The Francoism educational grants policy in Higher Secondary Education and Vocational Training (1939-1970)

La política de becas educativas del franquismo en el bachillerato y la formación profesional (1939-1970)

https://doi.org/10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2025-407-650

José Ignacio Cruz

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9494-0735

Universitat de València

Abstract

Grants programmes, which have been closely linked with overcoming lack of free education for a long time, were extremely weak in the Spanish education system. This research work studies how grants were contemplated during Francoism (Spain) by focusing on interventions in general, and on Occupational Higher Secondary Education and Industrial Vocational Training between 1939 and 1970. To do so, we started by locating primary documentary sources (most unpublished) to then analyse them by following the historic-educational methodology, and placing special emphasis on data triangulation and properly contextualising references in educational, social and political domains. Of the most outstanding sources, it is worth highlighting that two well-defined stages were identified. The first had only a few interventions. As from the 1950s, the second stage was to promote grants as a mechanism to extend schooling fees, and was exponentially intensified in 1961 with the Equal Opportunities Fund. The budget went from 95.5 million pesetas in 1960 to 2,400 million pesetas 7 years later. In 194,6 there were around 1,000 grants, which came close to 150,000 in 1966. Hence the grants policy became increasingly important in the Spanish education system. The programme was conceived by taking a proactive and strictly meritocratic approach, one exclusively for students with few resources and excellent capacity, and with the vocation to study. It was redesigned and supported by the reformist sectors of the Franco regime to fulfil social, cultural and political objectives, and was publicised as one of the most important achievements. Its contribution to updating and modernising Francoism was considerable, it always helped its survival and was never questioned as a political model.

Keywords: francoism, education policy, grants programmes, equal opportunities, secondary education, higher secondary education, vocational training.

Resumen

Los programas de becas fueron durante mucho tiempo extremadamente débiles en el sistema educativo español. Esta investigación estudia cómo los planteó el franquismo, centrándonos en las intervenciones en los itinerarios de los bachilleratos general y laboral y de la formación profesional industrial entre 1939 y 1970. Para ello hemos partido de la localización de fuentes documentales primarias -entre otras, legislación, informes y memorias- la mayoría inéditas, para posteriormente analizarlas siguiendo la metodología histórico-educativa. Se ha realizado especial hincapié en la triangulación de los datos y la contextualización de las referencias en los ámbitos, educativo, social y político. Entre las aportaciones más destacadas cabe señalar la identificación de dos etapas bien definidas. Una primera con escasísimas intervenciones. La segunda, a partir de comienzos de la década de 1950 en que comenzó a impulsarse las becas como mecanismo para ampliar las tasas de escolarización, y que se intensificó exponencialmente en 1961 con la creación del Fondo para la Igualdad de Oportunidades. El presupuesto pasó de 95,5 millones de pesetas en 1960 a 2.400 siete años después y los becarios, que en 1946 rondaba el millar, se acercaban a los 150.000 en 1966. De ese modo, el programa de becas cobró una importancia creciente. Este se concibió con un enfoque proactivo y estrictamente meritocrático, exclusivamente para estudiantes con escasos recursos y con notoria capacidad y vocación para los estudios. Fue rediseñado y apoyado por los sectores reformistas del régimen y buscó alcanzar objetivos sociales, culturales y políticos, siendo publicitado como uno de los logros más importantes. Su contribución a la actualización y modernización del franquismo fue notable y siempre estuvo al servicio de su pervivencia, sin cuestionarlo como modelo político.

Palabras clave: franquismo, política de la educación, programa de becas, igualdad de oportunidades, enseñanza secundaria, bachillerato, formación profesional.

Introduction

It is well-accepted that slowness and unequal development have characterised the implantation of the Spanish education system. The consecutive governments in the 19^th century promoted, albeit generally and without too much interest, the creation of schools, colleges and institutes, and set norms, but the majority did not meet the foreseen objectives. Thus, for decades, there was a very wide gap between that prescribed and its practical application (Puelles, 1999).

We can find a good example of this in the development of gratuitousness, which was a key element to promote schooling processes. On this, the Spanish “Moyano” Law in 1857 formally declared the partial gratuitousness of Primary Education in public schools for those pupils whose families did not have the necessary resources. To generalise it to second schooling, now called Secondary Education, more than one century had to go by, practically until the General Education Law (GEL) came into force in Spain in 1970 (Viñao, 2004). Although this is an area with plenty of grey zones, we can state that this regulation often proved useless.

