Education and the Baroque in Early Francoism

Education was one of the most important tools of the Franco regime for the re-integration of Spanish society after the end of the Civil War under authoritarian rule. As the dominant force in education, the Catholic Church had high hopes for a re-Christianization of ‘red Spain’, but also had to acknowledge that Catholic schooling had not been able to prevent the outbreak of the war and violent attacks on the clergy. Against this background, Catholic educators searched for a modernization of religious character building and rediscovered Baroque traditions of Catholic education. The article analyses the attempts to implement educational reform along Baroque lines and their contradictory results. It argues that while the rediscovery of Baroque education was driven by an authoritarian desire to achieve more disciplined and religious characters, the re-actualization of Baroque models also worked in an opposite direction. It fostered the conviction that the education of new and better Christians was not possible solely through force. Slowly, a dynamic set in that lead an important number of the Catholic educators to embrace more liberal approaches to education that had increasingly less in common with Baroque models

Art · Authoritarianism · Baroque · Conviction · Democracy · Literature · Modernization theory · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Historical Education Studies Worldwide · History · History of Education in Spain · Law