In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “the religious question” provoked endless conflicts throughout Europe as people debated what kind of a relationship should exist between church and state. The historically close connection between the two in Spain made the issue even more significant. Liberals asserted that Spain needed to modernize, a term they understood as synonymous with secularization and “Europeanization.” They shaped their project for change on the vision of a modern, active citizenry in a democratic society. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, argued for an essential Spanish character centered on Catholicism. Both sides spoke of liberty, but the Church held that freedom did not mean freedom to err in faith and morals. An adult lapsing into apostasy was one issue; it was quite another to lead a child into sin through an improper education. Both the right and left looked to the schools as the surest way to form the citizen they envisioned for Spain's future. Control of the education system, therefore, became one of the principal areas of contention between the Church and liberal reformers.
The relationship between the Church and state entered a new phase with the coming of the Second Republic. On April 12, 1931, the Republican-Socialist coalition won the majority of seats in municipal elections in larger urban centers. Two days later, Alfonso XIII went into exile and Spain became a republic. In general, the press reported peaceful transitions to the new order, accompanied by many shouts of “Viva la República.” Those most taken with the changes interpreted them, not so much as a rejection of a corrupt and broken political system, but rather as an expression of a people who “have the consciousness of citizens acting, not with base passions or dishonorable motives,” but rather as a once “degraded soul,” now regenerated.Footnote 1 In other words, the Spanish people had chosen a superior political system.
Initially, the Spanish hierarchy maintained a reserved reaction to the establishment of the provisional government. Publicly, bishops confirmed the accidentalist position of the Church and urged the faithful to accept the new government.Footnote 2 One month later, the burning of over one hundred religious buildings, known as the quema de conventos, plus the expulsion of the prelates of Toledo and Vitoria seemed to indicate that optimism was premature. The passage of the anticlerical sections of the Constitution in 1931 and the subsequent legislation implementing the articles reinforced a growing pessimism.
In the nineteenth century the Church responded to the erosion of many of its privileges by mobilizing the faithful into myriad associations formed around particular devotions and social causes. The coming of the Republic revealed the Church's increased dependence on an active and well-trained laity. Church officials sought to renew this partnership by organizing new lay associations or reinvigorating existing ones. The goal was to increase the laity's overall involvement in politics and social action in hopes of reversing or at least blunting the impact of new governmental laws and policies. In the case of safeguarding Catholic schools, it meant the formation of front organizations that took legal control over the educational institutions. The lay members, usually well-connected people in the community, further provided important expertise for religious orders as they sought to navigate through and around the laws. This article explores one facet of this collaboration with the laity in relationship to protecting Catholic education. It uses a case-study approach that analyzes the establishment of some of these lay associations and their role in maintaining three schools of an educational order of nuns known as the Sisters of the Company of Mary in the cities of Tudela (Navarre), Valladolid (Castile), and Tarragona (Catalonia).Footnote 3 This article focuses on these three houses because of the Company of Mary's long history in the field of women's education. The reaction of the nuns to Republican legislation, furthermore, represents typical approaches among religious orders, yet their response also illustrates how specific local contexts shaped their plans.
The struggle between the Spanish Church and the state over education has been well studied, but usually focuses on school reform on the national level and on those prelates and groups that labored to overturn Republican legislation. This focus on the national level is, in large part, a result of the tendency to view the Second Republic through the lens of the coming Civil War and the continued debate on the role of the Church. The contributions from well-known authors such as Paul Preston, Stanley Payne, and Julian Casanova have increased our understanding of the role of the Church and the success of the Francoist uprising. Each author, however, tends to treat the subject of religion and the state in binary terms leaving little room for a closer reading of rhetoric and events on the ground.Footnote 4 The genuinely intransigent attitudes of leading Church representatives, such as Cardinals Pedro Segura and Isidro Gomá, have obscured the wider variety of perspectives that becomes evident when one explores the local context. Although few were sincere supporters of the Republic, many religious leaders of the local Church in the three cities of this study demonstrated a willingness to adapt to the new circumstances and political structures.