Indeed, the gratuitousness of learning is something relatively recent in Spain. For a long time, people had to pay to study. The families that registered their sons and daughters in private centres had to pay, as did those who sent them to public schools and institutes. The vast majority, save very few exceptions, had to pay: registration fees and rights to sit exams; monthly fees; bonuses; administrative duties, etc. There were also other payments in kind. All this meant that the Spanish education system was based on marked economic discrimination.

To mitigate such a situation, study aid programmes were gradually set up, initially for students with notable intellectual capacities and few resources, which ended up being known as grants. This initiative involved considerable background. Bermejo conducted a detailed study (1971) that carefully traced them by linking them with the consolidation of the liberal state, and also with the slow implantation of the national education system. This grants programme somewhat intensified, but always fell short of the necessary requirements, and so it was that government plans sought to increase schooling as of the 1920s.

By taking all this background into account, the present research work aims to analyse the building and development of the grants programme during Francoism, from the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939) to the end of the 1960s. During this period (1939-1970), we pay special attention to the national funding used to apply the Principle of Equal Opportunities, created in June 1960, which played a very relevant role as both a benchmark of education policies discourse and a mechanism to drive schooling. Although grants covered the whole education system, we concentrate on Higher Secondary Education (HSE) and Vocational Training (VT), which make up today’s Secondary Education. We particularly measure their structuring with the changes that the education system underwent.

This theme has barely been investigated from our knowledge area. We found a couple of studies about School Protection Councils during the Second Republic in Spain (in the 1930s), but had very little to do with the school protection of Francoism for being more about administration organisations with no grants competences (Sánchez, 1991 and Fernández, 2017). Delgado (2005) describes the large grants system in force at Occupational Universities, and slightly more attention was paid to the University stage. Without forgetting the historic-educational perspective, we should mention the recent study by González-Delgado and Groves (2024) about the UNESCO grants programmes, or from sociology the work of Alegre (2022) about the evolution of students with grants. A global approach from the legal world about the state’s role in grants to study can be consulted in (Canal, 2018).

As we go on to see, this grants programme had some interesting ideological facets, and a marked quantitative dimension appeared with profound educational, social and political implications from the 1960s. As far as we know, this research is the first of its kind, focuses on pointing out the most highlighted traits and leaves open a number of interesting questions for future studies.

We followed the historic-educational method to conduct the present research work. For this purpose, we located and analysed many primary sources, including reports, memorandums, regulations, statements and adopted stances, of which many appear in Ministry publications. They are official political and administration documents whose writings underwent exhaustive triangulation. We also stress the quantitative perspective in an attempt to value as exactly as possible the impact of the various initiatives and their temporal evolution. To properly contextualise studied the debates and the initiatives, we resorted to reference texts from the general history, economic and tax domains.

Education following the Spanish Civil War

Right from the start, Francoism substantially reorganised the education policy. The new regime provided the theme we herein investigate with an outstanding space by passing the School Protection Law in 1944, whose ideological orientation was explicit (Ley de 19 de julio de 1944). When initially presenting the reasons, it claimed that it was oriented by principles of “social justice”, which inspired the new regime. Immediately after came: “School protection is not merely charitable work, but the state’s duty and a social obligation” (p. 5555).

Article 3 indicated the types and models of school protection with possible economic grants, which were direct, indirect, as credit and as studies material, provision, health care and the so-called supplementary welfare. On administrative organisation, it pointed out the leading role of the Ministry of Education by creating a School Protection Patronage. This was set up with the participation of those who acted as heads of this department, and were answerable to the ministry, and it also included representatives of Foreign Affairs, Work and Home Secretary, plus several delegations of the Secretary General of the Movement with educational competences. This national structure was replicated in every university district with the Rector’s Presidency in charge.

This law proved ambitious for covering the whole education system, and included aspects ranging from medical insurance and traditional study grants to school dining halls, and university subsidies, university end-of-career trips, and study grants and pensions for teachers. Intense proactivity was required to attend all this, but reality was quite a different thing and its impact was minimal. Few funds were granted for this purpose in the 1940s, and it was not until the 1950s before they slightly increased. Thus, for instance, it was not until a decade later before anything to do with health care started to be partially applied.

