Women's media in Francoist Spain suffered as a result of Francoist Spain policy. Many writers, translators and others were forced into exile, or faced stifling censorship and harassment if they remained. Spanish restrictions meant writing became one of the few acceptable occupations for women, and literate women with few other outlets for participation in Spanish society became voracious readers.

Internationalism disappeared in the early days of Spanish literature. The 1940s and 1950s saw the most popular form of women's literature being romance novels. Despite important literary contributions like Carmen Laforet's 1945 novel Nada, the 1940, 1950s and 1960s were a period where the broader male dominated literary establishment refused to take women's literary efforts seriously. The major theme in women's literature was trying to understand women's place in society in the period between the 1940s and 1950s, changing in the next decade with women beginning to challenge their role in society and to argue more for women's rights in literature. The death of Franco in 1975 would see women writers liberated in the themes they could explore.

In the early Francoist period, comic reproduced the gender roles advocated by the state, and were used to push this ideology onto children. Explorations of women's roles in society began to appear in comics in the 1970s, while women also began to appear as more three dimensional people and less as pure sex objects. Women were often portrayed as chaste, saintly figures who submitted to male authority in government approved domestic films. Starting in the 1950s, foreign movies in Spain presented women with images of beautiful and glamorous women who had their own agency.

Censorship became a new reality for many women writers in Francoist Spain. Publishers were subject to government control, and the Catholic Church was highly influential in what was allowed to be published. This would not begin to change until the 1970s, when some restrictions were relaxed.

Overview Following the Spanish Civil War, many writers, translators and other women involved in media production during the Second Republic went into exile. This included almost all Spain's most prominent feminist of the time. Those who remained faced repression, either because of their views or because of the language they spoke.

Writing was one of the few culturally acceptable forms of industry for women in the Franco period because it did not require women to leave the home to take up the occupation. Lack of education though could often lead to problems in the quality of women's writing, which would serve to further marginalize women's writing and their broader exclusion from Spanish literary canon of the Francoist period as a result.

With few other outlets for participation in Spanish society, many literate women spent hours a day reading various print publications and consuming other medium like radio programs. These included magazines, romance novels, history books, religious books and literary novels. This would inspire a new generation of women's writers and producers, both in print and other mediums.

Literature

1930s In the post-Civil War period, women's fiction was often marginalized, unclassified and dismissed as unimportant. A body of this work has largely disappeared, serving in part to erase the daily experiences of women in the early Francoist period. Almost none of the works of Spanish women in the period would make their way into the Spanish literary canon, largely as a result of the literary community at the time being dominated by the male victors of the Spanish Civil War. Starting with the end of the Civil War, Catalan language materials would officially be prohibited in the press and media until the 1970s. This would impact many women writers during the Franco period.

The start of the Franco period represented the start where internationalism disappeared from Spanish literature in favor of state favored domestically produced texts. At the same time, many of Spain's domestically produced works would not be translated into other languages or distributed internationally. Foreign literature would continue to enter Spain through more covert channels, bypassing censors. Spanish literature would not achieve any degree of major internationalism until after Franco's death, when many leading leftist Spanish publishers like Editorial Lumen would be acquired by international publishers like Random House.

1940s and 1950s

The most popular novels written by women in the 1940s and 1950s were romance novels (), outselling all other types of women's writings. These were not serious literary works, but were intended for mass consumption.

Carmen Laforet was the most important Spanish woman novelist during the 1940s, with her novel Nada published in 1945. It challenged Francoist Spain by showing a dirty underside that served as a counterpoint to the triumphalism of the Nationalists. Ana María Matute was one of the most important Spanish women novelists of the 1950s and 1960s. Her works were similar to that of Laforet and had Civil War themes, but represented a perspective of a child. The 1940, 1950s and 1960s were a period where the broader male dominated literary establishment refused to take women's literary efforts seriously. Francisco García Pavón asked in an interview about women's writings, "Are women's arms to weak for the oars of a great novel?" to which he basically answered yes. Consequently, there was very little serious criticism of women's writings and an erasure of their efforts in the immediate post war period. When their works were criticized, they were often compared only to works of other women in the past and found wanting. Some criticism in literary publications would comment on a female writers appearance, while taking very little note of her actual writings. When good women writers like Carmen Nonell were recognized, they were recognized in ways that sought to erase their gender. When women's works in the 1950s were perceived as offering social commentary on Spanish life, they were often subjected to critical commentary that tried to dismiss criticism of women as being an unnecessary female incursion into masculine life. At the same time, any promotion of the work of women writers as women writers was viewed as undermining women's creative and intellectual reputations. Male literary society believed women could only be properly supported by ignoring their status as women.

