From dictatorship to democracy: history of education in Spain

In her book published in 1995 Marie-Madeleine Compère offered an overview of the educational historiographical situation in Europe, in which she highlighted the situation in the Spain of the 1980s and 1990s (compared to that of post-Franco Spain) with its “full proof dynamism” and its “capacity to mobilise that any initiative is able to rouse amongst Spanish researchers”.1 Thus, when the coordinators of this special issue of Paedagogica Historica invited me to make a contribution, they not only suggested that I wrote on the influence the political changes had had on the History of Education as an academic research area, but added: “As you know, your foreign colleagues have been impressed by the intellectual explosion, the scientific initiatives and the high quality of history of education publications in the post-Franco period.”