Rupture and Continuity in the Socio-emotional Framework of Primary School Reading Books in the later Years of the Franco Regime (1959-1975)

Abstract

Reading books were one of the favorite textual genres of the Franco Regime, used as a privileged vehicle for the transmission of knowledge, values and emotions. This article explores the evolution of their characteristics and contents during the late Franco dictatorship (tardofranquismo). During the first and second phases of Franco Regime, textbooks contained heavy doses of ideological indoctrination, both political and religious. The inculcation of emotions and sentiments in school texts has been demonstrated; in the early decades of the regime, the language employed in the writing of textbooks had the specific objective of manipulating and persuading as a means to control and shape the emotional structure of childhood. There is debate as to what extent and in what manner the nature of the texts (the kinds of readings and their underlying messages) were modified under the new economic policy and technocracy. The study examines ruptures and continuities that appear in reading books and in their texts, focusing on publishers and authors on the one hand – the messages and their written and iconic languages – and on the emotions that are transmitted through both routes on the other. The economic opening and political turn of the regime’s later years did lead to certain aesthetic and didactic facelifts in the manuals. However, reading books not only changed their appearance; this study brings to light the changes in socio-emotional schemes, changes that took place slowly and gradually. The projected and stimulated emotions began to be directed more at the world of the children and towards a more constructive way reading, moving away from socio-political objectives