In spite of the Dictatorship: Women’s Football in Franco’s Spain, 1939-1975

Francoist Spain provided a hostile environment for the development of female football. Newspaper and magazine accounts, official newsreels and a documentary show that the women’s branch of the single party (the organization managing physical education and sport for girls and women) vehemently opposed female football, and the football federation ignored football when played by women. Spanish women’s football intersected with popular culture, and popular culture made female football an object of derision. Notwithstanding this hostile sporting environment, Spanish girls and women played football at first occasionally and for recreation. In the 1970s, they practised the sport in a more regular and consistent manner, and some Spanish women footballers even played against female teams from Portugal, France, or Italy. Spanish newspapers and magazines reported on football played by women mainly in Spain but also abroad in diverse ways (with supportive, neutral, or critical tones). This media coverage, particularly intense in the 1970s, permitted the media audience to learn of the existence of female football. When the dictatorship ended in 1975, football was played only by a minority of girls and women, who continuously confronted the monumental obstacles to the sport they liked to practice.