Cold War strategic priorities led the United States to establish an enduring military alliance with General Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain between 1953 and 1975. This article examines the educational diplomacy carried out by the US government during the 1960s and early 1970s to foster Spain's stable modernization through the training of…

This article deals with visual representations of children in social and natural science primary education textbooks from Spain and Portugal during the final years of dictatorship, transition to democracy, democratic consolidation, and democracy between 1965 and 1995. It explores ways in which children are addressed and made visible in social and…

The aim of this paper is to analyse the social and economic implementation of the reform of industrial vocational training during Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in Spain (1923-1930), based on the Industrial Education Statute of 1924 and the Vocational Training Statute of 1928. Framed within an international context affected by the consequences of…

Purpose: After World War II, an educational modernization process gained ground worldwide. International organizations such as UNESCO began to play a key role in the creation, development and dissemination of a new educational vision in different countries. This article examines the origin and development of this modernization process under the…

The General Education Law was approved half a century ago. It was designed by Francoism to reform the educational system, adjusting itself to the liberal-developmental approach that Franco's regime followed in its last few decades. The oppression that the so-called "vernacular languages" were subject to during the former years of…

Soldier newspapers on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War constitute a source of around 500 publications, 228 of which are illustrated. This article is the result of a visual and textual analysis of these 228 publications. Our aim was to discover how photography of cultural and educational events was used in this type of press publication…

This article analyses the case of Rosa Sensat teachers' movement in Catalonia during the final years of Francoism and the transition to democracy in Spain (1965-1990). This movement was a key actor in education reform debates in that period. Based on the perspective of political process theory, the article focuses on the contextual, organisational…

Purpose: This paper analyses the strategies designed by Franco's dictatorship to address the "problem" of children with physical disabilities, focusing on the relevance given to vocational training. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws mainly on official documents, reports from international organisations, and Spanish experts'…

Promoted by some of the most critical sectors of the education community, the history of the Spanish pedagogical renewal (19th and 20th centuries) shows all kinds of experiences representing an innovative, committed and transformative way to understand both pedagogical processes and the school. This article shows the final results of the…

This article analyses the concept of the state as represented in primary school social science textbooks in Spain during the transition to democracy. The analysis of textbooks during this period has tended to focus on the importance of National Catholicism (Nacionalcatolicismo) or the technocratic vision in the framing of their representations.…

This article's purpose is to address a hitherto unexplored topic in the history of education: the story of the "Cátedras Ambulantes," officially referred to as "Misiones Pedagógicas" during the final years of the Franco dictatorship and the beginning of the transition to democracy (1966-1977). The study is based on a…

This paper addresses aspects of alternative proposals taking place in the public education system, based on an anthropological, ethnographic, comparative study of alternative schools and educational projects in Catalonia. More specifically, it first explores educational change in Catalonia through time and on the present, with a special focus on…

This article explores visions of war and peace in the education system during the Spanish transition to democracy. During those years, the Spanish state was faced with the challenge of leaving its authoritarian political past behind and forging a democratic civic culture. As the concepts of war and peace are inextricably linked to those of state…

In this article we analyze knowledge about economics conveyed via primary school textbooks published during the late Franco dictatorship and the years of transition to democracy in Spain. Starting from the premise that the process of political socialization and identity construction is based partly on economic factors, we examine the evolution of…

In a book published in 1995 providing an overview on the state of the art in European educational historiography in Europe, Marie-Madeleine Compère referring to post-Franco Spain, emphasised the "dynamism" and "the capacity to mobilise" that had arisen among Spanish researchers by "any collective initiative." Moving…