Regarding grants, the crux of the law literally pointed out that five percent of students had to have a grant, but this figure was to become a fantasy. As it shows, we point out that during academic year 1946-1947, the ministry awarded 325 grants of 300 pesetas and 678 half grants of 150 pesetas, which were paid over 9 months for HSE studies (Orden de 16 de mayo de 1946). Although other grants existed, this call handed out the most funds. In round numbers, slightly more than one thousand of the 203,136 students (around 0.5%, one tenth of what the law indicated) were considered to be grant holders, and only one third were full grant holders (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, 1966). Pérez (2009) provides references in line with this from a much more specific local perspective. During academic year 1950-1951, the national call awarded 18 grants for Secondary Education for the whole Almería province (south Spain), of which six were for HSE students.

Some changes

Some changes of certain relevance started being applied to such a limited intervention in 1951 when Ruiz Giménez was named Minister of Education. In 1953, the School Insurance Law was passed, which initially covered some aspects of HSE students before shifting to other studies (Ley de 17 de julio de 1953). The next step came in 1955 when, by taking advantage of the reform made to the ministry’s organic law, which promoted several study offices, the School Protection and Social Welfare Office (SPSWO) was created (Puelles, 1999). This office was conceived as an executive organisation of the patronage, and was in charge of managing anything to do with the matters that we are analysing (Secretaría General Técnica, 1956). In line with what was happening throughout the ministry, its actions were prioritised to respond as efficiently as possible to any existing problems because “Spain’s delay in educational matters was considerable...” (p. 1).

This set of measures clearly covered the interest shown at the time in being able to increase schooling fees which, for HSE students, went from starting to open up classrooms to students from other social classes. Ruiz Giménez expressed this on many occasions by clearly stating his position in this outstanding aspect of education policy. He stated that “the most urgent needs of Spanish education” were about “winning the battle of solidarity between all school population sectors and establishing equal rights to education at all its levels” (p. 4).

The reformist consideration was done from the perspective of the theory about putting to better use human capital, as set out by one of the people in charge of the SPSWO (Lorenzo, 1963a). “There is awareness of having to avoid wasting the human resources that can be produced, but intelligent young people cannot go to class for not having economic resources” (p. 5). The two pivots on which this programme was based were indicated. “Two essential requisites overlap: firstly, the capacity, the aptitude for studies to which they show their vocation; secondly, not having the economic resources” (p. 8, the original is shown in italics).

Likewise, other objectives are taken into account beyond what is merely the economic perspective. The General Commissioner (Navarro, 1961b) pointed this out on a different occasion. He believed that a robust and balanced grants programme would be “a powerful incentive for progress and national harmony”. Otherwise, if not carefully looked after, negative consequences could come about: “When talent is lost, bitterness is felt, and an opportunity disappears, which means serious harm for the community’s interest” (p. 906).

The School Protection Office

Within this framework of ideological and political references, the grants programme had to steer well away from lethargy, and this office was in charge of doing just that. One of the most important actions it took consisted in managing to increase credits, which went from 165,000 pesetas spent in 1951 to grants from the studied courses of 10,173.268 in 1955 (Secretaría General Técnica, 1956). This increase was substantial and involved multiplying the budgeted amount by 60. Increases were even greater in successive years, but were always much less than those in charge hoped for and were far-removed from the 5% grants goal, as Table I shows.

The programme’s intensification became a regular feature. During academic year 1958-1959, grants increased by almost 50% compared to academic year 1956-1957, with 76% more being offered in 1961-1962 than five years before. This increase was even bigger in the budget. By taking academic year 1956-1957 as the starting point, which was the first academic year that this office led the grants programme, the quantity virtually doubled in two academic years and had tripled four academic years later.

The value of grants also considerably increased. In 1955, the modules for non-university students were 1,350 and 1,800 pesetas depending on place of residence and type of studies. In 1958, they went up to 2,250 and 6,000 pesetas, and those for IVT for academic year 1960-1961 were 7,500 pesetas, (Spanish Ministry of Education, 1961). Those in charge were critical about their low value and constantly reminded everyone of the objective that the 1944 Law set out by indicating that 3,500 grants for 1957 only represented 1.3% of those registered for HSE (Aparicio, 1957).

