Erotic postcards were pervasive in early 20th-century Spain, seeping into even the upper echelons of society, Maite Zubiaurre, a Portuguese and Spanish professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said during “Erotic Postcards: A Spanish Inventory,” part of the women and gender studies program’s Sexualities Lecture Series. The provocative images of women, often foreign, were common throughout Spanish households during the Silver Age, she said.
Erotica was heavily ingrained in Spanish culture until the Francoist dictatorship, in power from 1936 to 1975, eliminated such images, Zubiaurre said. All levels of Spanish society came into contact with the pornographic postcards prior to the time they fell out of favor, Zubiaurre said. Even women and children were known to view them and use them as masturbation aids, she said.
“Sexualized postcards appeared in everyday places because they were part of the everyday world,” Zubiaurre said.
Zubiaurre said she aims “to help revolutionize the way literary and cultural criticism has traditionally looked at” early 20th-century Spain, also known as the Silver Age, she said.
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