The Nostra Senyora de l’Esperança Professional Schools of the Juvenile Court of Barcelona: memory, life stories and proposals for pedagogical renewal in the 70s

Abstract

The buildings that currently, as off all of 2023, house the Barcelona Correctional Facility for Women Wad-Ras were, until 1983, the Nostra Senyora de l’Esperança Professional Schools of the Barcelona Juvenile Court (TTMB). The center, inaugurated in 1946, incorporated an Observation House, where the psychotechnical laboratory of the TTMB was located. It was designed as a reformatory, and it operated for 37 years, going through different up and downs that are presented in a summarized way in this collaboration. Examples of life memories of the experiences of some of the children and adolescents who spent their childhood in the center are also presented, framing the model of social response in the correctionalism that prevailed at that time. And we describe some of the situations experienced at the center at the beginning of the 1970s that led to the movement in pedagogical renewal of the social
response to vulnerable children that from Social Education and the Training Center for Specialized Educators, CFEEB, took the lead in those years.