Beginning with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1875 and ending with the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975, this book explores the intersection of education and nationalism in Spain. Based on a broad range of archival and published sources, including parliamentary and ministerial records, pedagogical treatises and journals, teachers' manuals, memoirs, and a sample of over two hundred primary and secondary school textbooks, the study examines ideological and political conflict among groups of elites seeking to shape popular understanding of national history and identity through the schools, both public and private. A burgeoning literature on European nationalisms has posited that educational systems in general, and an instrumentalized version of national history in particular, have contributed decisively to the articulation and transmission of nationalist ideologies. The Spanish case reveals a different dynamic. In Spain, a chronically weak state, a divided and largely undemocratic political class, and an increasingly polarized social and political climate impeded the construction of an effective system of national education and the emergence of a consensus on the shape and meaning of the Spanish national past. This in turn contributed to one of the most striking features of modern Spanish political and cultural life--the absence of a strong sense of Spanish, as opposed to local or regional, identity. Scholars with interests in modern European cultural politics, processes of state consolidation, nationalism, and the history of education will find this book essential reading.

Spanish identity in the age of nations offers the first comprehensive account in any language of the formation and development of Spanish national identity from ancient times to the present. Much has been written on French, British and German nationalism, but remarkably little has been published on Spanish nationalism. Paradoxically, even in Spain there is much more on Basque, Catalan and other regional nationalisms than on Spanish identity. As a result, this study fills an enormous gap in the literature on Spanish history. This book traces the emergence and evolution of an initial collective identity within the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the end of the ancien regime based on the Catholic religion, loyalty to the Crown and Empire. The adaptation of this identity to the modern era, beginning with the Napoleonic Wars and the liberal revolutions, forms the crux of this study. None the less, the book also embraces the highly contested evolution of the national identity in the twentieth century, including both the Civil War and the Franco Dictatorship. Álvarez-Junco ́s pioneering study was awarded both the National Prize for Literature in Spain and the Fastenrath Prize by the Spanish Royal Academy

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