Women's suffrage in Francoist Spain and the democratic transition

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Women's suffrage in Francoist Spain and the democratic transition was constrained by age limits, definitions around heads of household and a lack of elections. Women got the right to vote in Spain in 1933 as a result of legal changes made during the Second Spanish Republic.  Women lost most of their rights after Franco came to power in 1939 at the end of the Spanish Civil War, with the major exception that women did not universally lose their right to vote. Repression of the women's vote occurred nevertheless as the dictatorship held no national democratic elections between 1939 and 1977.

The Franco regime imposed changes around women's suffrage, namely as it related to the need for women to be heads of household and around women's age of majority.  Originally, the age was 23, but this was reduced to 21 in 1943 provided women were no longer living with their parents; otherwise the age of majority was 25.  Several national referendums were held in Spain, where women could vote if they were over the age of 21, for example in 1942, 1947 and 1966. Women could, under certain conditions involving age and marital status, vote in municipal elections. They could also run in municipal elections. Dolores Pérez Lapeña was one such women, winning in Valladolid in the 1963 elections.The first national elections in which women could vote took place in 1977, two years after the death of Franco. 

However, during Francoist Spain and the democratic transition, there were legal ambiguities over women's free right to vote, due to restrictions of women's rights in civil law, with unmarried and married women being under the guardianship of their fathers and husbands, respectively. In 1975, the permiso marital was abolished, improving the legal status of married women.^[1] The 1978 Spanish constitution gave men and women equality under the law, effectively ending the Franco regime's system of guardianship for single women, and a new family law was enacted in 1981, giving married women full civil rights, and also legalizing divorce.