"), even if one accepts the observation in another of the article’s sources that Montseny was "an exceptional case as a prominent female anarchist leader in the FAI" "Milicianas" p31 Both "deliberately excluded" and "locked out" are strong assertions. (Unfortunately the current text tends not to use page references, limiting my check on whether research has indeed overturned the positions in my available sources which are predominantly 40 years old.) But examples to the contrary suggest that the text should become less assertive.

It may also be relevant that CNT membership had a limited syndicalist focus: "...initially (the CNT) only allowed workers who had a wage and an employer to join. This of course excluded self-employed workers, members of co-operatives, certain technicians and intellectuals." (Marshall, Peter (1992). Demanding the Impossible. Harper Collins. p. 457. ISBN 9780002178556.).

It seems to me desirable for balance that specific reference should be made to Montseny and, partly consequentially, the assertions are reduced. It may be unproductive to add maintenance tags to the article, so for the moment I am raising this here to seek others' views? AllyD (talk) 09:48, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

• When I raised the concerns above (as well as the date concerns below), I wondered about tagging the article page for its factual accuracy. Recently, RaquelFlorez has adjusted the text, in particular about the views which had been ascribed to Victoria Kent Siano and Margarita Nelken y Mansbergen. This again makes me wonder if overall accuracy issues should be flagged for the remainder of the text, or if these were isolated problems (aside from my balance concern above)? AllyD (talk) 15:04, 1 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

In a previous edit I amended the date of the end of the Civil War to 1939. Looking again at the article, it has a Francoist Spain (1938 - 1973) section. Both these dates are out of line with the Francoist Spain article. Franco was "appointed head of government of Spanish state and Generalissimo of the armies" on 29 September 1936 (ref. chronology on p590 of Fraser's "Blood of Spain") and, although Franco appointed others as Prime Minister from 1973 onwards, which might be the intended justification for the end date, would anyone argue that events such as the Salvador Puig Antich execution did not occur under the Franco regime? AllyD (talk) 13:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• ¡No pasarán! Madrid.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:25, 12 May 2020 (UTC)Reply