Accordingly, grants doubtlessly became a preferential objective of the education policy. Without forgetting most of the rhetoric linked with the Spanish Civil War, interventions in education began by it being supplemented with more ambitious reformist initiatives.

From this perspective, what we believe is a particularly relevant, albeit rarely reviewed, fact must be stressed. This reformist orientation did not undergo any amendments with the change that came about from the 1956 governmental crisis, as specified in education, when Joaquín Ruiz Giménez was replaced with Jesús Rubio García-Mina. Despite their different bones, the former from a Catholic family and the latter a Falangist, continuity prevailed and the reforming orientation was made a priority, which enabled the efficiency of the taken initiatives to continue, and to even increase.

In parallel to reinforcing grants, the SPSWO was internally reinforced. In February 1956, José Navarro Latorre, who was then a professor at the Ramiro de Maeztu Institute, was appointed as General Commissioner of School Protection. He had shouldered different responsibilities in organisations corresponding to the Secretary General of the Movement in both Zaragoza, where he was born, and Madrid (Actualidad educativa, 1956). Jesús Aparicio Bernal, another interesting figure, also had other responsibilities, such as technical advisor to the SPSWO. A Falangist, and with an outstanding background in the Spanish University Trade Union (SEU), which he headed from 1957 to 1962, he later performed important tasks like the General Director of Radio Broadcasting and Television, and also in private firms.

The actions taken by the SPSWO were also characterised by another series of remarkable traits. First of all, he made considerable effort by integrating different grants to technically help procedures and by unifying administrative management. Previously each university district had its own award criteria. However, “… as of academic year 1956-1957, school grants started being awarded nationally by public calls and, in accordance with objective criteria, were generally applied nationwide” (Lorenzo, 1963a, p. 6).

The SPSWO, which acted as a branch of the School Protection Patronage, also knew how to maintain the head of the Ministry of Education as opposed to the other departments, particularly before delegations of the Movement, such as the SEU, the National Delegation of the Youth Front and the Trade Union Organisation. It had the support of Government’s Cabinet Office, and of the actions taken by the aforementioned Navarro Latorre and Aparicio, both with acknowledged careers in the Movement, which proved extremely helpful (Order of the Government’s Cabinet Office, 1957 and Technical Secretary of the SPSWO, 1957).

We complete the present analysis of general references with another about the specific distribution of grants. Data refer to the academic year 1958-1959 call and provide us with detailed information about them, as Table II shows.

Evidently for these dates the education authorities gave more priority to access VT studies, where we must also include the Occupational Higher Secondary Education (OHSE) course, taught at technical HSE or OHSE institutes. For the students of both these studies, 4,583 grants were available, which was almost two thirds of all grants, and were financed with 18,500.000 pesetas. There were 1,894 grants for the general HSE students registered with institutes, whose budget came to 8,757.000 pesetas. Next came private schools’ students with 949 grants and a budget of 6,500.000 pesetas. Their amount is striking because the students awarded grants had to be day students.

When we take into account the total registration of all these courses, their prioritisation comes over much more clearly. The students of such courses were distributed as follows: 420,852 general HSE, 15,536 OHSE and 61,294 industrial VT (Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, 1966). Therefore, 6.01 of the VT students, 6.39% of the OHSE students and 0.67% of the general HSE students obtained grants. When we calculate the amount spent on grants per student, we find that 236.32 pesetas were invested in VT, 272.78 in OHSE and 22.35 in general HSE.

All these figures move in the same direction and endorse the indicated prevalence. In round numbers, the number of grants was 9-fold bigger in the two professional courses than in the general HSE one, and the amount per pupil was between 10- and 12-fold larger. In its low budget, the main objective of the grants programme for that time was for students of the professional courses as opposed to those studying traditional HSE, and for those of OHSE (Lorenzo, 1963a).

The above table is completed with two other more peculiar elements. During that academic year, 17 grants were awarded that totalled 104,850 pesetas for those students registered for the milling machine transformation course. The consulted documents allow us to certainly assume to a great extent that it was a specific initiative of a conjunctural nature that, despite continuing later, was not very large.

