The Comisión de Cultura y Enseñanza () was one of seven sectoral departments that formed the Junta Técnica del Estado, which was, in turn, one of the various political-administrative bodies created by General Francisco Franco in October 1936 following his appointment as head of government of rebel Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Presided over by José María Pemán, the Culture and Teaching Commission was arguably the Junta with the highest political profile within a body made up of individuals with little political relevance. Its most significant achievement was the continuation and institutionalization of the purge of teaching staff, which had already been initiated by the National Defense Junta. It was dissolved with the creation of Franco's first government in January 1938.
Context
On 1 October 1936, General Francisco Franco officially took office as head of government, although all official media referred to him from the outset as "Head of State," thereby increasing his power. His primary priority was achieving military victory, and he was in no hurry to form a genuine government. Therefore, he contented himself with creating a General Secretariat of the Head of State headed by his brother Nicolás and a Junta Técnica del Estado, which was a more technical than political body. On 2 October, the newly renamed Official State Gazette published the Law establishing these and other bodies. Both the terminology used in the legal text and the provisional nature of the institution are characteristic of military language, which sought to create a kind of rear-guard administration to solve the most immediate problems, but subordinated to the fundamental objective of achieving military victory.
The Junta
The Junta Técnica del Estado consisted of a presidency and seven commissions. Its main headquarters were in Burgos. Although its composition into commissions resembled an incipient Council of Ministers, it was made up of second-rank figures who handled routine administrative functions. The Board was headed by a president responsible not only for directing the institution but also for serving as a channel of communication with the Head of State, who held final decision-making power on all matters. The President was required to meet with the commission presidents at least once a week and communicated with Franco through direct reports. The initial appointee was Fidel Dávila, a brigadier general who was also appointed chief of the general staff.
Composition and ideology
One of the Junta's commissions was to be dedicated to culture. The initial idea for its creation came from Eugenio Vegas Latapie, who had proposed establishing a commission responsible for culture and propaganda that would include figures such as José María Pemán, the Count of Rodezno, José Pemartín, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, Juan José López Ibor, and Eugenio Montes. However, the authorities decided to separate culture from propaganda and rejected some of the names, particularly that of Sainz Rodríguez.
The Commission for Culture and Teaching was undoubtedly the one with the most distinctly political composition. It was dominated by monarchists linked to the Acción Española group, such as its president, José María Pemán, and the members Eugenio Montes and Vegas Latapie. Additionally, José Ignacio Escobar served as a non-permanent advisor. Outside this group were the other members, Mariano Puigdollers —a Traditionalist— and Alfonso García Valdecasas, who had participated in the inaugural rally of Falange Española in 1933 but had not played a significant role in that party subsequently. Another influential member was Romualdo de Toledo.
Pemán, a native of Cádiz, belonged to a conservative high-society family. He held a doctorate in Law and had achieved literary success with his poems and plays. Politically, he positioned himself in favour of the Dictatorship and served as local leader of the Patriotic Union, the party sponsored by Primo de Rivera. With the arrival of the Republic, he quickly distinguished himself against the regime with calls for military insurrection, becoming a reference point for the reactionary right. He supported the Sanjurjada, which forced him into exile for a time. When the uprising broke out, he placed himself at the service of the rebel military. In the words of Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, he was "a good name for propaganda."
Pemán attempted to avoid the presidency, arguing that his role was that of an orator who harangues the masses, not the head of an administrative body. According to his later account, he was pressured —particularly by General Emilio Mola— and had to accept, but he stipulated that a vice-president be appointed to the commission who could replace him and complement him in bureaucratic functions. The chosen candidate was the Integrist-minded paediatrician Enrique Suñer, who joined somewhat belatedly after managing to flee the enemy zone. In fact, Suñer replaced Pemán in almost all meetings with the other commission presidents.
The president's relations with the Falangists were not good. The magazine Jerarquía labelled him an "old thing, rhetoric," and he himself held no better opinion of the Falangists, whom he considered a "deliquescent, vague, and narcissistic group." This continued even after the unification, to the extent that Pemán commented to the president of the Junta —by then Jordana— that the Commission was becoming a "refuge and headquarters for everything left out of the single party."
