Introduction

According to Marsha Kinder, Pedro Almodóvar was able “to perform a radical sex change on Spain’s national stereotypes”. This essay discusses how Todo sobre mi madre portrays changing identities in a post-Franco Spain and argues that it humanises minoritised and oppressed groups.

To begin, it is important to lay out historical context regarding Spanish culture and identity throughout the 20^th century. Spain entered the second half of the century under Francisco Franco, who imposed fundamentalist Catholic policies that stifled cultural expression and the range of acceptable identities. The Sección Femenina, the women’s section of the ruling Fascist Party, “train[ed] women to embody its nationalist and Catholic ideologies in their roles as wives and mothers”,[1] discouraging them from taking active roles in society. Sexuality was also tightly policed during the Francoist regime. “Carmen Martín Gaite, Rafael Torres, and Juan Eslava Galán describe […] a country obsessed with sex”, where sexual behaviour was regulated and moralised by the state and by the Church.[2]

In contrast, Almodóvar portrays women as active, independent, and valuable members of society, both within their sexuality and separate from it. Close to every named character in the film is a woman, and they are consistently portrayed positively, with their experiences and lives made relatable to the audience. The film features several sex-workers and lesbian relationships that are not deployed for shock-value; the characters are humanised and shown as sensitive, complex individuals whose desires and aspirations are portrayed as natural and legitimate.

Rosa and the changing times

Approximately 30 minutes into the film, we meet Rosa’s mother, as Almodóvar creates a clear contrast between the old and young generations. Rosa, who is 26, mostly grew up after the fall of the Franco regime. She is portrayed as progressive, working to help women leave sex work without stigmatising the work itself; she is never portrayed to see being a sex-worker as a moral failure. She is also a nun in the Church, a place depicted in the film as a refuge for non-conforming people, in stark contrast to the repressive laws enacted in its name during the Franco regime.

However, Rosa’s mother embodies more of the rigid social values cemented under Franco. Upon meeting Manuela, she rejects her help because she is a “whore”, showing the persistence of these ideals even two decades after the end of the dictatorship. She therefore symbolises the social stagnation throughout the era.

The friction between Rosa and her mother is one of the key themes throughout the film. Rosa chooses to rely on an almost total stranger over her mother during her pregnancy and HIV diagnosis, worried about what she might think. She relies on Manuela and the other younger women in her social group to escape the judgements influenced by Francoist ideology. Indeed, the stigma and silence propagated by the Franco generation was a contributing factor to the spread of HIV in Spain, with the country seeing the highest incidence rate of the disease in Europe, especially where Rosa resides in Catalonia.[3]

In the 1990s, HIV/AIDS was heavily stigmatised. Many religious groups, especially in the U.S., saw it as a form of divine punishment for sinners.[4] Almodóvar, however, does not portray the disease as punishment. Rosa is found to have contracted the disease about three months after she slept with Lola, the second parent to her child, and she is not part of any ‘risk group’; she is a cisgender woman and a member of the Church. Her infection with the virus is not, in any meaningful sense, depicted as her fault.

When Manuela is informed of Rosa’s HIV status, she briefly slips into blame, “why the hell did you screw Lola?”, but as we discover later, Lola is also the parent to Manuela’s Esteban, so it is possible that this is at least partially a projection of her own grief. After this outburst, she composes herself and switches into offering advice and emotional support, showing no fear of catching the disease from physical contact, an unfortunately common myth even today.

Lola herself is also shown sympathetically, despite being the one to infect Rosa. It would be easy to paint her as a villain, especially with the setup provided by Manuela’s move to Madrid over a decade earlier, but Almodóvar refused to take that portrayal, instead taking much of the last quarter of the film to humanise and sympathise with her, showing her as a character who deserves compassion and as an individual rather than a stereotype.

Almodóvar’s portrayals of Rosa and Lola as fully humanised and characterised HIV sufferers help expand the cultural image of what it looks like to have the disease, broadening it from the classic stereotype as a ‘gay disease’ to a nuanced, complex issue that can affect anyone. Rosa especially challenges this notion, as she seemingly simply was just unlucky once, which is all it takes to contract the disease, combatting ideas of the disease only affecting those who are promiscuous or sleep with many people.

