Representaciones femeninas en la cartelería de la Guerra Civil Española: usos didácticos y posibilidades de análisis en la enseñanza de la Historia

José Antonio Mérida-Donoso; Irene Abad Buil; Arasy González-Milea

doi:10.4025/dialogos.v30i1.78152

Authors

José Antonio Mérida-Donoso University of Zaragoza Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7385-6772
Irene Abad Buil University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR). Zaragoza-AR, ES Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9792-6763
Arasy González-Milea University of Zaragoza Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7807-4777

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4025/dialogos.v30i1.78152

Keywords:

Spanish Civil War, Poster Art, Female Representations, History Teaching, Gender Perspective

Abstract

This article examines female representations in Spanish Civil War posters as historical sources and as didactic tools in teacher education. Based on the exhibition Posters That Tell: Women in the Spanish Civil War, the study explores diverse portrayals of women in both Republican and Nationalist propaganda. Using a qualitative approach, the research analyzes how secondary teacher training students interpreted the posters through critical, aesthetic, and pedagogical lenses. Results highlight the potential of these visual materials to promote historical thinking, visual literacy, and critical awareness among students, while also identifying persistent resistance and superficial understandings of gender issues in education.

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Author Biographies

José Antonio Mérida-Donoso, University of Zaragoza

Associate Professor (Profesor Permanente Laboral) in the Department of Didactics of Social Sciences at the University of Zaragoza. He holds a degree in History and Humanities from the University of Zaragoza, a PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and a Master's degree in Gender Studies from the Universitat Jaume I. He also holds a Diploma of Advanced Studies (DEA) in "Lies and Fictions in the Humanities" and postgraduate training in History and Human Rights from the University of Zaragoza. He is a member of the ARGOS research group and the Institute of Environmental Sciences (IUCA) of the University of Zaragoza. His research career lies at the intersection of historical education, visual culture, memory, contested heritage, and the construction of social and territorial imaginaries. His work analyzes how cinema, comics, literature, museums, visual imagery, textbooks, and heritage discourses contribute to the formation of representations of the past and space, as well as their potential for the development of historical thinking, critical citizenship, and democratic education. From an interdisciplinarity perspective, his research pays special attention to how images, cultural narratives, and places of memory intervene in the construction of identities, the transmission of collective memories, and the educational problematization of conflictive pasts. This common thread connects his studies on visual culture, heritage, democratic memory, rurality, territorial imaginaries, and history teaching.
Irene Abad Buil, University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR). Zaragoza-AR, ES

Bachelor’s degree in Humanities and PhD in History (2007). Currently, Assistant Professor with Doctorate in the Department of Specific Didactics at the Faculty of Education, University of Zaragoza, where she has been an Associate Professor since 2018, balancing this with secondary education teaching (2012-2025).

During her doctoral research, she authored several titles: The Storm That Passes and Recedes. The Maquis Years in the Aragonese Pyrenees – Sobrarbe (Prames, 2001); In Constant Struggle. The Political Biography of Ãngeles Blanco (1917-2000) (IEA, 2003); Leandro Saún and Carmen Casas: Clandestine Political Organization in Zaragoza in the 1940s (Government of Aragón, 2008).

She completed a postdoctoral stay at the University of Utah (USA), focusing her research on the International Democratic Women’s Federation and the impact of gendered repression beyond Spanish borders. This work led to the article: “The Dimensions of Gendered Repression during the Francoist Dictatorship” (Jerónimo Zurita History Journal, No. 84, 2009).

She is the author of the documentary We Were Prisoners’ Women, along with director Eva Abad, and the author of the book At the Gates of Prison: Repression, Solidarity, and Mobilization Outside the Walls of Francoist Prisons (Icaria, 2012).

Coordinator of the special issue A Constructed Present. The History of Monzón in the 20th Century (IEA, 2008).

Author of numerous articles and book chapters on the categories “women of prisoners” and “gendered repression.” She is a member of the Argos research group (IUCA) and director of the History area at the Institute of High Aragonese Studies (IEA-Huesca).
Arasy González-Milea, University of Zaragoza

Assistant Professor Doctor at the University of Zaragoza (Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences, Huesca Campus). Graduated in Early Childhood Education from the University of Málaga and Higher Technician in Early Childhood Education. I completed the Master’s in Policies and Practices of Educational Innovation, in which I received the Extraordinary Degree Award granted by the University of Málaga, and the Master’s in Education Research (MURE), specializing in Social Science Didactics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

I hold a PhD in Education and Social Communication from the University of Málaga, with a thesis titled “Teaching to Read Outside the Mold: Critical Literacy in Social Science Didactics for Early Childhood Education,” supervised by Dr. Carmen Rosa García Ruíz and Dr. Antoni Santisteban Fernández, evaluated with Highest Honors cum laude.

I completed predoctoral research stays at the University of British Columbia (Canada), the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo (Portugal), and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain), as well as postdoctoral stays at the latter and at the University of Granada (Spain).

I am a member of the University Association of Social Science Didactics Professors (AUPDCS) and the Research Institute for the Training of Education Professionals at the University of Málaga (IFE).

Since 2018, I have been part of the Social and Civic Education Research Group (HUM 856), and from 2024, of the S50_23R: ARGOS Research Group, in Social Science Didactics.

I participated in the R&D project “Education for the Future and Hope in Democracy. Rethinking the Teaching of Social Sciences in Times of Change” (EpF+ED) with reference PID2019-107383RB-I00, as well as in the R&D+I project “Emergent Narratives on Inclusive Schools from the Social Model of Disability: Resistance, Resilience, and Social Change” (RTI2018-099218-A-I00), coordinated by Ignacio Calderón Almendros and María Teresa Rascón Gómez.

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