One of the more effective instruments that the franquist dictatorship used to ensure their ideological submission was the professional purge. It applied to all civil service being the faculty sector the most affected. The goal was to secure the accession and to punish the so-called enemy through the application of sanctions such as their displacement, their disqualification for the teaching, forced transfer; suspension of employment and salary….
Fortunately, currently is has gotten to break, largely, the wall of silence which he the regime rose to hide the repression. Precisely, one of the facts that has collaborated in the shoot down of said wall, has been the boom of investigation in the past two decades around the causes and consequences of the franquist purge: some thesis and numerous studies about teaching have been published; between 2000 and 2015 the ministry have financed some I+D projects focused on the incidence that such repressive action had on the high school teachers; there are also studies complete about the situation focused in the university field.
Although there is all that documentation about it, still has not dealt with a study that provides a global valuation of the repercussion so said purge in the different educational sectors.
Precisely, to cover the void is the global of the current investigation: first, we analyze the peculiarities of the scientific production published to the moment; then we highlight the characteristics of the process of purge and its singularities depending on the teaching type, and finally we compare data on the proportion of sanctioned and their distribution by faculty, academic categories, geographical space, …it is our sample being teachers of faculty, high school, regular school and university.
But it does not deal only with offering the reader a general vision about the obtained results by the different researches related with this subject. Our goal is to tackle a study from a comparative point of view, analyzing the variables dealing with the most significant elements of the process of purge, the proportion of sanctioned and their distribution by faculty, academic categories, gender, geographical space…, with the intention to approach a critical valuation of the repercussion the franquist purge has in the already mention teachers and also to detect the possible differences and similarities in the application of that repressive action.
In relation to the analysis of the published scientific production, we have discover that the way to approach this historical incident is very heterogeneous: the first publications dedicated to the purge of the teachers focus on the university, however, that initial interest has any continuity, probably, because of the difficulties found when accessing to the information, which explains that there is still a long way to cover to enjoy a complete vision of the matter; on the other hand, the study is usually focused on a certain kind of teachers, being elementary education, the most numerous, the one that has generated a more abundant bibliography production; the contributions related to high school are more limited, but having a smaller personnel there exist some publications that approach the problem in its totality, in that referring to the repercussion of the purge in a general level, by gender, academic categories and influence at a territorial level; finally, of the repercussion in the inspection we only have a general level contribution, other about the community of Navarra and the last one focused on Málaga, while of the purged teachers of the faculties of Business, Arts and Trade, Musical schools… we do not have any evidence of published researches.
It is advisable to stress that all the teachers were purged. The process of purge was not a product of improvisation. It had its support in a very complex legislative entourage. Such legislation was equal for all the teachers, expect for the university, where some professors that executed important charges in the administration and republican governments were definitely dismissed from their position by order, without passing through the Commissions of purge. This was justified because franquists considered university the focal point of intellectuals that, lo a large extent had provided the ideological fundaments of the republic and directly involved them in the government this one.
With the establishment of the Technical Board of the State (1936) and the creation of the Commission of Culture and Education, the civilians took the place of the military in the management of the politic of education and one of the first measures was the publication of the decree of November 8th 1936 where the purge machine is outlined with the creation of the four Purge Commissions. The principal functions of these commissions were: 1º To gather reports of the personnel assigned to be purged; 2º To write a document of charges that expressed the accusations that the accused person should refute in a period on 10 days with the document of depositions; 3º To propose different resolutions that went from the confirmation on the charge of those who did not have any kind of accusation, to the proposal of sanctions like forced transfer, definitive dismissing from service, being relegated to a lower position, disqualification for the teaching, which was the most serious sanction, disqualification to hold a managerial position in cultural and educational institutions, suspension of employment and salary and forced retirement, only if that person could confirm 20 years of service.
In general terms, between 25% and 28% of the teachers were sanctioned, except in university where the proportion came close to 42%. In all the academic classes, men received a harder punishment, talking in a quantitative level, than their female workmates, this was because according to the social model the politic implication was something practically exclusive to men, even though we have to admit that the II Republic broadened the horizons of the participation of women in society. That is why, when the franquist government drove again the traditional roles, the social projection of women returned to be obstructed by its own biology. This had a direct influence in the actions of the purge commissions that accused and valued the conduct and behavior of the teachers, depending on the gender. This way, women that participated in politics suffered a double purge, on one hand for supporting any republican political party, and on the other hand for betraying their condition as wives and mothers and therefore leaving aside their fundamental duties. They were also judge in a more scrupulous way, in comparison with men, in their religious believes and their moral conduct, especially if they were teachers.
The more practiced sanction was the definitive dismissing with a relegation to a lower position, especially in university and, in a smaller measure, in high school. However, the number of affected teachers of temporal sanctions (suspension of employment and salary, forced transfer…) was much higher, because the dictatorship did not have enough financial support to renew the personnel and, on the other hand, they were in the hurry to start applying their education system to instill their ideology. That explains why the purge was not only punitive but also preventive, this means, it avoided the spread of ideals opposed to the regime in educative centers through control and fear. At last, we would like to emphasize that with this article a lacuna within the historiography dealing with this historical event is now covered. It is the first time a global look of the problem is provided, up to now the published researches have focused only in the test of a certain sector of teachers. We consider, thus, that it can be seen as a useful tool for those who want a synthetic approximation of this reality, or even, as a starting point in future investigations. Classification-JEL: R1 Keywords: Profesorado, Depuraciónd de aguas residuales, Franquismo, Historia, Educación, Andalucía (españa), Teacher, Debugging, Francoism, History, Education, Andalusia (spain) Pages: 71-89 Volume: 1 Year: 2019 File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2562.pdf File-Format: Application/pdf Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:1:y:2019:p:71-89