The last epigraphy is about 233 grants, valued at 4,500 pesetas, for the students at major seminaries, on whom a total of 104.850 pesetas was spent. As another example of the important role played by the Catholic Church during Francoism, the School Protection Programme also systematically included grants for seminarians and priests. In this case, studies at major seminaries were considered to be the equivalent to those of HSE. However, as part of Higher Education, some grants for members of the religious order and priests were also found for them to continue their studies at pontifical and civil universities, and in both Spain and abroad, and they could also train in missionary activities (Technical Secretary of the SPSWO, 1957).

Another interesting trait is that the whole programme comes over from the purely meritocratic perspective. Those responsible in ministries made this intention quite clear in numerous reports and statements. One of the most significant intentions is found in the words pronounced by Navarro Latorre during the welcome speech of the First International Colloquium on School Protection, which was held in Madrid in 1957 (Se celebra en Madrid, 1957). During his speech, in a grandiloquent tone he clearly set out the Spanish government’s objective: “Undeniably this is the time to extend assets of the superior culture to many strata of our people…”. These initiatives had to make the following principle quite clear:

Help those who are worthy of it; those who notoriously demonstrate that they have the capacity and vocation to obtain the privilege of higher qualification. But far from us are these confusing forms of false proselytism, which blind us about finding easy paradises with promises of equal advantages for all, and the noble purpose of protecting and helping, but only and exclusively, the best (p. 68).

On many occasions, Professor Navarro insisted on expecting excellent performance, which he believed to be of utmost importance. His criterion was taken into account and he built one of the distinguishing marks of the grants programme (Navarro, 1961a, and Lorenzo, 1963b).

These meritocratic considerations represented a clearly restrictive conception of the right to education: for everyone, but only concerning Primary Education. Then the dual system imposed its law and promoted the grants programme, as the person in charge of it pointed out, and it should be confined only to those boys and girls from less favoured classes who display “notorious capacity and vocation”. Only those students could benefit from “the privilege of Higher Education” (p. 68).

Precisely these words pronounced by the person in charge of the grants programme allowed us to make a link with the last trait to be highlighted. The increase in grants carefully took into account the international perspective, particularly the European perspective. The cited event is a good example of this. It was a meeting organised by the International Association of University and Professional School Information, to which representatives from Germany, Belgium, Canada, the Dominican Republic, France, Israel and Tunisia attended, as did observers from Colombia, Chile, the United States, the Philippines and Persia, as well as delegations from the World Health Organization and UNESCO (The First International Colloquium, 1958).

Spanish education authorities were intensely involved in the organisation by sending a delegation with 12 members, when those of other countries only had one member or two. For a greater effect, after a debate and reform process, they presented and managed to get passed a Declaration of Principles about Protecting the Right to Study. It was the so-called Declaration of Madrid, which was edited in Latin, French, Spanish, English and German (Lorenzo 1957).

Apart from this colloquium taking place in 1957, the studied documents are full of references made to grants and school protection programmes from other countries (Núñez, 1957). Along these lines, those in charge of the education policy coincided with other departments.

This was how Minister Rubio García-Mina saw it in the National Education Council during a session held on 23 May 1961. While making his speech, he pointed out that a general rule of the Spanish regime was “hostile lack of knowledge”. However, something was about to change: “here it is fair to recognise that in both the permanent Geneva Expo and the “Bureau International d´Education Record”, or in the corresponding UNESCO Departments, praiseworthy remarks have been repeatedly made to this guiding operation towards Spanish school protection” (Rubio, 1961, p. 1022).

The National Fund for Promoting Equal Opportunities

Such clearly proactive dynamics resulted in the grants programme being incorporated into political discourse by conferring it great importance and stressing its excellent benefits. At the SPSWO, a suitable title was sought: Doctrine of School Protection in Spain (Ministry of National Education, 1961). In this way, one of the people in charge described the situation in this way: “…. School Protection activities are performed more. Every year their penetration goes more deeply into problems in broad sectors of public opinion…. It is necessary for such attention to not diminish” (Lorenzo, 1960, p. 64). The promotion to favour public and political visibilidty aimed to increase assigned credits, which was a largely pursued objective.

Such considerations converge with reformist proposals in economic policy and in administrative organisation, which were being debated at the heart of the Franco government. As a response to the bad economic situation, these initiatives were taking off at the end of the decade. They were specified in the 1959 Stabilisation Plan and in later development plans. Within the new technocratic framework, which the Franco regime delved more deeply into with these measures, the grants programme found the place it was looking for and was well-promoted. A first fact showing its importance took place in June 1960 with the bill Bases with which certain national funds are created to apply Tax and Savings (Governance of the Spanish Parliament, 1960).

