Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 31, Number 4 (Winter 2025)
Article Note: García-Fernández, Mónica. “From National Catholicism to Romantic Love: The Politics of Love and Divorce in Franco’s Spain.” Contemporary European History 31, no. 2 (2022): 2–14.
By Martina Cucchiara, Bluffton University
In this prize-winning article, Mónica García-Fernández examines the changing emotional regime of romantic love in marriage in the final phase of Franco’s dictatorship (1939–75). She argues that a shifting discourse on love and marriage that prized happiness and fulfillment had repercussions far beyond the private sphere. Rather, she writes, “the defense of romantic love and divorce went hand-in-hand with a demand for religious freedom, individual rights, the separation of church and state and, ultimately, democracy” (p. 2). This new discourse was so consequential because Catholicism and the Catholic Church underpinned Franco’s dictatorship, permeating virtually all aspects of Spaniards’ public and private lives. It was a conservative, nationalist Catholicism that promoted an emotional regime based on sacrifice and submission. Since Spaniards could not legally divorce until 1981, unhappy couples were admonished to endure in their broken marriages and to embrace a life of suffering. García-Fernández writes, “This concept of love was intended to create docile citizens who would place morality before self-interest,” conforming “with an authoritarian regime that outlawed individual freedoms and regarded them as potentially dangerous to the goal of the state” (p. 6.)
This restrictive conception of love began to unravel in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) when a new discourse emerged in Spain that placed the health and happiness of individuals above the preservation of a shattered, loveless marriage at any cost. The author examines the writings of three progressive Catholic intellectuals, all of whom argued for empathy for desperate couples trapped in unhappy unions. These writers advocated for reforming marital and divorce laws. One writer, Enrique Miret (1914–200), argued that “a marriage without love ceased to be valid” and justified a divorce (p. 10). Miret and others, like the journalist and former advisor of the women’s section of Catholic Action, Antonio Aradillas, also called for the separation of church and state, which would make faith a private matter. García-Fernández argues that, in persistently demanding the separation of church and state, “these authors abandoned the identification between Catholicism and the Spanish nation that was paramount to Francoist politics.” (p. 12). In its critique of National Catholicism and embrace of romantic love, “this new Catholic emotional regime,” she concludes, “was a sign of rising democratic sensibilities” in Spain (p. 14).
It is here where the article falls somewhat short. Although García-Fernández makes a compelling case for the transformation of the emotional regime surrounding love and marriage in Franco’s waning dictatorship, she is less successful in demonstrating how these shifting emotional norms translated into broader democratic sensibilities. The connection is suggested rather than fully developed, leaving the reader wishing for a more explicit articulation of how emotional change fostered political change. Nevertheless, García-Fernández convincingly shows why the history of emotions matters: she shows that intimate emotional shifts can foreshadow profound political and cultural realignments.
Martina Cucchiara, Bluffton University
