Abstract
There has been an ongoing debate in the past few years on Spain’s transition to democracy, a transition that has been interchangeably idealized and demonized by supporters and critics alike. One of the central issues in this debate has been over the question of who were the real ‘protagonists’ of the transition – as the title of a recent conference in Madrid postulated. Contrary to the official narrative on the model Spanish transition ‘from above’, in the past years a counter-narrative has been introduced regarding the dynamics from below, starting with Pamela Radcliff’s compendium study (2007) on the Asociaciones de Vecinos (residents’ associations) spectacular demands for more rights. This relatively recent interest by the academic community on a bottom-up perspective of the events that followed General Francisco Franco’s death in November 1975 that focuses on the role of social actors, might not have become hegemonic but has definitely acquired more clout, both in the English-speaking and the Spanish literature on the subject.
Tamar Groves’ book Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy in Spain falls under this category. Pitting herself against an idyllic perception of consensus in Spain’s transition, forged by the political elites, with which the public seemed to acquiesce, she demonstrates that in reality there were sectors of Spanish society, boiling with unrest. Carving for herself a middle ground between history of education and the sociology of social movements, Groves brilliantly captures the bitter conflict that was underway in Spain of the 1970s, not in the streets, but in the workplace. Its protagonists were teachers involved in ambitious projects of pedagogical innovation designed to democratize the education system and imbue students with a sense of democratic citizenship at the same time. Rather than positing itself directly in the black and white debate of who democratized Spain (the political leaders or the streets), the book argues about a shared civic commitment of an awakened civil society instead. By drawing attention on the role of professionals – namely the teachers’ movement – as ‘cultural agents’ (p. 13) of a more democratic educational system, the book focuses on a hitherto neglected but crucial aspect of Spanish transition and civil unrest: that of the educational milieu of schools, instead of universities.
The book kicks off with a description of the surprisingly liberal 1970 reform: equally attacked by left and right and never implemented but somehow sawing the seeds of future educational demands, and ends with the first restructuring of non-university studies by the first socialist government of Felipe González in 1985. Groves skilfully demonstrates how the teachers were in close contact with all kinds of new social movements, including residents’ associations, critical Catholic movements, women’s initiatives, as well as the labour movement and student movements, the latter two constituting the most tangible threats to Franco’s regime. Most importantly, the Partido Comunista de España created Comisiones de Enseñanza (Teachers Commissions), following the successful model of its underground trade unions Comisionas Obreras (Workers Commissions), making teachers see themselves as ‘educational workers’ (p. 105). Rather than focusing on strikes and demonstrations, however, Groves skilfully focuses on other civic initiatives, belonging to that expanding ‘protest cycle’. She investigates their vital contribution to the process of democratization after Franco’s death by means of a transformation of the education system from within. She demonstrates how their activities might not have had a direct impact on political decisions (even though eventually they did, as in the case of the 1985 reform), but managed to forge the very democratic values that the country had been deprived of for so many years.
The book focuses on Madrid and Salamanca, and the countryside and villages around the latter, with occasional glimpses on Barcelona and the influential Catalan educational initiatives of the mid-1960s. It catalogues initiatives (like the Acción Educativa and the private school Colegio Estudio) that attempted to import the innovative pedagogical model of Rosa Sensat from Catalonia to Madrid, initiating a fashion of sorts and spilling over into the public sector of education. One is astonished by the fact that certain values from the moribund Republican period not only were not entirely extinguished, but were even revived on a local level in the last years of Francoism, hence pointing to continuities and not just ruptures in educational traditions. At the same time, Groves catalogues the projects inspired by the work of the emblematic French pedagogue Célestin Freinet from the 1930s, and the Brazilian and Italian educators Paulo Freire and Mario Lodi, among others. ‘We see here an example of how in spite of the dictatorship’s efforts, foreign models infiltrated Spain and … became an important source of inspiration for teachers’, Groves maintains (p. 67). The book masterfully highlights how a multitude of pedagogical initiatives of an antiauthoritarian and anti-disciplinarian character in line with the most progressive ideas of the time abroad, proliferated in late Francoist Spain.
In one of the most interesting parts of the book, the author resorts to interviews with activists but also students of the Hogar del Empleado [Employee’s Home] network of schools (she uses an impressive total of 78 interviews). Participatory education rendered those students conscious of the incredible changes happening around them in social and communal terms, ‘encourag[ing] them to live the experience of political change in all its meaningfulness’ (p. 158) alongside rendering them ‘active beings in the education process’ (p. 170). ‘We were wildly conscious’, a former student states bluntly, summarizing the intense processes of identity construction (p. 156) – even though in other parts of the book we see that some children, especially in the countryside, did not always welcome the freedom they were given and the sudden absence of strict rules (p. 199). The subjectivity with which the students express themselves at present could have been further explored – and at times the reader craves more oral history, but apparently using more chunks from interviews lies outside the scope of the present study. Equally more attention could have been given to the role of gender and sexuality in these projects – so central in antiauthoritarian education of the time, occasionally glimpsed upon by the author, but not exhaustively dealt with.
All in all, in this much-needed book, Groves demonstrates how the actual transition to democracy had in reality started on the ground long before the death of the dictator. By telling the fascinating story of the feverish efforts of progressive Spanish teachers to free their country from its authoritarian legacy by means of pedagogical innovation and the induction of civic commitment to its future citizens, she paradigmatically shows how certain grassroots initiatives eventually could have long-term effects and can even lead to radical institutional change. Her book is an indispensable companion to all scholars of transition and history of education in post-authoritarian societies.