The focus on policies emanating from the central government, furthermore, fails to recognize the uneven application of its directives. As demonstrated by Ángel Luis López Villaverde in his book El gorro frigio y la mitra frente a frente, the level of anticlericalism and actions of individual officials shaped the response of regional and local governments.Footnote 5 Anticlericalism in areas such as La Rioja, Zaragoza, Andalusia, and Valencia often resulted in more confrontational approaches of governments that instituted stricter secularization programs. This is exemplified when the municipality of Caspe (Zaragoza) attempted to expropriate the convent and seminary of the Franciscan priests. Even within areas known for anticlericalism, reactions could still vary. In Huelva (Andalusia), the Colegio Santo Ángel of the Sisters of the Guardian Angel saw no real change in the operation of their school, including its numerous religious celebrations. Quite the opposite, the local boys' school of La Escuela de Sagrado Corazon found itself under the microscope of local officials soon after the establishment of the Republic. Subsidies were removed together with its classification as an educational foundation with officials citing the overly religious nature of its works.Footnote 6 Municipalities that were traditionally more Catholic, such as cities in Navarre and the Basque Country, on the other hand, were more likely to allow the legal cover granted by lay front organizations to function with relative ease.
The above examples are but a few that support López Villaverde's contention that the local level is critical to understanding the application of the Republic's laicization program. There has been a significant growth in regional studies on the impact of educational reforms and the Catholic response, yet the internal events and experiences of religious congregations remain little studied.Footnote 7 These stories are essential to understanding the overall narrative of the government's secularization program, the nature of Catholic mobilization, and our understanding of the multi-sided institution simply called “the Church.”
This study begins with brief overviews of the Republican educational reforms of the first bienio (1931–1933) and the Church's response to the new laws and policies on education. The core of the study is an analysis of the strategies the nuns employed to protect their schools. From their perspective, education was central to their mission and the principal battleground in the great struggle for the hearts and minds of Spanish youth.
I. Republican Educational Reforms
The conflict between the Church and state during the Republican era had its roots in the liberal reforms of the late-nineteenth century. In order to build the society that liberals envisioned, leading university professors, led by Francisco Giner de los Ríos (1839–1915), founded the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Institution of Education) or the ILE in 1876. The ILE offered an environment that used an innovative pedagogy to prepare students for active citizenship in a democracy. Consequently, they rejected the methods commonly found in most public and Catholic schools that relied on textbooks and rote memorization—methods designed to produce passive and obedient citizens. Giner de los Ríos, like others of the ILE, believed that only a religiously neutral education could inculcate tolerance and intellectual freedom. He proposed the end of all confessional private schools arguing that such institutions divided society and prevented the formation of a nation of free and equal citizens. His critique of Catholic schools raised the ire of the hierarchy and Catholic educators who tended to fear whatever the ILE supported.
Members of the Republican-Socialist coalition in the newly formed Constituent Cortes were determined to implement an educational reform based on the ideas the ILE espoused. They retained the same faith in education as the most effective tool for the formation of a modern and democratic society in Spain. School reform, therefore, received high priority in the Cortes, which quickly put the assembly in conflict with the interests of the Church.
The debate soon centered on legislation outlining the new relationship between the Church and state. As the debate became increasingly contentious, the deputies in the Socialist-Republican coalition found themselves divided over how stringently to deal with the Church. Manuel Azaña took the podium to present a compromise that would maintain coalition unity. In his speech of October 1931, Azaña, then Minister of War, proposed the dissolution of the Jesuits and the complete removal of religious orders from teaching. Arguing that the government must act under the principle of social utility and defense of the Republic, Azaña declared that “at no time, under no condition, and in no way will my party or I in its name subscribe to a legislative clause . . . that will entrust religious orders with the service of instruction. This, never.”Footnote 8 In defense of the Church, some deputies argued that guarantees to freedom of conscience and assembly should apply equally. Azaña, however, contended that Spain's future development of a democratic society would be undermined.Footnote 9 The coalition held and the Constituent Cortes passed Article 26 of the new constitution. The article suppressed the Jesuits and sought to expropriate their property, ended Spain's official confessionalism, and declared that religious orders could not engage in “industry, commerce, or education.” The orders, moreover, would be subject to special legislation designed to implement the article. A reluctant president, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, signed that bill into law on June 2, 1933. The Law of Confessions and Religious Congregations required municipalities to complete the substitution of religious personnel at the secondary level by October 1, 1933 and at the primary level by December 31, 1933.Footnote 10
Removing religious orders from education formed only the first part of a much more ambitious plan. The Republican vision of forming a new generation of citizens in a democratic society entered a new phase with the October 1931 elections to the Cortes. Azaña, now prime minister, appointed Socialists Fernando de los Ríos and Rodolfo Llopis as Minister of Education and Director of Primary Education respectively. Both men embodied the philosophies of the ILE and the uncompromising belief that Spain's future rested in school reform. Llopis summed up their faith in the power of education, asserting,
We have created a Republic that must make of Spain a free, progressive nation, open to all the boldness of civilization. The most efficacious instrument of this national transformation is the school. . . The school has the power to convert subjects of the Bourbon monarchy into citizens of the Spanish Republic.Footnote 11
The Second Republic inherited a system sorely underfunded with all the consequences of years of neglect.Footnote 12 The state's plan to overhaul the educational system started with the goal of building thousands of new schools in order to accommodate all eligible students.Footnote 13 The Educational Ministry improved pedagogical training for teachers and formulated a revamped curriculum that supported its understanding of citizenship. Although they made little headway, officials sought to address gender and class inequality inherent in the system through the establishment of coeducation and the unified school.
