ABSTRACT
For Spanish liberalism, education was a key component of the process of nation-building initiated with the Constitution of Cadiz in 1812. A public system of instruction was seen as instrumental to transforming the subjects of the Ancien Régime into the citizens of the new State, as well as to preparing them to function in the new forms of economic development imposed by capitalism. The 1813 report on public education set the framework for this undertaking, but its realization would encounter numerous obstacles—most notably among them the reluctance of the Catholic Church to cede control over education, the often violent disruptions of political life, and the chronic lack of consensus among the country’s elites regarding the components and the nature of Spain as a national community—that would eventually limit the extension and impact of public instruction, even though a stable system was finally established in 1857 (the Moyano plan, which would remain in place until 1970). Despite these difficulties, however, the various projects articulated throughout the century all envisioned a strongly centralized model of educational authority and the imposition of Spanish as the only national language to serve as a vehicle for instruction.
