Resumen de Children’s education and mental health in Spain during and after the Civil War: psychiatry, psychology and “biological pedagogy” at the service of Franco’s regime

Amparo Gómez Rodríguez, Antonio Francisco Canales Serrano

• This article analyses the child psychiatry and psychology developed during the Spanish Civil War and immediate postwar period. The aim is to demonstrate that, despite the existence of a certain degree of disciplinary continuity in relation to the pre-war period, both disciplines were placed at the service of Francoism. This meant that the association of psychology and psychiatry with pedagogy in order to educate/cure children played a key role in legitimising the child intervention policies of Franco’s regime, and this strategy was best reflected in Vallejo Nágera’s proposal regarding “biological pedagogy”. Finally, it analyses how psychiatry and psychology were used outside the school context to re-educate and control an infant population trapped between two worlds as the result of the Civil War.