Abstract
This article uses the medical records of six women admitted to the Manicomio Nacional de Leganés, Madrid (Spain), in which, in addition to medical notes, there are letters and other personal documents. These unsent letters allow us to read about their complaints towards the institution, as well as to recover the voices of the inmates and their resistance to being treated like insane people. This analysis leads us to explore the double marginalization: being “women” and being “mentally ill”; it also brings us closer to building a story from the patient's point of view. The time frame is Franco’s dictatorship, during which the implementation of a national-Catholic system undoubtedly reinforced the female hegemonic model of the regime.
Psychiatric care; Spanish Civil War aftermath; Correspondence; Women mentally ill; Written culture