A key theme of women writers in the 1940s and 1950s was understanding their role in society. Examples of such works include those by Carmen Laforet. Unlike earlier periods, these novelists did not use their writings to argue that women were entitled to equal rights. Their domestic writings did not espouse radical philosophies that would have challenged Francoist Spain. Overtly female Francoist writers were held in even less esteem than their male contemporaries, a situation that would continue throughout and after the fall of Francoism in Spain.

1960s The 1960s would begin to see a change in major themes in women's writings, with women beginning to challenge their role in society and to argue more for women's rights. This represented both self-realization in women expressed in fiction and a begin to a return of Republican era thinking about women. These writers were not intending to subvert Francoism, the Catholic Church or their parents, but instead were about improving their own situations and creating more opportunities. These women were not ideologically united for a variety of reasons, including their educational backgrounds, shifting positions in Spain sanctioned organizations like Sección Feminina, the lack of a clear ideological viewpoint from Francoism and that their beliefs contradicted societal norms which they needed to explore in more socially accepted methods to avoid censorship.

During the 1960s, publishers were afraid to take risks in printing many new novels out of fear of Francoist interference, even when the established risks were low. This particularly disadvantaged women writers who already faced many commercial obstacles. Writers in the 1960s were often poorly paid and could not afford to live exclusively on money earned from their craft. Women had a slight advantage of their male counterparts in that social norms at the time meant middle and upper class women could more easily rely on their families for financial support.

1970s Catalan Esther Tusquets was an important woman author in the 1970s and 1980s, though her works are notable in this period for being unlike her peers in exploring themes of Catalan nationalism.

Starting in 1975, as a direct result of the death of Franco, women writers in Spain were liberated for the first time in the subject content for which their works could focus on. This led to them exploring things such as sexual desire and fantasy. This period marked the beginning of a self-made era where women's work was equal to that of their male contemporaries, based on the merits of their work while being created in female defined spaces. Following the death of Franco, the most important novel published was by a woman. At the same time, a group of women novelist emerge to describe feminist life in post-Civil War Spain. They had started writing in the 1940s, with a second cohort joining them in the 1960s when censors began to relax.

Literary awards Between 1945 and 1960, the Nadal Award was given to women six times. The 1958 Nadal Award had 175 entrants, of which 58 were women. The awards committee's willingness to consider women's writings on par with that of men made it particularly attractive for women, and it acquired a reputation as "fama de feminista". Among literary circles, this resulted in a loss of prestige for the prize, with it becoming known as the "premio dedal" or the thimble prize. This was a result of the patriarchal male dominated literary establishment doubting the talents of women based purely on sex related factors. Writers such as Mercedes Salisachs were particularly looked down upon by this male group as they were viewed as prize collectors, instead of serious writers.

In 1953, the Premio Fémina was created by the publisher Colenda to be a women's only equivalent to the Nadal Prize with the intention of encouraging more women to become writers. It had a prize of 50,000 pesetas. The inaugural prize, in a 63 participation deep competition, was given to Carmen Nonell for her work Zoco grande.

The Ateneo de Valladolid created Spain's second women's only literacy award in 1962, with the Premio María de Molina. The prize money was only 10,000 pesetas.

Feminist writers Margarita Nelken, María Martínez Sierra and Carmen de Burgos had all been pre-Civil War feminist writers. Following the war, their work was subjected to strict censorship. Spanish feminists in Spain in the post Civil War period often needed to be active in exile. Works produced by these writers including Nada by Carmen Laforet in 1945 and La mujer nueva in 1955, Primera memoria by Ana María Matute in 1960. Writings of some foreign feminists did find their way to Spain, including the Le deuxième sex published in French in 1947 by Simone de Beauvoir. Inside Spain, well connected, often aristocratic Spanish feminists were sometimes able to publish their works for domestic consumption by 1948. This includes works by María Lafitte, Countess of Campo Alanaga, and Lilí Álvarez. Works by Republican pre-war feminists like Rosa Chacel and María Zambrano, who continued to write from exile, also saw their works smuggled into Spain.