Radio, Exile, and Feminisms: Spanish Republican Women Writers in Buenos Aires

Abstract

In this article I explore how radio served as an important platform in the intellectual and feminist trajectories of Spanish Republican women writers living in exile in Argentina after its vast expansion as a form of mass media in the 1930s. Radio took off around the country at a particular moment for feminisms, when women were asserting their social and political rights and becoming more active in the public sphere. This moment coincided with the arrival of intellectuals exiled following the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and their incorporation into the cultural market. Through a study of writers María Teresa León’s (1903–1988) and María Martínez Sierra’s (1874–1974) participation in cultural activities on Radio El Mundo in 1942–1943 and Radio Nacional in 1959, respectively, I examine their relationship with the medium and how contact with this new communication technology led them to transform the kinds of cultural products they created in order to develop their feminist ideas through radio broadcasts. I argue that although this radio archive has received scant critical attention, recuperating and analyzing it allows us to complicate our view of the relationship that exiled women had with their host culture and to have a broader understanding of the Republican exile.