Agrado and authenticity

Let us now move on to Agrado, transgender woman and close friend of Manuela. At the end of the film, she delivers a powerful speech on what it means to be authentic, ultimately concluding that it “costs a lot”: that taking steps to change one’s physical appearance to be oneself is natural and valid. She lists off the prices that she has paid for different body parts, reframing authenticity as a self-funded project, finishing by saying “you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being”. This view of identity as something fluid, changeable, and individual stands in complete contrast to the Francoist ideals of a God-given, static, duty-bound identity, especially for women.

Agrado’s status as a sex-worker at the start of the film is never portrayed negatively to the audience. She acknowledges that the career has risks and that it is not an ideal situation for her, but no moral judgement is made against those who work in the trade. 

As she transitions into mainstream employment under Huma, we see less-accepting ideas being floated by her colleagues. Two characters comment about wanting to see her penis. In response to one of them, she asks “do people ask you to suck their cocks because you’ve got one?”, framing the request as absurd while refusing to become a fetish object or a thing of curiosity for her cisgender colleagues, establishing herself as more than her former career.

Her retort is also a good example of how Almodóvar uses humour to de-sensationalise minoritised experiences; throughout the film, humour and social commentary are interwoven to humanise and normalise characters that were still somewhat socially stigmatised throughout the 1990s. If Rosa and her mother represent the friction between generations in a changing Spain, Agrado represents a total liberation from the past and a redefinition of what truth and identity even mean. She serves as the perfect example of how the film humanises minoritised peoples, with Almodóvar taking a story that would have been untellable under Franco and making it human and relatable.

Almodóvar also notably grants Agrado autonomy over her own body; she is characterised as deserving humanity and justice, as in the scene where Manuela strikes a man attempting to rape her over the head with a rock, followed by Manuela taking care of her even despite the social repercussions from the pharmacist. The audience is always meant to root for and sympathise with her, not out of pity but out of a genuine wish to see her do well.

Pity

Pity is an especially important topic to discuss in this context. When writing stories about minoritised characters, it is often easier to focus on all the negative aspects of their lives and create an image of the poor, helpless person who is saved by someone from the majority. Characters in Todo sobre mi madre resist that narrative urge – they help themselves, they help each other, but they are never helped by someone external to their situation. The state is notably entirely lacking from the film; there is no presence of social workers or police officers, and all support is individual-led mutual aid.

Creating an image of a self-sufficient minoritised community that does not need pity or saviours is a powerful social choice by Almodóvar, especially in a blockbuster genre-defining film. This is yet furthered by the fact that Almodóvar is a man and, while queer himself, does not have first-hand knowledge of living as a woman and especially as a transgender woman. The ability to step back and allow other groups to take centre-stage in his movie is a powerful signal to the Spanish public that they can do the same and likely helped immensely in changing the social standards of the time.

National rebirth and self-actualisation

Both in contemporary[5] and modern[6] sources, the transition to democracy was also referred to as a dream. A parallel can therefore be drawn between the liberation of Agrado, a woman described as older, “between 30 and 50” according to Rosa, who would have grown up at the end of the Franco era, and the liberation of Spain from the dictatorship. It is highly likely that Agrado would not have transitioned under Franco due to a severe risk of imprisonment or state-sanctioned violence against her. The Ley de Vagos y Maleantes, “Vagrancy Act”, was first established in the 1930s immediately before the civil war and was used against many groups viewed as socially lesser by the Second Republic and especially by the dictatorship. The law was frequently used against queer people from its inception but became yet more prevalent following a modification in 1954 that officially made homosexuality illegal.[7]

The Franco regime socially regressed even further into the 1970s, mandating the “rehabilitation” of entire social groups with the Ley de Peligrosidad y Rehabilitación Social, “Danger and Social Rehabilitation Act”, seeking to cure individuals of their ‘afflictions’ and to cure Spain of those individuals.[8] Given the timeframe of Agrado’s age, this is most likely the environment she grew up in, immediately before the fall of the regime. The fact that, after growing up in that environment, Agrado can proudly be herself with a group of people who accept her as who she is represents a profound shift in Spanish culture in a short timeframe.

Agrado’s openness and authenticity on stage while recounting her life experience can be further contrasted with the Spanish Pacto del Olvido, an agreement by the post-Franco Spanish establishment to avoid discussing or acknowledging the dictatorship and its impacts. This is most strongly emphasised by the 1977 Amnesty Law, which granted official amnesty to all crimes committed by the Franco regime, including crimes against humanity.[9] If Agrado is a depiction of Spain, therefore, her free and open discussion of the past, especially of her trauma, stands as a request for Spain itself to remember its traumas and history, while still moving past them to work toward the “dream” of a better future.

