Teaching spanish transition: between memory and history

Abstract

This study examines how the Spanish Transition is taught in Secondary Education and Baccalaureate, analyzing its treatment in curricula, teaching materials, and classroom practices. Using a mixed-methods approach, a questionnaire was designed for Geography and History teachers across Spain. The collected data were processed, analyzed, and interpreted to understand and explain how this historical period is taught. The findings suggest that the Transition is covered in a superficial manner, with an outdated approach and an idealized perspective that emphasizes consensus and unity while overlooking the tensions and conflicts that also shaped this process. This approach, widely reproduced in textbooks, contributes to perpetuating an uncritical collective memory, hindering both a contextualized understanding of the period and the development of historical perspective. Although teachers acknowledge the significance of the Transition for students' civic and democratic education, constraints such as time limitations, a lack of updated resources, and the prevalence of traditional approaches make it difficult to address the topic from a critical perspective. The study concludes that the persistence of this collective memory weakens the rigor of historical knowledge conveyed to students and prevents a critical reading of the past. This underscores the need to update teacher training and renew educational materials to incorporate current historiographical perspectives, fostering multiperspectivity and critical thinking in students.