Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Review of the book Pedro Luis Mateo Alarcón, Carmen Morente Muñoz y Roque Hidalgo Álvarez Jesús Yoldi Bereau. universitario al servicio del bien común. Granada. Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2021

The objective of the article is to “rescue from oblivion” and, therefore, “make visible”, the female teachers at the grammar and teacher training schools of Andalusia that were sanctioned during the Spanish civil war. Silence leads to oblivion on the part of the protagonists themselves and, above all, to the ignorance of those who have not lived the facts. We intend to rescue these teachers from that oblivion and thereby recover their name and their memory. Here we have applied the historical-educational methodology, based on a review of the existing literature and, fundamentally, the use of primary sources. We have consulted the publications on the development of the different purging processes and gone to the primary sources—personal purging files, minutes of the teacher training schools, etc.— to make a portrait, however brief, of the different teachers. We also resorted to the scarce historiography that we found.The work is structured in three parts: a first part is dedicated to reflecting on the peculiarities of internal exile to which the teachers were subjected; in a second moment we highlight the general peculiarities of the purges, both at the level of secondary schools and teacher-training schools, in terms of the number of teachers sanctioned, charges pressed, type of sanctions, etc.; and finally, we focus on the biographies of the teachers.

This 2021-2022 academic year marks the 35th anniversary of the student strike of the 1986-1987 academic year, which constitutes the largest student conflict in the history of Spain. It marked the beginning of a three-year period of protests against the policies of the PSOE government, which had failed to satisfy the workers’ expectations of reform. These protests went in crescendo with the teachers’ strike of the 1987-1988 academic year, culminating in the historic general strike of December 14, 1988. The student strike of 1986-1987 stood out for its massive participation and for the important effects it achieved in educational policy, especially in the extension of secondary education. The fundamental organization of these protests was the responsibility of the Student Union. We chat here about these events and about the subsequent trajectory of the Student Union with Juan Ignacio Ramos, its general secretary at the time, and with Bárbara Areal, a militant in that strike who later became general secretary.

When they seized power in 1922, the Fascists adopted a patriarchal stance regarding women. Adopting the pronatalist theories of Riccardo Korherr, Federico Marconcini and Ferdinando Loffredo, Fascism became a staunch defender of demographic policies relegating women exclusively to the role of wife and mother, mere breeding machines whose only job was to increase the number of Italians for the war effort and to drive colonial expansion in order to keep up with the other European nations. As a consequence of the war for the conquest of empire in East Africa, a population management strategy was conceived in which young women would be sent to produce families to re-populate Ethiopia in the name of the Fascist state. Accordingly, it became necessary to develop a different model for educating young women, to actively equip them for their new lives in Africa. With this in mind, the Fascist leadership exploited women’s Fascist associations, drawing up national curricula for standardized training of these before sending them off to Africa.This investigation explores the contemporary press such as L’Azione Coloniale and the training manual used in the courses preparing women for life in the African colonies. The objective was to understand whether the change in the educational policy devised for a group of young women, chosen for convenience, may have modified the overall image of women on a symbolic level in the last years of the regime.

Review of the book MARCELO CARUSO. El espíritu o la mecánica. La enseñanza mutua y la culturalidad del orden de la enseñanza (Prusia, Dinamarca/Schleswig-Holstein, España, 1800-1870). Berlín: Peter Lang, 2021

The purge of the teaching profession represents an example of the seizure of dissident memory, of the  memory that was removed from the discourse that legitimized the Franco regime, which carried out a campaign to guarantee the collective de-memorization and counter-memory, in a society devastated by war. At the same time, the New State implemented mechanisms, with varied criteria, when evaluating and finally deciding on the professional future of teachers based on their gender. Teachers were the object of sexual repression, and there is an important bibliographical production on studies addressing the purging of primary teaching in Spain. This article aims to cover a gap still present in educational historiography, which is the study of the purging process carried out in Madrid on primary school teachers, focusing on the group of teachers. The work shows how the purging process unfolded,  with some peculiarities not found in other Spanish provinces. Although the general features of the procedure are similar, Madrid teachers suffered less punishment than those in other regions of the peninsula.

Review of the book Ian Aitken. Film and Reform. John Grierson and the documentary film movement. London-New York: Routledge, 2014 [1990],

Review of Leni Riefenstahl, por Steve n Bach. Barcelona: Circe, 2008,  ISBN: 978-84-7765-261-8Memorias, por Leni Riefenstahl. Barcelona: Lumen, 2013.  ISBN: 978-84-2642-149-4Conversaciones con Leni Riefenstahl. Almería: Confluencias Editorial, 2016,  ISBN: 978-84-945298-7-0Leni Riefenstahl, por Manuel García Roig. Madrid: Cátedra, 2017, ISBN: 978-84-376-3628-3

Review of the book  Eulàlia Collelldemont and Conrad Vilanou (coords.). Totalitarismos europeos, propaganda y educación. Una historia visual desde los No-Do. Madrid: Trea, 2020

Review of the book ANNA KATHRYN KENDRICK, Humanizing childhood in early twentieth century Spain. Cambridge: Legenda, 2020