Family as chosen

Francoist Spain had a very rigid idea of family – the nuclear unit was “society’s original cell”, “the basis of society”,[10] ideas refuted by Almodóvar. This is emphasised from the beginning of the timeline; Manuela does not stay with Lola because she is the parent to their child, she leaves for a better life for herself and her son. This theme of ‘leaving blood family’ continues with Rosa, as previously discussed, as Manuela becomes essentially her adoptive mother through the middle third of the film. The idea of chosen family is only further cemented as Agrado, Rosa, Huma, and Manuela form a social unit where members look out for each other. Almodóvar portrays these deep friendships as a type of family, one not made by blood but by choice. When Manuela leaves Barcelona after she sees Lola for the final time, she chooses not to cut contact with her chosen family and writes to them frequently. When she returns to visit, the connection is still there and still as strong as when she left, implying a deep and lifelong connection between these people that approximates a family.

Manuela’s role as a mother to her son, then Rosa, then Rosa’s son, and even somewhat to Huma and Agrado, shows a form of autonomous motherhood far separated from the rigid confines of the Francoist ‘ideal mother’. There are no men in her life from who she derives authority; she is a strong and independent character by her own ability and willingness to care for others around her. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the play so instrumental to the story, Blanche states “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” In the context of the play, this is an admission of weakness and vulnerability, but it takes on a new meaning in the lives of these characters; the kindness of strangers is what brings together a community and a new chosen family unit away from the ‘nuclear family’ of Francoist ideals.

Conclusion

The Spain depicted by Almodóvar in Todo sobre mi madre serves as an almost idealised form of what societal changes he wishes to see in the world and serves to platform voices that otherwise would go un-noticed, from transgender women to sex-workers. Throughout the film, Almodóvar tears down the social expectations of Spanish society. He humanises the outcast, tells stories that just decades before would have been unthinkable, and centres women as independent and powerful characters without deferral to men. Through the metaphor of Agrado as Spain, he describes the changes he wishes to see, and through her “radical sex change” performs one on Spanish culture.

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[1] Reeser, Victoria. 2019. “Exploring Female Identity in Francoist Spain,” Penn History Review: Journal of Undergraduate Historians, 6 June, p. 74

[2] Imaz, Mikel, and Alberto Mira. 2005. “De Sodoma a Chueca: Una Historia Cultural de La Homosexualidad En España En El Siglo XX,” Chasqui, 34.1, pp. 291-2, doi:10.2307/29741949

[3] Casabona Barbarà, J., and others. 1993. “Premature Mortality Related to AIDS among Men and Women in Catalonia,” AIDS (London, England), 7.8, pp. 1099–103, doi:10.1097/00002030-199308000-00012

[4] Kowalewski, Mark R. 1990. “Religious Constructions of the AIDS Crisis,” SA. Sociological Analysis, 51.1, p. 91, doi:10.2307/3711343

[5] James, B., International Herald Tribune. 1992. “Spain Waking to Cracks in Dream of Democracy,” The New York Times, 7 January <https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/07/IHT-spain-waking-to-cracks-in-dream-of-democracy.html> [accessed January 4, 2026]

[6] Haiser, E. 2019. “The Peaceful Transition of Spain: How Authoritarianism Became DemocracyDemocracy,” ScholarWorks at WMU, no. 3216 (December) <https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/3216/>

[7] Gahete Muñoz, Soraya. 2021. “Ser Homosexual Durante El Franquismo. Su Rastro En Los Expedientes Del Juzgado Especial de Madrid Para La Aplicación de La Ley de Vagos y Maleantes (1954-1956),” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporanea, 43, pp. 185–200, doi:10.5209/chco.78177

[8] Ley 16/1970, de 4 de agosto, sobre peligrosidad y rehabilitación social. 1980. in «BOE» Núm. 187, BOE-A-1970-854

[9] Ley 46/1977, de 15 de Octubre, de Amnistía. 1977. in «BOE» Núm. 248, BOE-A-1977-24937 <https://www.boe.es/eli/es/l/1977/10/15/46/con>

[10] Meil, Gerardo. 2006. “The Evolution of Family Policy in Spain,” Marriage & Family Review, 39.3–4, pp. 359–80, doi:10.1300/j002v39n03_07