‘Seeds of Spain’: Scouting, Monarchy and National Construction, 1912–1931

Abstract

The official Spanish branch of the international Boy Scout movement, the Exploradores de España, offers an instructive example of a nationalist association in Spain in the first third of the twentieth century. This article adopts a comparative perspective and studies the Exploradores discourses and practices, the association’s founders and leaders, the scouts’ publications and activities, as well as the organization’s internal conflicts and evolution between 1912 and 1931. As in Britain and many other countries, the movement was endorsed by the royal family and led by military officers and middle-class men – representatives of monarchist civil society. It shared nationalist and regeneracionista (from regenerationism) values, as an agent of nationalization throughout Spanish territory. Like other Boy Scout movements in Europe and the Americas, it pursued the goal of making good patriots, with a knowledge of and ready to defend their fatherland: young hidalgos, the Spanish equivalent of the British gentlemen. Hence this study also explores the gender aspects of Boy Scout ideals. Initially, the Spanish scouts were troubled by an intense religious conflict, which was won by Catholic sectors, so their nationalism became deeply conservative. During the 1920s, the movement was instrumental in the nation-building projects of different governments, especially under the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1923–1930). In short, it can be considered one of the main nationalizing agents during this key period in modern Spanish history, and belies the image of supposed passivity and a lack of interest in national construction among Spain’s ruling elites.