ABSTRACT
Operating sometimes in clandestine conditions and at risk of severe repression, a movement for educational reform that came to be known as the Alternativa was sustained within the educational profession as part of a more general resistance to the Franco Regime. This extremely formative period in the 1960s and 1970s contributed directly to ideas that would later inform the legislative programme of the Socialist Government from 1982, although the author argues that many proposals of the Alternativa have been lost, watered down, or inadequately supported. Study of this period offers further insight into the politicization of the teaching profession and the critical experiences of leading educators who later became influential in politics. Many teachers who were politically active in this period were later to be involved in the progressive ‘movements for pedagogic reform’ which have represented the cutting edge of reform over a period of two decades, even if they are now in danger of being absorbed within the political and administrative establishment. The chapter draws upon the firsthand experiences of the author, who wrote the original version for a 1992 scholarly retrospective of the 1970 Education Act (O’Malley, 1992).
