ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the use of science as a key weapon in the rhetoric that sustained the defence of the Second Republic during the Spanish Civil War. In its own propaganda, the Spanish Republic was projected as the guardian of the highest values of modern civilisation, and science was used as a unified category that incorporated and reinforced republican values and goals. Already from its start in 1931, the newborn republic included science in its identification with secularism. Science was one and, as such, represented not only technical progress and modernity but also, importantly, an attitude and an instrument in the forging of new social relationships. The union between science and social reform, science and republic and also between science and revolution was a constant feature in Spanish discourse about modernisation from the 1870s to the 1930s. Both emphasised the value of science and culture as tools of social justice.
