Of Maiming and Privilege: Rethinking War Disability through the Case of Francoist Spain, 1936–1989

Abstract

Abstract This article attempts to reconfigure current historiographical debates on war disability, which have hitherto tended to rely on ‘masculinity’ as an analytical framework. Instead, the case of the Francoist war disabled of the Spanish Civil War underscores the need to consider war disability in relation to broader social hierarchies, and the socio-political topographies in which these operate. In doing so, it is possible to understand how the Francoist war disabled occupied a relatively privileged space in twentieth-century Spain, despite and even because of the impairments they sustained in the Civil War. At the same time, Francoist war disability benefits left much to be desired, and clear differences emerged between the experiences of ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ veterans. In this sense, the Francoist war disabled were both favoured and under-served by the regime’s war disability policies. This research has broader relevance to scholars working on contexts beyond modern Spain, as it disrupts the traditional association of physical impairment with marginality, while highlighting the fluidity of perceptions and experiences of war disability according to socio-political context.