Between regeneration and punishment: the educational model in Falangist Social Aid

Abstract

The people who controlled the Falangist Social Aid care network –which was to become the Delegació Nacional de FET-JONS (National Delegation of the Spanish Traditionalist Phalanx Unions of the National-Syndicalist Offensive) in May 1937– placed great importance on education as a key piece in their re-educating and regenerating project for children in care. This article gathers some of the projects that were designed by the members of the Social Aid advisory team during the civil war and the first post-war. Apart from some very early projects influenced by the most modern, progressive pedagogic currents, which referred both to the comprehensive education of children and to their physical and psychological health, the national- Catholic education model, based on discipline and Catholic morals, prevailed, which was strongly defended by the pedagogic advisor and Falangist, Antonio Juan Onieva. Likewise, the intervention of the Church was clearly felt from 1939 onwards. As a result, the Social Aid projects evolved towards proposals with a greater emphasis on discipline, ideological control and the need to «redeem» and «re-educate» the children in care –poor children, the sons and daughters of republicans– by means of a Catholic upbringing. Through the testimonies offered by those who were «Social Aid children» during the forties and fifties, it can be concluded that it was basically a punitive care model that was imposed, which neglected the education of the children in care and was never concerned with putting into practice the regeneration project that had been designed in detail on paper.

KEY WORDS: Civil war, Franco Regime, Social Aid, education, Falangism, Catholicism, oral memorial.