Ladies of Spain

You've had this dream in the back of your mind: a tall, dark woman, her face half hidden in the folds of a black-lace mantilla; a mysterious promise in smoldering eyes. But there are several obstacles between you: a stone courtyard wall breached only by a wrought-iron gate, heavily padlocked; a stocky, dour duenna swathed in shapeless black; a stern father who suddenly snatches a gleaming Toledo blade from its sheath....

Wake up and smell the café, fella. The ladies of Spain are still, to paraphrase the song, adorable; but they are not now, if they ever were, creatures of such stereotype. (Lots of them are blondes or redheads, for starters.) And while it is true that until the death of Generalissimo (text concluded on page 146) Francisco Franco in 1975, nearly all freedoms, including that of sexual expression, were repressed--Playboy was outlawed, for instance--in 1983, some of the señoritas of Spain are among the freest spirits in all Europe.

What's astonishing about this sea change is that it has taken place so profoundly in less than a decade. Or, to hear some Spaniards tell it, in less than a week. One bachelor scientist described the scene after the dictator's demise thus: "One week, all you could see was a woman's ankle. The next week, total nudity."

The scientist, who conducts research for Spain's burgeoning wine industry, has had ample opportunity to study developing Spanish womanhood. He has five sisters and several girlfriends. "I see the differences in women by five-year age spans," he told us. "It's difficult for women over 30, for example, to adjust to sexual freedom. The 25-year-olds are more liberated--and the 15-year-olds are doing everything."

We were reminded of Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's film Maravillas, released a year or two ago, in which a 15-year-old girl has sex with a series of men in the flat she shares with her widowed father--while her father is at home, observing the bedroom traffic. Not the sort of scene you'd expect to see in Dubuque. When asked, at a Chicago International Film Festival press conference, if Maravillas' behavior were typical of 15-year-old Spanish girls, Gutiérrez Aragón replied, "Perhaps not, but it's the way most would like to be."

Such changes haven't taken place without a rent in the country's social fabric, of course, and more than one observer feels that the pendulum is about to swing back again. But it will never return to the days of the duenna. And today, the chances of striking up a conversation--and, with luck, entering into more intimate companionship--are just as good in Spain as they are anywhere else in the world. Spanish girls are dancing in discos, working in offices and stores, studying law and medicine, doing everything their peers in England, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States are doing.

Spain is a country of immense contrasts, from lush, semitropical Andalusia to the austere plains of Castile and the unique flavor of Galicia and the Basque country to the north. It's in the big cities--Barcelona and Madrid--and in the resort-cum-artist's-colony atmosphere of Ibiza that most of the action takes place. For one thing, there are more jobs there, and a girl is more likely to be able to afford her own apartment or, at least, to share one with girlfriends. In a smaller village, just as in East Snowshoe, Nebraska, she's more likely to live at home with the folks. Economics, in fact, has a lot to do with sexual freedom in Spain; when a woman works, as most now do, she's more independent.

Carlos Martorell, an international-public-relations expert who describes himself as "the first guy in Barcelona, years ago, to have refused to become a lawyer and moved to Ibiza to live like a hippie, surrounded by Americans," has a lot to say about regional differences in mores.

"Ibiza is still the most open place in Spain," he says, "partly because there are so many young tourists here. It's the Sodom and Gomorrah of 1983.

"Next most liberal is Barcelona, perhaps because it's near France. The most conservative areas are Asturias and Zaragoza, in the north. As for Andalusia, there's sex there, but much of it is underground. All the society ladies are criticizing everybody else while they're fucking their chauffeurs.

"Still," he concludes, "I think we'll go back to romanticism soon. Spaniards have always been extremists."

He may be right, at least about the romanticism. Like many of the young women in Spain who posed for Playboy, Barcelona's Carmen Moriche Real told us that romanticism was the quality that most pleased her in a man. But neither she nor the other young women with whom we talked want to turn the clock back to the heyday of machismo.

Another outsider who has adopted Spain as her homeland is Petra Sonneborn, who hails from Hannover, Germany, and now teaches in a private German school in Madrid. She was surprised at what she found: "Women are more liberal here in Spain than elsewhere in Europe; often, the younger Spanish girls will make the first move. Which makes it difficult for the rest of us, because many men think we're all fair game."

Although the liberation of women--sexual as well as economical--is pretty much a fait accompli in Spain, the news hasn't leaked out to many parts of the world. Even Staff Photographer Pompeo Posar was skeptical. A letter he got from a friend didn't help: "Spanish women don't even undress before their husbands! How are you going to get through this assignment?"

When he left for Spain, Pompeo took along a powerful ally in the form of Associate Photo Editor Janice Moses (who, in the process, fell so deeply in love with Spain that she made three trips to the country, on her own time, within months).

"We started out in Barcelona, where the offices of Playboy's Spanish edition are located," Janice recalls. "And that should have given us an inkling that the job was not going to be impossible. The streets of Barcelona were filled with girls in very short skirts, ruffly, romantic blouses, high heels or sexy boots. It was obvious that those girls were aware of themselves and of their sensuousness. In Barcelona, we met Ignacio and Estrella Ribo--she's a journalist and he's a successful attorney by day and owner/operator of the popular disco Up & Down by night--public-relations man Carlos Martorell and the brilliant sculptor Xavier Corberó, who allowed us to use two houses in his 300-year-old castlelike complex for our shootings.

"Those introductions helped us in other cities, such as Madrid, where we found more beautiful girls at the disco Pachá. This place reminded us of New York's Studio 54 in its heyday. If you're a night person, by the way, you'll love Spain: People never dine before ten, get to the discos at one or two and don't roll home before four or five in the morning."

Pompeo and Janice continued their odyssey through sun-baked Andalusia and the Costa del Sol, where they headquartered in Marbella's Hotel Puente Romano, with side trips to such sites as Ronda, with its ancient Roman bridge, and other spots filled with evidence of Spain's mixed cultural heritage (400 years under the Romans; nearly 800 under Moorish conquerors whose level of culture was astonishing). Next came Seville, where the Plaza de España and other remnants of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 presage what's to come in 1992, when Seville and Chicago, Playboy's home base, will each host a world's fair in commemoration of Columbus' discovery of America.

A two-hour flight took our team to the Canary Islands, Spanish provinces off the west coast of Africa. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a popular spot, they had scarcely settled into their hotel before the phones started ringing with calls from girls, agents who wanted appointments for their model clients and television stations asking for interviews. Exulted Janice, "Who said it couldn't be done?"

Last stop was Ibiza, long the bastion of nonconformity in Spain. There have been nude beaches on Ibiza and its neighboring Balearic Island of Formentera for some time, and the steady influx of tourists (many of whom decide to stay) has carved chinks into conservatism, even during the days of Franco. Many of the most attractive girls who posed for Playboy, in fact, were born elsewhere but have settled into Spanish life in recent years. They probably wouldn't have found it congenial before.

By the time they had to hop their Iberia 747 for the flight back to the States, Janice and Pompeo were satisfied that they'd done their job. We trust you'll agree.

(For information on travel to Spain, write to one of the Spanish National Tourist Offices: 665 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10022; Suite 915 East, Water Tower Place, 845 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611; One Hallidie Plaza, Suite 801, San Francisco, California 94102; 4800 Galleria, 5085 Westheimer, Houston, Texas 77056; or Iberia Airlines of Spain, 9777 Queens Boulevard, Rego Park, New York 11374.)