On paper, the reforms were far-reaching and innovative. Despite the daunting task, the Ministry of Education was able to make significant advances. Their educational philosophy and the ultimate objective of removing clergy and religious sisters and brothers from the field of education would ultimately put the state on a collision course with the Catholic Church that believed education was its special domain.
II. The Catholic Response to Republican Educational Reforms
The centrality of the debate over education, as previously stated, hinged on the belief that the school served as the single most important vehicle in shaping society to a specific vision. This was no less true for Catholic educators. Catholic understanding of the mission to “go and teach all nations” (based on Matthew 28) meant influencing the school system whenever possible. This command, reiterated in the papal encyclical Divini Illius Magistri (1929), took on a greater urgency since the encyclical stressed that the Church's mission went beyond the present world. The purpose of education was to prepare students to fulfill their earthly duties in anticipation of eternal life. It remained as the primary tool for freeing a child from the clutches of original sin, an idea contrasting with the institucionalista position that education freed a child to think and discover for him or herself. Effective teaching educated the “will of the individual” bringing about the “moral perfection of the student” and thus, the regeneration of the nation.Footnote 14 In order to fulfill its mission, many in the Church argued that its ministers must remain unhindered by the constitution or the laws implementing its articles.
Despite the Church's efforts, it soon became clear that the campaign to pressure the government to rescind what most Catholics believed were the most onerous portions of the Constitution would fail. The responses to the anticlerical legislation coming out of the Cortes proved as varied as the groups within the Church. The far right, such as Carlists and Integrists, saw any cooperation as giving in to apostasy. A handful of prelates, several religious orders, and groups such as Catholic Action hoped to respond proactively rather than resort to confrontational action and mere condemnation of the political situation.Footnote 15 To do this, Catholic reformers had to search for ways to prove their relevance in modern society while guarding the Church's most cherished values. More pressing, however, was the need to develop structures that would protect existing Catholic schools.
Catholic educators often formed mirror institutions in its competition with the ILE. One of the most important was the Federación de Amigos de la Enseñanza (Federation of Friends of Education—FAE) founded in 1930. The organization worked to promote the Church's interests in education and to renew Catholic pedagogy. With the coming of the Republic, the FAE increased its efforts to facilitate greater coordination among educational orders and to train Catholic lay teachers in modern, scientifically based techniques. Its goal was to improve educational practices in Catholic schools while answering critics who portrayed Catholic education as retrograde and anti-modern. They also helped educate and guide the leadership of the religious orders in relation to the new laws.
One of the most important of the new lay groups formed in response to the Law of Congregations was the Sociedad Anónima de Enseñanza Libre (SADEL). The recently revitalized Confederation of Fathers of Families formed SADEL in 1933 to operate on a national level. Its sole purpose was to “create, sustain, operate and direct . . . institutions of an educational or cultural nature, particularly schools, academies, boarding schools and residencies.”Footnote 16 Its basic mode of operation entailed taking legal control of schools previously run by religious orders and all materials within it. Depending on how strictly the law was enforced and for how long, SADEL reserved the right to buy schools from the various orders. SADEL appointed the director and teachers became employees of the organization. Any religious with state certification could teach, but must do so as lay men and women. Those religious without the necessary credentials could serve as teacher aides.Footnote 17 This structure served as a model for many religious institutions. Although none of the three schools in this study contracted with SADEL, some Company of Mary schools did, such as those in Logroño and El Ferrol.
