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- Women in PSOE in Francoist Spain had been involved in important socialist activism since the 1930s, including behind the scenes during the Asturian miners' strike of 1934, even as the party offered few leadership roles to women and address the issues of women. During the Civil War, the party was one of the few left wing actors to reject the idea of women on the front, believing women instead should take care of the home. Socialists continued to have a fraught relationship with feminism during the post-war early Franco period with 10% female membership, and Partido Comunista Española (PCE) overtook PSOE in importance as the dominant left wing group in the Spanish interior. Most of the prominent socialists leaders and many women in PSOE fled to exile abroad. Those who remained were subject to severe repression. Many were imprisoned. Some were executed. During the 1940s, PSOE's interior activities were clandestine. Toulouse would become the home of leadership on the exterior, with exile women in France and Mexico playing important exterior roles. Leadership faced numerous challenges in the 1950s as a result of regime repression. In the 1960s, interior and external divisions came out into the open with women like Josefina Arrillaga and Carmen García Bloise playing critical roles in the unfolding drama. The early 1970s saw a period of renewal and renovation of the PSOE executive committee. Addressing women's issue was not something PSOE was able to do, as women in power understood that an attempt to do so would lead to internal party divisions. Divided amongst themselves, PSOE aligned women would be at the forefront of introducing more explicitly socialist and politically class focused third-wave feminism to Spain. The transition would see Adolfo Suarez's Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) come to power in 1977 following Franco's 1975 death. Ignoring women's issues would be one of the reasons UCD lost the 1982 elections and PSOE come into power. PSOE would declare its explicit support for feminism by 2019. (en)
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