The Vanguard of the Seccion Femenina: Gender and Emotions in the Creation of a Mythic Narrative (1934-39)

The objective of this paper is to examine the collective identity constructed by the Seccion Femenina of FET-JONS (SF) in the period before it became the organization responsible for educating Spanish women. Both gender and emotions are the categories used to examine two aspects of the discourse that these Falangist women constructed: the mythification of their origin as the female Falangist vanguard and the shaping of a female paradigm compatible with active involvement in the Civil War. This approach will show how this short period was crucial to the invention of an "identity canon" that formed the basis on which the mod& of womanhood that the organization imposed during the dictatorship was set up.