After this peculiar heading, four funds were created: extending the principle of equal opportunities; welfare work; protecting jobs; diffusing real-estate property. The aim was to increase some social policies that had barely been attended to until that time in the economic reorientation context that was being set up. Of these four, that which interests us is the National Fund for encouraging Equal Opportunities, which was completely limited to the education domain. To finance it, the project set out that it would spend all the money obtained from tax on the general contribution to the grants programme and to School Protection Patronage grants.

This tax was the peculiar and not clearly related background of today’s Income Tax for natural persons which, paradoxically, was created in 1932 by Catalanist Republican minister Jaume Carner and only taxed annual incomes over 100,000 pesetas. As a reference and guide, in 1960 only 0.5% of salary earners earned more than 52,500 pesetas a year, while the minimum salary was 1,800 pesetas. So, this tax was paid only by a very few taxpayers (Martorell & Comín, 2002 and Lorenzo, 1963b).

The bill was debated in the Treasury Committee of the Spanish Parliament, where marked differences in opinions were voiced. Some deputies rejected the proposal with arguments like: it was not the right time; a rise in taxes or preferences for tax rebates. Positions in the debate did not change and several reforms were presented for the motion for the rejection of the bill, which they were rejected by 23 votes to 11. The project moved on to the plenary session held on 20 July. The sentence was defended by deputy Díaz Ambrona, who was the President of the cited committee and a well-known Falangist. During his speech, he pointed out the regulation’s close link with the Stabilisation Plan, the favourable results that the new economic policy was yielding and the marked increase in tax collection. He also applied social justice arguments, supported by data from the SPSWO about grant holders’ low rate. The law was voted and passed, although 24 deputies voted against it (Creation of National Funds, 1960).

From this time, the grants programme quickly entered a much more ambitious phase. From the administration perspective, it attempted to adapt what then existed to the new context marked by increased finance. As the management structure had been set up and working some years before, it helped this promotion to be carried out without too many problems.

One of the first steps consisted in reorganising the patronage and the SPSWO. The former was transformed to become the Patronage for Promoting Equal Opportunities (PEOs), structured during a plenary session that, in turn, had four work committees and a permanent committee. Committees covered the four stages of the Spanish education system: Primary Education, Secondary Education, VT/OHSE and Higher Education. The Department of Education remained in first place. The minister still occupied the presidency, subsecretary and Vice-presidency, and designated members included all the general directors, protection and school extension commissioners, the SPSWO secretaries, the Industrial VT Board secretaries, the Professional Secondary Education Patronage secretaries, and one representative of the Spanish National Research Council. Two representatives of the Ministry of the Treasury and that of Work, one from the Ministry of Agriculture, seven from various delegations of the Movement with education competences, four representatives of the Church, two representatives of country council offices and two from municipal councils, plus an interventor representative, came to the plenary session (Decree 2420/1960, of 20 December).

It is worth highlighting several of the new organisation’s characteristics; firstly, its willingness to reinforce the coordination of the different structures with educational competences; secondly, the interest in facilitating its operation by organising it at several levels, such as permanent, committees and plenary session; finally, the prioritisation of budget streamlining is also stressed, done by including representatives of the Treasury and an interventor representative of the General Intervention of State Administration, who also played the role of Head of Accountancy.

The patronage began its tasks in 1961. The Treasury assigned 600 million pesetas and the SPSWO began devising an investments plan for academic year 1961-1962 (Decree 2412/1960). Credit had substantially increased if we bear in mind that it had received 95.5 million pesetas the previous year, and Plan I implied an increase of more than 600% (Lorenzo, 1963a).

The budget continued to go up in successive years, as Table III shows. The 600 million pesetas in Plan I doubled the following year, and 800 million more were added in Plan III to reach 2,000. There were 2,200 million pesetas for the next three academic years, which once again went up to 2,400 million in Plan VII that corresponded to academic year 1967-1968. The credit for grants had gone from 95.5 million pesetas in 1960 to 2,400 million in 1967, and had multiplied by 25.15 in eight years. Such effort must be considered particularly significant and remarkable from any point of view.

