The socio-economic reality of industrial vocational training during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923–1930

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the social and economic implementation of the reform of industrial vocational training during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship in Spain (1923–1930), based on the Industrial Education Statute of 1924 and the Vocational Training Statute of 1928. Framed within an international context affected by the consequences of the First World War, the project formed part of an authoritative corporate structure within the ideological paradigm of “reactionary modernism”: a combination of social tradition and the modernity of industrialisation, exemplified in the vocational training of industrial workers and technicians in the work schools. In particular, the objective is to identify the effects of the implementation of this reform on a local level from a training, socio-professional, political, and economic perspective. To do this, the legislative and newspaper sources of the reform have been analysed, together with annual reports and reviews of the educational centres and the statistical yearbooks of enrolment. The results indicate that, in spite of the institutional re-launch of the reform, the ideological basis of the project clashed with the specific interests of the local reality.