Queen Margarita of Bulgaria

What people wore

Painted Stocking Seams

Women who could not afford real stockings sometimes painted a line down the back of their legs with eyeliner to simulate a seam.

Getting around

Railways dominated passenger travel by 1936

By 1936, the railway was the dominant mode of transport for long-distance travel, accounting for nearly 75 percent of internal land transport of passengers in Spain.

At the table

Creative substitutions for scarce food

Ordinary families survived by using culinary imagination to simulate scarce items, such as making omelets without eggs using bread and onions.

Music

Accordion as a wartime companion

The accordion was a ubiquitous rural instrument during the Spanish Civil War, used in trenches to play popular dances and tangos as a way to cope with boredom and fear.

Daily life

Child labor and limited schooling access

Poorer girls often worked as domestic servants for as little as one peseta a month plus food, while others stayed home to embroider or care for younger siblings instead of attending school. Schooling was frequently interrupted by teacher changes or seasonal farm work, with some children walking over two hours to attend.

What it cost

Cooking oil prices in 1938

In 1938, a liter of cooking oil with an official price of 3 pesetas could reach 100 pesetas on the black market.