On the anniversary of Franco’s death, Spain’s beleaguered Socialist government will modify school history teaching to boost the prominence of communist figures. Sánchez’s administration will target the curricular content of compulsory secondary education, vocational training, and the baccalaureate—all with the aim of increasing the prominence of republican icons.
The Socialist executive proposes to strengthen what it calls “democratic memory” in the education system. Historic figures of the Left will be guaranteed a prominent place in the classroom, against what the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) calls a
worrying increase in denialist and revisionist discourses among young people, fuelled by disinformation on the internet and by certain political and media sectors.
A typical beneficiary of this government activity will be ‘La Pasionaria’ (Dolores Ibárruri), linked to the assassination of monarchist Deputy José Calvo Sotelo in 1936. The curricular aggression coincides with targeting Spanish youth at various publicly funded exhibitions, investing nearly €500,000 on a census of those executed during the Franco regime, and constant secular state pressure to take control of national monument The Valley of the Fallen.
