Editorial

European History Quarterly

2023, Vol. 53(2) 209–210
Resisting Models, Building © The Author(s) 2023
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Bridges: The Present and Future sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02656914231165436
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Gender studies is currently one of the most dynamic fields in Spanish historiography and
in recent decades has stood at the forefront of the renewal of the discipline. One of the
main reasons behind this dynamism lies in the efforts by gender historians to place
their research within the context of international debates, although to date with much
less impact beyond the frontiers of Spain than desired. Accordingly, the major aim of
this special issue is to rectify this situation by offering the international academic com-
munity eloquent proof of this vitality. To this end, we have chosen five topics that are
central to Spanish history, as well as being of special importance to gender history in
general: the construction of sexual difference in the transition to modernity; the relation-
ship between gender and religion; the meanings of feminism; the historical study of mas-
culinities; and women and fascism.
To address these topics, we have incorporated transnational dynamics into the Spanish
case. This required keeping an eye on the apparent singularities of the Spanish case while
remaining alive to broader phenomena. In this task, we have tried most of all, to avoid the
mechanical application of models created with other contexts in mind. Accordingly, these
articles confront many problems that have already been comprehensively explored in
gender history in many other countries, offering new answers to old questions and refin-
ing the keys to their interpretation.
The articles collected here show the main developments of gender history in Spain to
date, while signalling some of the most promising and innovative approaches to each
topic. In the first contribution ‘Between the Soul and the Body: The Construction of
Sexual Difference in Modern Spain’, Bakarne Altonaga analyses the meanings of
sexual difference in the transition to modernity in the international context. She rejects
the idea that this evolution was the result of the growing influence of enlightened (and
liberal) visions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These discourses coex-
isted with other visions that have not received the attention they deserve: the reformula-
tions of femininity and masculinity that the inflexible, post-Tridentine Catholic discourse
would continue to offer until well into the nineteenth century. The Church remained loyal
to many of its traditional ideas, although demonstrating a huge capacity to adapt its for-
mulations to the social and discursive changes of each moment and contributing, at the
same time, with very novel gender configurations. Inmaculada Blasco’s article,
‘Gendering Catholicism in Late Modern Spanish History (1854–1923): Research Lines
210 European History Quarterly 53(2)

and Debates for a European Dialogue’, continues to examine the contribution of

Catholicism in producing modern gender notions. In particular, it focuses upon the
role of Catholicism in mobilizing support in very gendered ways and in the context of
a contentious secularization process (from the mid-nineteenth century until the Primo
de Rivera dictatorship). Critically attentive to conceptual and theoretical discussion main-
tained in European historical studies on gender and religion, Blasco also engages in
recent approaches to Spanish modern history. Mapping the problems, interpretations
and debates generated by innovative Spanish historiography on the subject will hopefully
contribute to stimulating a more complete and balanced transnational and European dia-
logue on gender and religion in modern history.
In the article ‘On Don Juan and Beyond: Masculinity Studies in Modern Spain’, José
Javier Díaz Freire revisits Spanish masculinity, outlining the prominence of the figure of
Don Juan in studies of masculinity. He argues that the distinctive focus on Don Juan
within the Spanish historiography could be a significant contribution to masculinity
studies more widely, given that Don Juan embodies the features that have been attributed
to hegemonic notions of masculinity, a key concept throughout this field of research. In
‘Beyond Models: The Many Paths to Feminism in Modern Spain’, Nerea Aresti reflects
on the concept of feminism and underlines the impoverishing effect of rigid interpretative
models. In this regard, she accepts two challenges proposed by Joan W. Scott – to look at
the specific discursive frame in which feminism operated in order to unravel its ‘para-
doxes’ and to historicize the category of ‘women’ – to analyze how feminists articulated
their demands in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the
twentieth century. In her analysis, however, Aresti does not place the emphasis so
much on the paradoxes generated by the discursive logic imposed on feminists as on
the ability (or inability) of these feminists to alter the very terms of that logic.
In the last article, ‘“The Falange Changed Our Way of Being Completely”: Women
and Gender Identity in Spanish Fascism’, Ángela Cenarro offers a historiographical
journey devoted to showing the main contributions to the study of the Women’s
Section of the Falange which have been articulated along the lines of similar debates
arising from historical analysis of fascist female mobilization during the interwar
period. She explores the construction of the Falange’s female subjectivity, focusing on
the reformulation of dominant notions of womanhood undertaken by the organization
on the basis of the experience of the Civil War and the ideology of José Antonio
Primo de Rivera. Attention is also paid to the making of the leadership of Pilar Primo
de Rivera, whose main contribution was to shape a particular political religion based
on Catholic traditional identity.

Nerea Aresti
University of the Basque Country, Spain

Inmaculada Blasco Herranz

University of La Laguna, Spain