The Spanish women deceived by Plan Marta, the Machiavellian operation of the Franco regime to marry them in Australia

Are you a young, Catholic, single woman? Welcome to Australia!

Almost 800 Spaniards emigrated to the antipodes between 1960 and 1963 with the purpose of working in domestic service and prospering in life. However, before getting on the plane they were unaware that their destiny was to marry compatriots who worked in the harvest.

They had been deceived by the Catholic Church and Francoism.

Named as Martha Plantheir objectives were hidden from the protagonists, although they may remember the martens of The Handmaid’s Talewhose name refers to Martha of Bethany, sister of Lazarus (“get up and walk”), described in the Bible as helpful and industrious, today the patron saint of cooks, servants, laundresses and housewives.

March 7, 1960. Eleven Spanish women embark on the first brides planewhere Italian and Greek women also travel, some married by proxy. This is what they ignore:

– After the Second World War, the Australian Government plans to increase its population with American, British, Baltic, Dutch and Polish emigrants: a Australia white and, if possible, blonde. Then citizens from Mediterranean Europe will also join the list. The motto is clear: Populate or perish!that is, populate or die.

– Although the Franco regime does not maintain diplomatic relations with Australia, the arrival of young, single Spanish workers is organized to work on the sugar cane plantations. Canarians and Andalusians are ideal, due to their experience. However, they only admit people from the north, such as the Basques, who had already emigrated decades ago. Other reprehensible reasons influenced the selection, which we will explain later.

– In the mid-fifties, Basques, Navarrese or Cantabrians began to work on sugar and tobacco plantations in the state of Queensland. To the Operation Kangaroo of 1958, Operation Eucalyptus of 1959 and Operation Emu of 1960 would follow.

– There is a precedent: a year earlier, in 1957, the Spanish Emigration Institute deployed Operation Bison, which was destined for Canada. Almost three hundred men and women, almost all of them Galician, cross the pond to work on farms in Montreal. In parallel, Operation Moose employs a hundred men in railway companies and, three years later, fifty single Spanish women travel to Canada to work as domestic workers.

March tenth, 1960. The brides plane lands in Melbourne. Over the next three years, hundreds of Spaniards will arrive on thirteen flights. Male emigrants already established in Australia go to the airport to receive them. One gets married the same day of landing.

Captured in religious settings, all of them are unaware of the hidden agenda of the Francoism and the pacts between the Catholic curia of both countries, as well as their objectives. For example:

– In 1959, Monsignor George Michael Crennan, cardinal primate and director of the Federal Catholic Immigration Office, visited his Spanish counterpart, Fernando Ferris Sales, to propose “the establishment in Australia of some young Spanish single women, of a certain education”, as stated in a letter from the Spanish consul in Sydney. In reality, it was not important that they were well trained so that they would not cause problems upon arrival.

– Francisco Franco uses emigration as an escape valve and as a source of income. That is, less unemployment and more remittances. To channel savings and hoard foreign currency, savings accounts will be created for emigrants with advantageous conditions.

– Australian Catholicism, with a strong Irish imprint, seeks to gain followers in a land where Anglicans and other Protestants have become strong. For this reason, Operation Marta targets single women without children, of childbearing age and devout. Women recruited through Catholic Action and the Christian Worker Youth, as well as the Spanish Institute of Emigration.

It doesn’t mean that they were all pious. Many have emigrated for economic reasons, but also to see the world or learn English, because of their desire for independence, to get rid of a constricted education, to circumvent social pressure in the face of an unaccepted sexual orientation or because of the stigma of being single mothers, although Some will soon be reunited with the children they have left behind.

Before traveling, they receive a course to learn how to cook, iron, clean and take care of children, tasks included in the Home Server Manual. Just a few words of basic English and you’ll fly.

What did they find when they arrived at the homes of the Australian families who welcomed them? Well at the beginning they felt loneliness, racism and lack of communicationdue to the language barrier, which would lead them to found the Sydney Spanish Club.

very many basquebut also Asturian and Galician; then, over time, Navarrese, Cantabrian, Andalusian, Aragonese or Madrid. Some did not marry Spaniards, but with other Europeans. All of them honored on March 10 of last year, coinciding with the day of the first flight, in Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Sydney and, of course, Gernika.

Her story was rescued by Natalia Ortiz Ceberio in the essay The Marta plan (1960-1963) (Dykinson), from which the documentary was born The bride’s planeco-directed by Javier Castro and the professor at the University of New South Wales, although Ignacio García had already written in 1999 about the male expeditions in Operation Kangaroo (May 1st Foundation).

