In my article I show how a very particular identity was created for women during the period of Franco's Spain. I will draw upon a varied range of materials from of®cial discourses, particularly the SeccioÂn Femenina (the women's branch of Falange); the A Â lvarez Enciclopedia and other texts such as songs, poems and the popular press. Following Foucault (1980: 30) I analyse an identity based on oppressive discourses whose power`reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning process and everyday life'. The nationalistic stress of this discourse is one that encourages women to create a new image of Spanish femininity that should be`different' from the liberated portrayal of women coming from Europe, mainly through the path of growing tourism.The language of these discourses is somehow baroque, elaborated, energetic and highly dramatic. It tries to seek attention through an unnecessary and badly misorientated dramatism. It is cryptic and manipulative and claims to be poetical, but its main intention is to confine women indoors and to make them look at the world through the curtains or from a closed window. On the other hand it made women feel they were the representation of a unique matriarchal nationalism making them appear as the heroines of an essentialist national metaphor: women mothers of the nation.Inherent in Franco's equation of women = femininity = nation is a contradiction that defines women as`indoor heroines' and bases nationalism in a naturalised representation of gender where women are a gendered representation of this nationalism.Introduction.

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One of the most recognizable Mexican painters of the twentieth century, Frida Kahlo produced around 200 paintings, dozens of drawings and an illustrated journal. She related her works to her experiences in life: in particular, to her physical and emotional pain and her relationship with her husband, the acclaimed Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Her paintings are visual narratives in which she fuses elements of fantasy and reality, Surrealism and Mexican folklore. She is perhaps best known for her self-portraits. The life cycle is a constant concern in her art: birth, childhood, family, pain, and death; her pictorial language is characterized by a great irony and sense of humor. Her importance lies in her ability to explore taboo aspects of female experiences long before the women’s movement. She was known for her alliance to the Mexican Communist Party, and her political position influenced her paintings from her earliest years as a painter in many different ways. Her work is emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous tradition, and as a depiction of female experience. Today Frida Kahlo has become an international icon and her paintings fetch more money than those of any other female artist.