The objective of this article is to explore the relationship between concepts relating to nature and production and, by extension, to work, personal prosperity, and Spain's economic growth, as portrayed in compulsory education textbooks between 1965 and 1990. To this end, in our investigation we scrutinize the evolution of the conception and presentation of work, consumer relations, and economic relations in school curricula and in the discursive form that they ultimately took in Spanish school textbooks. In the course of the article, we identify the continuities found in school textbooks as well as the novelties that began to appear with the beginning of developmentalism in Spain.