Pemán himself shared the anti-Semitic atmosphere prevalent in Nationalist Spain, which identified Judaism with liberalism and Marxism. He proclaimed that "bad intellectuals must die" and in his Poema de la bestia y el ángel (Poem of the Beast and the Angel), he blamed the synagogue and the Masonic lodge for Spain's ills. In this context, "the synagogue" encompassed the entire left.
Objectives
Beginning in 1931, the republican authorities had implemented certain reforms that were contested from the outset by Catholic and conservative sectors. The Government prohibited religious orders from continuing their educational work, affecting nearly five thousand primary schools and 295 secondary schools. Although the Catholic Church was able to maintain its influence in these centres through intermediaries, the measure was highly controversial. The use of Catalan as a vehicular language in education was also disputed. Other contentious measures included replacing the 1914 Study Plan with a new Professional Teaching Plan in 1931 and changing the access system to the teaching profession, replacing the traditional system of competitive examinations with short courses to substantially increase the number of primary school teachers. A professional sector felt disadvantaged by these reforms and repeatedly demonstrated its hostility long before the outbreak of the war. Although the idea that teachers were predominantly in favour of the republican reforms later became widespread, the reality is that progressive unions were a minority, and there was a large group of educators trained in traditional methodological principles who were highly critical of the changes.
The Commission for Culture and Teaching continued the work already initiated by the National Defense Junta aimed at dismantling all the educational reforms carried out by the republican governments. Aside from the actions of the Junta Técnica del Estado —and as happened with other groups— during the first months of the war, the physical elimination of hundreds of educators took place. An undetermined number of teachers were murdered in paseos and prison massacres, or executed after summary courts-martial. Leftist teachers were particularly accused by the rebels of being the cause of Spain's grave situation. A well-known circular signed by José María Pemán although drafted by Vegas, defined them as "poisoners of the popular soul." But the Commission went further and regulated the purge of teaching staff, which was applied uniformly throughout the national territory with the exception of Navarre, where the rebels had created a Superior Board of Education that carried out the same task autonomously.
However, the suppressive work reached back beyond the republican reforms. The aforementioned circular from President Pemán stated that:
And Vice President Suñer published his book Los intelectuales y la Tragedia Española (The Intellectuals and the Spanish Tragedy) on 28 February 1937, in which he expounded his theses. Among other things, he stated:
And as the concept of "intellectual" was too broad, he made explicit the objective of eradicating from the University the presence...
And he added:
All of this reveals the desire of the new rulers to completely end not only the republican reforms but also the work of the Free Institution of Education.
Purge of the teaching staff
Regulations
Scholars have highlighted the special influence of Enrique Suñer —a person held in very low regard by intellectuals not closely identified with the regime, such as José Ortega y Gasset— as the main driving force behind the process of purging the teaching staff. According to Vegas Latapie's later account, he himself raised initial opposition to Suñer, who was consistently supported by Puigdollers. The vice-president emerged triumphant from the showdown due to Pemán's passivity, and Vegas eventually left the Commission. Decree No. 66, which regulated the purging of teachers, was published in the BOE on 11 November 1936, but a draft of broader scope for all teaching staff, which was even more severe, had already been prepared beforehand. The preamble of the regulation stated:
Decree 66 created various commissions responsible for evaluating the behaviour of teachers at each educational level: Commission A, tasked with purging University staff; Commission B for teaching staff at special schools for engineers and architects; Commission C for personnel at secondary schools, normal schools, commercial schools, arts and crafts schools, labour schools, primary education inspection, and all those not assigned to the other commissions; and Commission D for primary school teaching staff. The Order of 10 November 1936 regulated where the commissions would be established and their internal functioning. Although severe and almost inquisitorial, the regulations approved by the Junta Técnica represented a certain progress compared to those previously applied by the National Defense Junta, as they allowed for the defence of the accused and the decision was no longer based on a single, subjective opinion.
Procedure