Matching Gender with Sustantivos y Adjectivos and Patriarchy in Spain

One of the trickiest things to get the hang of in Spanish is matching gender with nouns and adjectives.

Every noun in Spanish has a gender. Masculine nouns frequently end in -O and feminine nouns often end in -A. The articles must match the gender of the noun. El and Los for masculine, La and Las for feminine.

El abuelo
La abuela

Los hombres
Las mujeres

So far so good. Here's where it gets tricky. The gender of the adjective modifying the noun matches the gender of the speaker, when the speaker is male. For female speakers, and this sounds crazy until you understand the history of Spain (which we will get to in a moment) the gender of the adjective modifying the noun matches the gender of the person being spoken too. Confused? Let's sort this out.

Take this sentence:
My red Porsche has been impounded by the Feds.

A man speaking to another man or a woman would say:
Mi Porsche rojo ha sido confiscado por las autoridades federales.

A woman speaking to a man would say:
Mi Porsche rojo ha sido confiscado por las autoridades federales.

A woman speaking to another woman would say:
Mi Porsche roja ha sido confiscado por las autoridades federales.

¿Claro?
I don't understand it either, but maybe a little history will help.

From 1936 until 1975 Spain was ruled by a reactionary fascist government under Francisco Franco. One of the things the fascist government did was to re-entrench the patriarchal aspect of the this Catholic society that had eroded in the free wheeling 20's. The most lasting reforms was changes to the Spanish language that reflected a power structure that was a sentimental projection of a bygone set of power and gender relations that never really existed but nevertheless were comforting to a country roiled by the tumult of a mid-20th century Europe.

In the 90's, the Green Party added the goal of restoring gender parity to back to the language (la lengua) but to no avail.

So to recap. The article reflect the gender of the noun. The adjective modifying the noun reflects the gender of the speaker, if the speaker is male and the gender of the listener if the speaker is female.

¡Muy Confuso!