The Catholic Trap: Secondary Education and the Battle for Catalonia

Abstract

Whilst the nationalization of primary education concentrated on monitoring teachers, extra-curricula patriotic celebrations and structural improvements, the transformation of secondary education focused on a curricular reform and the imposition of a single national textbook for each level and area of instruction. As early as November 1923, the Dictatorship demonstrated its intention to carry out a series of changes in secondary and university education and ordered the Council of Public Instruction to produce a report.2 Published in March 1924, the report recommended modernizing the system to facilitate the ‘full development of all physical, moral, and intellectual adolescent activities’, turning secondary education into an autonomous form of education and not merely a preparation for university.3 However, clashes between the dictator and the Council ended up with the advisory body being purged by the regime and the transformations postponed for almost two years.