'Plan Marta': The journey of 815 young women sent to Australia by Francoist Spain

https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-08-10/plan-marta-the-journey-of-815-young-women-sent-to-australia-by-francoist-spain.html

‘Plan Marta’: The journey of 815 young women sent to Australia by Francoist Spain


SILVIA R. PONTEVEDRA
Santiago de Compostela - AUG 10, 2025 - 00:00 EDT

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‘The real deception lay in the impossibility of paying for the return ticket,’ says Natalia Ortiz, a researcher of these expeditions that provided domestic service for Australian families

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It all began in the early 1960s and could serve as the inspiration for a long television series. These were young women recruited from villages in northern Spain: the Basque Country, Navarre, Asturias, Cantabria, Galicia, and only later from regions further south. They were drawn in by Catholic institutions under Franco’s regime in what was dubbed “Plan Marta.” They arrived in Australia in the footsteps of a contingent of men, also mostly from the Basque Country and Cantabria, who had been recruited through “Operation Kangaroo” (1958-1963) to provide cheap, reliable labor for the plantations, especially those growing sugar cane. These women were known as the “martas” or “marthas,” and they were called upon to become perfect domestic servants, like the biblical figure Martha of Bethany or the class described by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale. Both men and women breathed life into and worked to build a country that was, for the most part, still in serious demographic distress.

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The machinery was set in motion after a visit to Spain in 1959 by the Cardinal Primate of Australia, and soon the recruitment drive was helped by the consulates, the Spanish Emigration Institute, the Episcopal Conference on Migration, and a dense network that reached even the most remote parishes of Spain through Catholic Action and the Christian Workers’ Youth. The candidates were first selected here. They had to be young, unmarried, healthy, and officially Catholic. But a few were not, in reality, as devout as desired, and what they really longed for was to free themselves from the rigidity of family life and the feminine roles instilled by Francoism. Some were single mothers who left their children in Spain with the idea of bringing them over later.

They underwent a medical examination and a “training” course at the convent of the Madres Reparadoras in Madrid, where they were taught efficient domestic service, Australian customs and schedules, and survival English for a housekeeper: it was enough to know that a spoon was called a spoon and a mop was called a mop. The important thing was to be able to name the most basic kitchen and cleaning utensils, because the rest, if their life was going to be eminently domestic, did not matter. The boys who had gone to cut cane, on the other hand, had received a much more comprehensive training through the Good Immigrant’s Manual, which they could learn during the month-long boat trip.

Generally, those who were already there had “kept quiet” about how hard it was to work in houses in a country whose language they did not know. To provide “spiritual support” and help the martas with any problems that arose at work, or when their spirits flagged, the Church sent three “lay sisters”: Paquita Bretón, María Luisa Erro, and Mari Carmen Cervera. It was known as “immigrant sickness or Australia sickness,” says the professor, the “depression” and “despair” of being “far from everything,” with no escape from the vast island, at a distance that was “impossible to overcome.”

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Connecting the dots with Franco regime and friend of Opus Dei: women trapped in slavery to the church. Plus breaking basque resistance.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/11942607