A daughter’s documentary reveals her mother’s traumatic youth under Franco’s Spain, where she was institutionalized for non-conformity and subjected to brutal psychiatric treatments, now fueling demands for historical justice.
Marina Freixa always sensed a hidden darkness in her family’s past, but it was only a decade ago that her mother, Mariona Roca Tort, began to share the truth. Over a Christmas dinner, Mariona disclosed that her own parents had reported her to the authorities, leading to her confinement in a reformatory at age 17 for refusing to adhere to the regime’s strict Catholic values. This revelation stunned Marina and her cousins, who struggled to comprehend their grandparents’ actions in having their daughter locked up.
Growing up in a right-wing, ultra-Catholic household, Mariona’s life transformed when she turned 16 in 1968 and encountered anti-Franco activists through evening classes. Inspired by global protests against authoritarianism, she joined raids where activists blocked streets, threw Molotov cocktails, and distributed leaflets, embracing the spirit of rebellion against decades of dictatorship. Franco’s regime had banned political parties and enforced censorship, but young people like Mariona yearned for change, making her involvement in dissent a risky endeavor.
After a friend’s arrest on May Day 1969, Mariona feared police retaliation and stayed away from home, infuriating her parents who viewed it as a family disgrace. That summer, she resolved to leave home by traveling to Menorca with college friends, but her parents reported her as a runaway, leading to her arrest upon return. Instead of taking her home, they delivered her to a convent under the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, a state-sanctioned network for ‘re-educating’ non-conforming women.
In the convent, Mariona was segregated with other ‘rebellious’ women, subjected to a grueling routine of prayers, Mass, and forced labor in a clothing workshop. Communication was strictly controlled to prevent solidarity, with nuns reading aloud during work to enforce silence and punishing any attempts to form connections. She never learned the stories of her fellow detainees, as the system aimed to isolate and indoctrinate them into accepting blame for their perceived transgressions.
After a brief Christmas release, Mariona escaped but was quickly recaptured and returned to the convent, where her resistance led to isolation and food refusal. This resulted in her transfer to a psychiatric clinic, where she endured electric shock therapy and insulin coma therapy—a dangerous treatment involving insulin injections to induce hypoglycemic comas, believed to ‘reset’ the brain. The therapy, which was being phased out internationally due to its lethality, caused severe memory loss and mental submission.
The insulin injections prompted Mariona to keep a diary to combat memory gaps, a document that later became vital for her daughter’s documentary. Her despair grew so intense that she contemplated suicide, but she eventually reached a target weight of 40 kilograms for release in 1972, vowing never to live with her parents again. Upon returning to Barcelona, she built a career as a TV director and raised her own family, though her relationship with her parents remained strained and unresolved.
Marina’s documentary, ‘Els Buits’ (Catalan for ‘the spaces’), has won awards and nominations, including a Goya Award, and has sparked a movement for recognizing Patronato survivors as victims of Franco’s regime. Community screenings have empowered other women to share their stories, revealing that these abuses were systematic rather than isolated incidents. The film has contributed to a groundswell of calls for official inquiry and justice, highlighting the enduring impact of historical repression.
Fifty years after Franco’s death, Spain’s Minister for Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has expressed openness to addressing the survivors’ plight, signaling potential government action. Mariona’s story, once shrouded in shame, now serves as a powerful testament to resilience and the ongoing struggle for accountability, reminding society of the importance of confronting past injustices to shape a more equitable future.
