A woman writes a letter telling of the hell that has reigned in her home since day one of marriage. She tells of the “so abrupt” ways and the attacks she suffers from her husband, who also hits their five-year-old son. She says she still loves the perpetrator and admits that she is afraid the man might take the child away from her. Your request? She asks Elena Francis for advice so that her husband becomes “a good and loving person”. The former replies: The woman is to “suffer” in this life, marriage “is such a great bond of union that it is impossible to break it” and recommends that she take her case to a priest because “husbands do tend to respect men of habit”.
This is one of the letters that “El Consultorio de Elena Francis” received during one of its 10,000 broadcasts, broadcast from 1950 to 1984, the year in which it ended up suffering from the loss of audience and influence and from its inability to respond respond to modern Spain and ambitious ones who wanted to leave the darkest years of Francoism behind. During its heyday, however, the program received up to 20,000 letters a month from anonymous women who trusted the encyclopedic wisdom of a female character that never existed.
In this context, and coinciding with March 8, La 2 shows tonight (10:50 p.m.) the premiere of the documentary “Elena Francis, the first influencer”, a production of the public broadcaster in collaboration with Bing Bang (The Mediapro Studio ), which deals with the subject of this badge of Spanish radio, which served to spread the prevailing morality during the Franco dictatorship and served to indoctrinate women.
The origin, a trade agreement
The documentary has an extensive documentary work that included the contribution of the RTVE archive, Super 8 images and unpublished photographs of the time, and the collaboration of specialists in history, psychology, sociology, documentation and marketing together with radio professionals such as Pepa Fernández, Mara Torres, Macarena Berlin, Nieves Herrero or Ángeles Afuera.
The origin of the radio room comes from a commercial agreement between the Elena Francis Institute and Radio Barcelona to sell beauty products. It was aimed at upper class listeners and only aesthetic requests were made. Soon the office was opened to the general public to attend to the human doubts of women who had no one to turn to. “They were tied to home, marriage and their parents. Anonymous and always under a pseudonym, they used this space to have a window. It became an outlet for many women who lived pretty miserable and poor lives,” explains the production’s director, Mónica Artigas.
Every afternoon, around 7:00 p.m., the tune of the “Indian Summer” crept into the neighboring patios. The show became a social phenomenon that lasted 34 years. In 1966 the show switched to Radio Peninsular, which at the time belonged to Radio Nacional de España (RNE). Letters poured in from across the country, particularly from adolescents and young women, the lower classes, and unfortunate immigrants fleeing the city in search of a better life. They wrote to Francis for advice from someone they didn’t know but adored. They shared their deepest secrets and intimacies for comfort, support, or patterns of behavior. Everything was secret and some of them put a third person’s address on the sender’s address to avoid being identified.
Marked with ‘R’
The confessions were received at the headquarters of the Francis Institute, where the letters were arranged by subject. Those on the “R” list went to the radio, but those dealing with more inflammatory issues, such as sexual abuse or homosexuality, were answered privately by a group of “outside answering machines” hired via press ads. Those with an asterisk bordered on forbidden topics and would never come to light.
The Franco regime’s control of content was absolute and subjects that did not correspond to Christian morality were censored, such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, incestuous relationships or politics. “A positive feature of the office was that it created sororities. The woman who provided counseling listened to someone else’s problems and did not feel alone. A community was created,” Artigas points out, although he clarifies that this radio room was “an instrument of the Franco regime for the indoctrination” of women.
Elena Francis never appeared in public. In fact, there were several voices that impersonated the presenter, but Maruja Fernández, who worked as a singer in Antonio Machín’s orchestras, became the announcer who preserved her identity the longest. Juan Soto Viñolo, a bullfighting critic, took over the space as a screenwriter for the radio show siempre en la sombra. He answered women’s questions through books, encyclopedias, or consultations with his friends. It was said that there was a priest or therapist on the team, but the names of the individuals are not recorded.
Democracy has destroyed this ultra-conservative space, despite attempts to modernize it in the last few years of its formation.
