Lesbianism (female homosexuality) in pre-modern Spain (1200 - 1813) was largely not tolerated and considered illegal, with a possible death punishment. During this period, Spain's legal and religious justice systems were at times one and the same, with female homosexuals being persecuted by both civil and religious authorities. In 1497, Spain's Catholic monarchs Isabel and Fernando said anyone who engaged in unnatural sex should be given the death penalty. Spanish lesbians were caught up in the Inquisition, with documented cases of some of them having been burned at the stake. During confessions, priests were often interested in women's sex acts.
Medical texts began to develop in this period to try to explain female sexual desire for other women. One explanation was that these women should have been born men, but the mother did something wrong and their sex changed while they were in the womb. Women in this period who expressed desire for other women were most often found in convents or working as prostitutes. Some women in Spanish prisons engaged in sodomy, but this was allegedly because they lacked male sexual partners.
Prominent female homosexuals of the period included Katalin Erauso, Isabel de Borbón-Parma, and Elena/o de Céspedes . Important Sapphic writers included María de Zayas and Teresa de Avila. Notable literary works depicting female homoeroticism include Tirant lo Blanc, originally published around 1490 and written by Joanot Martorell and Martí Joan de Galba, and La Celestina is a Spanish novel attributed to Fernando de Rojas. A number of modern words associated with lesbianism in Spain originate from this time period including tortillera, desviada, marimacho, tríbada and virago.
Words to describe lesbians
Any description of women as lesbians before the 19th century when the term was first used by Michel Foucault can be problematic. Lesbianism, as an identity based on exclusive romantic or sexual desire of women by women, did not yet exist. This makes some scholars and historians hesitant to describe women from earlier periods as Lesbians. Many prefer instead to use the phrase "female homosexuals" as it relates more to sexual acts and is less about complicated identities around orientation. Others freely use the word lesbian as a convenient short hand. Still other historians and scholars use Sapphic love or refer to Lesbos to talk about women who had intimate relationships with women in this period. It remains problematic to talk about lesbians in this period as it relates to a specific lesbian identity rather than sexual practices. At the same time that problems around scholarly treatment of lesbians exist, female homosexuality in this period of Spanish history is rarely discussed.
In official Spanish, terms to describe female homosexuals were often scarce when compared to men in dictionaries like Diccionario de autoridades . The first word, machorra, would not appear until 1734. Lesbio does not appear in the Diccionario de la lengua española until 1884 where it is defined as "homosexual woman". Lesbiana does not appear with its own definition until 1984.
The slang word tortillera, similar to the English word dyke, used in Spain and Latin America to describe lesbians, likely originated in this period as a derivative of the word tortus, which means twisted or one-eyed. As it was used more widely, this Latin word began to be consistently and erroneously pronounced as tortillera. Its origins are likely intertwined with homophobia, and would later become similar to the English language word queer in its popular usage in the Spanish speaking LGB community. The first known written usage pre-dates 1831. It does not appear in the Diccionario de la lengua española until 1927.
Desviada was in use by the end of the 19th century in Spain. It rise in usage coincided a societal process of pathologizing homosexuality as a disease. Invertida was use in use by 1897, being borrowed from the English word invert. Its usage also coincided with continued pathologization of homosexuality as a unnatural and sexually deviant.