In the second half of the 19th century, two Spanish primary school teachers were
married despite the fact that their legal status as women rendered this union not
only illegal but also publicly scandalous. In 2008 their story was resurrected in the
form of a book based on an extensive review of educational, legal, and media archives.
The Spanish press responded to the book’s publication by embedding the events within
a more recent historical narrative around the struggle for gay marriage rights. In this
article, we analyze the events in light of the understandings of sex, gender and sexuality
that were available at the time, and then explore both the continuities and discontinuities
with the modern interpretive framework that affords these women a lesbian
identity, drawing upon Bennett’s notion of ‘‘lesbian-like’’ practices in eras where such
identities were not yet conceptualized