A comparison to other references allows us to better grade the magnitude of these figures. The credit assigned to Plan II was higher than the 1963 general budgets assigned to each of the following ministries: the Treasury, Housing, Work, Information and Tourism, and Trade and Industry (Lorenzo, 1963b). Let’s centre on the Department of Education. In 1963, it received 8,883.5 million pesetas. The 2,000 assigned to the Patronage, whose accountancy was separate, represented almost one quarter or, more specifically, 22.5% more. As one part of this department’s structure, only the General Management of Primary Eduction had 6,150 million pesetas, a much higher credit (Spanish National Education, 1963).

Given this new situation, grants notably increased. During academic year 1960-1961, the last year of the previous stage, 15,000 grants were announced, of which 9,453 corresponded to the three academic years we herein study (Lorenzo, 1963a). In Plan I, they rose to 31,127, which was more than double (Lorenzo, 1963b). The general increase was even more marked. For the education system on the whole, 79,324 grants were assigned, which was more than 5 times those offered the year before. They continued to go up in successive years. For the academic years indicated in Table IV, those corresponding to HSE and VT courses multipled by 4.

Those that increased the most were for general HSE, which multiplied by 6, and those for VT and OHSE had multiplied by around 2.5. The OHSE ones lowered for academic year 1965-1966, doubtlessly due to the foreseen unification of this course with the elemental general HSE grade, which took place in April 1967 and put an end to this course (Lorenzo, 1963a, 1963b and J. A. Lorenzo, 2003).

By carefully analysing the Plan III figures, as the new model started to become quite well-established, we can better see the dimensions and internal reorientations that were carried out. The budget for this academic year came to 2,000 million pesetas, which enabled 777,700.000 pesetas and almost 91,000 grants to be awarded to the courses being studied. Thus 30.82% of the students who had registered to study OHSE, 28.13% of those studying VT and 9.43% of the general HSE students were grant holders. This distribution corresponds to the indicated reorganisation. Although the percentage was still higher for the OHSE and VT students, the number of grant holders in general HSE significantly grew. By taking the figures for academic year 1958-1959 as as reference, the grants awarded for professional-type studies multiplied by between 4.6 and 4.8. Conversely, although there were fewer HSE grant holders, their numbers had multiplied by 14 in one 5-year period.

To this analysis we must add a grant category that appeared for the first time with Plan I, the so-called access grants, which were encompassed in the Primary Education block. Its objective was to help Primary Education pupils to go on to study HSE. This category’s background was the rural grants that had been awarded during academic year 1960-1961. Beneficiaries had to be highly capable boys and girls, their capability was proven by them doing certain tests, and they had to live in towns with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. During this call, they were literally called pupils from “poor rural towns”, and they did not live in towns where they could continue their studies. The first selection was done by male and female teachers themselves at schools. Candidates later had an interview with the Provincial Committee with representatives from the inspection department and institutes. The grant included “lodging, meals, books and, in certain cases, clothing and footwear”, and its amount was the equivalent to that of university education (National Ministry of Education, 1961, pp. 17-18).

During the first call, they were granted to 18,000 students who had passed the tests prepared by the Centre of Documents and Didactic Orientation for Primary Education (CDDOPE), which consisted in two intelligence tests and one instruction test. The programme was closely followed up by the SPSWO, which evaluated in detail each call’s evolution by identifying which aspects were to be improved and by making suitable amendments (Navarro, 1961b and Lorenzo, 1963b).

This major reorganisation of priorities in Secondary Education courses responded to the changes made in the education policy. The education authorities, along with Minister Rubio García Mina at the head, set a new goal. He, in association with the statements made in 1961 to journalists from various mass media, indicated that given the contemporary world’s demands, elemental HSE must be considered “the minimum base for Spaniard’s education” (Editorial. Fomento, 1961, p. 992). The main person responsible for the Spanish education policy added to this initiative others to “… extend Secondary Education inside and outside urban centres, in suburb districts, in rural centres…”. The aim of them all was to attain “better prepared youths for the time we live in”, but to also renew the “the features of our own towns” and to revitalise by means of culture “…their spiritual eagerness’s and energies towards new courses of prosperity and well-being” (p. 993). The fact that this stance was taken allows us to insist on the wide range of motivations that were related to the reorganisation of the grants policy carried during these academic years (Cruz, 2019).

