Citizenship Education in Spain. A subject for ideological and political confrontation

Abstract

In Spain, we are lived one of the most controversial issues in education because of the implementation of Education for Citizenship and Human Rights, a school subject recommended repeatedly by the European Union and international organizations. The controversy went beyond education due to a planned political strategy covered by religious arguments based on deeply undemocratic axioms. This research uses the historical method applied to the analysis of the curriculum. The documentation used comes, mainly, from curriculum prescription, newspapers, and judicial sources. Their analysis has allowed us to focus on how the most traditional and conservative groups of our society used public space to perpetuate their power and control, slowing down changes in the curriculum and educational practice. The article aims to demonstrate the existence of a concatenation of perfectly coordinated and sequenced actions with the clear intention of hindering the implementation of the subject and maintaining the hegemony of particular religious values over civil ones. A latent confrontation awaiting its reactivation.