Girona hosts the first conference dedicated to the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, the Francoist institution of control and repression of women

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

They will take place on November 12th and 13th at El Modern and will include talks and round tables with experts and first-person testimonies from some of the victims.

ecover the memory of what was one of the most repressive and cruel Francoist institutions against women and give a voice to its victims. With this objective, Girona will host the first edition of the conference dedicated to the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, which will take place on November 12 and 13 at El Modern.

The Patronato de Protección a la Mujer was one of the longest-running institutions of the Francoist repressive system, in force between 1941 and 1985, which subjected thousands of women to internment and disciplinary regimes marked by institutional violence, labor exploitation and religious imposition. The Patronato de Protección de la Mujer aimed to reeducate young women so that they would conform to the model of femininity dictated by National Catholicism.

Despite its duration and scope, this gender repression continues to be one of the most forgotten in historical research, in collective memory and in public reparation policies. The conference aims to contribute to reversing this silence, giving a voice to survivors and opening a space for critical reflection on truth, justice and reparation.

Organized by the Association Against Forgetting: Support Group for Reprisals by the Women's Protection Board, Memorial Democràtic and Girona City Council, the conference aims to open a space for critical reflection on truth, justice and reparation and address issues that have been silenced until now, such as the physical and psychological consequences of the mistreatment that the young women and girls interns received, which centers existed in the city of Girona and in the Girona regions and the current avenues for reparation, among others.