Patronato de Protección a la Mujer
여성보호위원회 (스페인)
A body of the Spanish Ministry of Justice refounded by Franco’s decree of 6 November 1941. In the name of women’s “moral dignity” it confined young women of 16 to 21 deemed “fallen or at risk of falling” in closed centres run by religious orders and re-educated them in Catholic doctrine. Prostitutes, rebellious girls and lesbians were among those held; it disappeared only in 1984.
In depth
The Patronato de Protección a la Mujer originated in the Royal Board for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade, created in the Ministry of Justice by a royal decree of 11 July 1902; set up to abolish prostitution, it soon became an instrument of social control and moral training. The Second Republic turned it in 1931 into a secular “Board for the Protection of Women”, whose members included María Lejárraga and Clara Campoamor, but lack of money led to its dissolution in 1935, its powers passing to the Higher Council for the Protection of Minors.
The Franco regime refounded the Patronato by a decree of 6 November 1941, with Franco’s wife Carmen Polo as honorary president, and the same decree created the Work for the Redemption of Fallen Women. Its stated aim was the moral dignification of women, especially the young, keeping them from exploitation and vice and educating them in Catholic doctrine, though the education was minimal or non-existent. Young women of 16 to 21, or up to 25 in special cases, came to it through the courts, police raids, denunciations by relatives and neighbours, requests from clergy or their own parents. In its centres letters were censored, going out and telephoning were forbidden, there were isolation rooms and punishment cells, and lesbian inmates were sometimes moved to psychiatric hospitals.
In the Patronato’s maternity homes stolen babies, forced labour of pregnant women and the separation of mothers and children have been documented. After fifteen-year-old Inmaculada Valderrama died in September 1983 trying to escape from the San Fernando de Henares centre on knotted sheets, its conditions came to light; as its powers passed to the autonomous communities, the Patronato disappeared entirely in 1984.