Now the writer Celia Santos publish The land of the golden sunset (Editions B), a novel starring Elisa, a young Asturian woman who travels to Australia to work at the Santa Ana ranch, although in reality she takes advantage of the Marta Plan to find the father of her child in Queensland.

You had already addressed female emigration to Germany in ‘Ana’s Suitcase’.

History is always written by the victors and the patriarchy, which is why I vindicate those women, equal to or superior to men, who have been relegated to the background. The role of Elisa and other companions is the same: earn money to send to their families. Or so they believed when they were offered work through advertisements in publications and in parishes, although the ultimate goal was to marry them to single men in Australia, of which there were many, about nine for each woman.

It was an operation orchestrated by the Australian Catholic Church in connivance with the Italian, the Greek, the Spanish… They were not interested in the reproduction of the aborigines and they wanted to repopulate Australia with whites. Curiously, the actor Jacob Elordi, protagonist of the series Euphoriais the grandson of a Basque who emigrated to Australia.

The name of the operation gave a clue to the intentions of its organizers. And then we meet the ‘sables’ from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’…

We could also think of movies like Women’s caravan. However, they knew they were going to get married, but not in the case at hand. They offered them a promise of work in domestic service, where they endured very hard days, and they wanted them to interact with Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Portuguese… The Spaniards went by bus to wait for the women at the airport and a man and a woman got married the same day they met.

Australia sought to conceive white children and Franco’s Spain sought to stimulate the economy with foreign currency.

And establish relations with foreign countries, because he had no friends and needed to get along with Germany, the United States and other richer countries. There is no doubt that Franco was interested in the workers leaving Spain: one less unemployed person and also one person who thought less. In addition, they sent foreign currency, which was what the country needed at that time.

And the Catholic Church, gaining weight against Anglicanism.

It was a power struggle between Protestantism, the dominant religion in Australia, and Catholicism, which not only wanted to claim its plot, but also outnumber the Protestants. At a global level, it was resolved with emigration to Latin America.

Of course, Australia wanted whites, not olive-skinned Spaniards.

In fact, the Franco regime offered Canarians experienced in sugar cane plantations, but the Australian Government wanted Galicians, Asturians and Basques. A trait of supremacism: they wanted whites who looked white. They had already brought in British, Dutch or Nordic people, although they needed even more people to create the Australia they were looking for. That is why they chose an emigrant people like the Basque, with a reputation for being strong, hard-working and resistant, as well as tall and, sometimes, blonde.

Hence the women in Plan Marta came from Euskadi or Galicia, right?

Yes, because they wanted an Aryan Australia. Starting in 1963, people from Madrid, Extremadura, and some from Aragon began to come… And in the 70s they were already coming from all over Spain and offering houses and land to young couples. There were almost 800 women, although fortunately the plan did not last long, because the emigrated men began to claim their families.

They paid for the outward flight, but the return flight was very expensive, which forced them to stay for at least two years of the contract. The salary was high compared to Spain, however it was not enough for them to buy a ticket. Does it sound like trafficking for labor exploitation?

The Spanish Government agreed with this, because the families left behind were very needy and thus it was guaranteed that they would remain abroad for two years by sending money. It was very well tied and organized. It was long-term labor exploitation.

A Machiavellian plan?

Of course, but we are not talking about something that far away. In fact, last year a referendum was held in which they voted against Aboriginal rights [concretamente, contra la modificación de la Constitución para crear un organismo que les diera voz ante el poder ejecutivo y legislativo]. Let’s not throw our hands up with the Marta Plan, although we must bear in mind that many Italian women were already married by proxy, without knowing their husband.

Did they return to Spain or stay to live there?

Quite a few returned after retirement, because returning before was expensive and difficult. Others, however, put down roots because they had children and grandchildren.

How did you model Elisa? A sum of all the ‘sables’?

The protagonist has characteristics of all of them, although especially one: she was not married and was Catholic, but she had a son, which then meant being a single mother. I read it in an article, it caught my attention and pushed me to write this novel about a Spanish woman who leaves her son in Spain to look for her emigrated father in Australia. My purpose is that these women do not fall into oblivion.

In search of José Ramón, in a distant, unknown and immense country.

Australia is fifteen times larger than Spain. For this reason, at the beginning of the novel, Sister Clara connects Elisa with Mrs. Otylia Lewis and her husband so that she works as a maid on the Santa Ana estate, located in Ingham, in the county of Queensland, where her boyfriend lives.

[Consciente de que la Iglesia católica tenía un plan secreto para aquellas mujeres y que había trazado un futuro que Elisa y sus compañeras desconocían, “la hermana Clara estaba determinada a salvar al menos a una de aquellas infelices”].