A War Widow writes to Francisco Franco

Francisca González, whose husband was killed during the Civil War, wrote this letter to Francisco Franco from Soria on 10 January 10, 1944. Addressed to the El Pardo Palace in Madrid, Franco’s official residence, it pleads with the dictator to grant pensions to her four orphaned children.

Civil War widows, especially the widows of the vanquished, were in a situation of particular vulnerability. These women were stigmatized within their own communities and often unable to find employment, in addition to being excluded from any form of aid from the new authorities, such as widows’ pensions. For the widows of the victors, making ends meet was a little easier— and not only because they had a certain standing and influence within their communities.

The material poverty of the post-war period was so intense and prolonged that it also affected many widows of the victors, such as Francisca González, whose husband "was executed in the Red zone." This woman, who claimed to be in "great need" and in desperate need of money, worked as a servant in Soria for 60 pesetas a month. Despite having a job, Francisca had to leave her three youngest children—the eldest being only thirteen years old—with her mother-in-law in a village in the province of Soria because she could not afford to care for them. They all lived in extreme poverty. She admitted to receiving an additional 60 pesetas from Auxilio Social [Social Assistance], the main charitable and welfare institution of the Francoist regime during the 1940s, to feed and clothe her children, as the town where they lived did not have a soup kitchen where they could get a hot meal. As she explained in her letter, this was not enough to live decently.

Francisca González decided to write to Franco, hopeful after learning that war orphans from the winning side, like her children, were entitled to receive 3 pesetas a day. She was also driven by the injustice of the fact that the children had not been included in the census due to an administrative error.

War widows who sent letters of supplication to the Francoist authorities often used rhetorical strategies aimed at moving the recipient to fulfill their requests. Francisca González delved into her daily poverty, highlighting the miserable and precarious conditions they were forced to live in, and signing off as a “poor mother.” In order to have her request granted, she did not hesitate to refer to the dictator as the protector of orphans and to employ the regime’s rhetoric, closing her letter with the slogans “¡Arriba España!” [Arise Spain!] and a “¡Viva Franco!” [Long live Franco!].

GRR