L'Escola Normal del Magisteri Primari de Barcelona : 1939, anno zero

As a result of the republican defeat at the end of the Spanish civil war, the ambitious programs of reform which had been undertaken in the field of education in 1931 saw their final days. As a consequence of this, the curricula of the Escuelas Normales were redesigned to fit in with the regressive and conservative ideology of the winning faction, while the teaching staff and the students were subjected to strict processes of political purge. The Escuela Normal del Magisterio of Barcelona was not an exception to this. However, the effects of the professional purge were somehow mitigated by the ideological coincidence of some of the members of the faculty with the winning faction. Yet, it did not quite work along the same lines for the students who were subjected to obscurantist and reactionary curricula and to an atmosphere of ideological, moral and religious control. This would prove to have a strong effect on the State run Catalana school system in the years to come.