By taking a more broader approach, when comparing these figures to the 9,453 grants scheduled for academic year 1960-1961, which was almost one tenth of those announced three academic years later, to the budget of 14,485.500 pesetas for academic year 1958-1959, which was 55 times lower, we can better grade the magnitude of change. With these changes, grants stood out for the first time in the Spanish education system for all the educational, social and political implications that this meant, and they coincided with plans to extend the network of institutes (Viñao, 2004).

Likewise, it was in this new stage that study grants were widely advertised as one of the most highlighted social initiatives. We have provided several examples on previous pages. We complete them with the words that General Franco spoke on this matter during his speech on 17 November 1967 when opening the Spanish Parliament’s new term of office. From the regime’s political dynamics, this was a particularly outstanding occasion, that of making the most of striking a balance for the whole stage and to set out future action proposals.

The Head of State assessed the initiative as follows by framing it within the broadest objectives of the education policy by specifically pointing out that:

Forty years ago, half the population had no schooling of any kind … Then only half a dozen children studied in towns, the children of the wealthy who lived there; today a modern, diversified Secondary Education system, supported with funds from extremely important grants, reaches the whole country, is available for both sexes, and has become a true cultural revolution… We have taken a historic step with consequences that are impossible to calculate, but is now the present reality, with future hope that the Native Land has never known (La Enseñanza media, 1967, pp. 2337-2338).

Conclusions

So, we conclude that there are sufficient documents that reveal the considerable reorientation of the Francoism grants policy during the study period. After more than one decade of the system initially not proving to be practically useful, it started to be reactivated while Ruiz Giménez was minister, and exponentially grew as of 1961 with the National Fund for Equal Opportunities. Since it was set up, it substantially contributed to the proactive state change that the Franco authorities imprinted on the education policy in general, and on the HSE policy in particular.

According to the studied documents, this reorientation was amply supported, but had certain resistances. It was partially shaped by the successive people in charge of the education policy in the 1950s regardless of it being bonded to different families of Francoism. With the later technocratic-type changes, the initiative was considerably reinforced with the support of the new people who governed the economic policy as of 1961. Furthermore, with the creation of the National Fund to encourage Equal Opportunities, the number of grant holders exponentially multiplied.

There is no doubt whatsoever that grants were a powerful instrument to extend school fees, and one of their main objectives was to improve the grade of youths’ training. The present study reveals that grants also pursued social, cultural and political goals, and were oriented to follow the wake that other European countries made.

The system was designed and promoted by different Franco sectors to make reforms to respond to the Spanish society’s increasing needs, which were especially profound in the education domain. We believe that it is interesting to insist on these particular nuances, the importance of reformist willingness and on how important the education policy was during the study period, because we think that they are not suitably reflected in general Francoism studies.

Regarding limitations, we point out that sometimes we were unable to specify some quantitative references as accurately as we would have wished. Until 1970, Secondary Education included a wide and disperse series of studies —trade, teacher training, reports, artistic teaching, etc.—, although roughly 80% of students concentrated in HSE courses, above all, and in VT ones. This circumstance tends to mean that, occasionally, the located sources do not present homogenous data, which makes preparing statistical series difficult (Cruz, 2016). In any case, possible omissions or inaccuracies do not hinder this work from revealing the most stressed trends and their variations over time, nor the dimension of the main magnitudes. Similarly, studying in detail the subsequent continuity of the grants policy, and its education and social effects, is pending. The indicated changes always took into account the regime’s tight margins. They were always taken as an element to ensure the continuity of Francoism as plausibly as possible by adapting it to new domestic and foreign economic, social and political circumstances. In this adaptation and survival strategy, the grants policy played a relevant role, which has not been studied in depth to date. This was an outstanding, interesting and somewhat traditional expression of the leopard skin doctrine using an aphorism: if you want everything to stay as it is now, everything needs to change.

Funding

This work has been conducted within the National R&D&I Project Framework entitled “El giro copernicano en la política de educación y ciencia en el desarrollismo franquista: de la subsidiariedad a la intervención estatal (PIB2020-114249GB-I00)”.

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Contact information: José Ignacio Cruz Orozco. Universitat de València, Facultad de Filosofía y Ciencias de la Educación, Dpto Educación Comparada e Historia de la Educación. E-mail: jose.i.cruz@uv.es