The majority of groups formed to protect the schools functioned at the diocesan level or, in some cases, locally and for particular schools. The organizations included parents, relatives of congregational members, alumni, and/or prominent lay members within the local Church. In Logroño, for example, the Mutua Cultural Riojana directed many of the city's Catholic schools whereas the Christian Brothers developed La Instrucción Pública S.A. for their many institutions across Spain. Although rare, some religious orders moved their schools to properties owned by trusted friends and registered the colegio in an individual's name. This was the case of the Carmelite sisters of San Fernando (Cádiz) who legally ceded the school to Dolores Ramón who also had her national teaching credential.Footnote 18 The variety of approaches was based primarily on which organization of lay people the religious institute thought provided the best opportunity for the ministry. Local ecclesial representatives often became involved in the decisions as they attempted to maintain authority over the associations. The nuns in this study chose local organizations to protect their ministries. The communities of Valladolid and Tarragona partnered with the laity in the formation of mutuals structured similarly to SADEL, whereas the community based in Tudela turned to alumnae.
III. The Formation of Mutuals: Valladolid and Tarragona
Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer of Tarragona had been at the forefront in planning Church strategy prior to the Cortes passing the law removing orders from teaching. Soon after the Cortes initiated debate on the Law of Congregations, the cardinal began planning for alternatives to keep the schools open. He proposed the formation of mutuals that included prominent laymen, church officials, relatives of the nuns, and school parents. Archbishop Gandásegui of Valladolid, who greatly admired the cardinal, sought to implement this policy in his own diocese and demonstrated a similar willingness to work within the new regime. Both believed that careful coordination of the Church's response within their respective dioceses was critical to maintaining a working relationship with local governments. To facilitate this policy, diocesan personnel closely supervised the mutuals.
Central to the success of the mutuals was the formation of the laity who would actually see the project through. In Valladolid, Gandásegui utilized the Diocesan Confederation of Fathers of Families as one of his primary instruments for the training of the laity. Bishops established its forerunner, the Confederation of Fathers of Families against Immorality in the latter part of the nineteenth century. With the coming of the Republic, the bishops pressed for a renewal of parent groups so as to have one more weapon in the Church's arsenal to counteract the government's laicization program. A reorganized chapter of Fathers of Families began in 1932 with José Valverde as president, replaced soon after by Fernando Carro Izquierdo. The organization's total membership the first year numbered 243. By 1936, the group had grown to 973 members.Footnote 19
According to its statutes, the principal objective of the Fathers of Families was to defend the right of parents to choose the education and instructors for their children. Other stated goals were to “protect and increase Christian education for youth,” to help in the formation of good Christian parents, and to fight against immorality in society.Footnote 20 Consequently, the association labored on a community-wide level, assisting in the creation of new Church institutions that offered classes to the laity, sponsored conferences on a variety of topics, and organized study groups. These efforts reflected the perspective of Gandásegui who saw catechetical programs run by lay people as one of the most effective ways to combat the increasing role of the state.Footnote 21
Despite its ties to the national organization, the Valladolid branch operated with relative independence because of different approaches. The national office called for a vigorous response to the Law of Congregations. Gandásegui, however, wanted to avoid open protest and, instead, work quietly to assist the religious colegios and to form new Catholic institutions within the diocese.Footnote 22 He strove to establish schools for the poor, who were seen as the most susceptible to radical influences. The association, consequently, opened two Manjón-inspired Ave María schools in Delicias and San Andrés, both neighborhoods in the poorer sections of the city.Footnote 23
The Fathers of Families in Valladolid subdivided into smaller groups in order to focus on particular issues such as promoting Catholic primary education and influencing government policies in the public schools.Footnote 24 Fearing that the Law of Congregations would be strictly enforced, the organization established yet another association known as the Mutual of Fathers of Families. Formed in August 1933, the stated goal of the Mutual was to “attend to the moral and Christian educational needs of the children of its members,” but it would extend the benefits of the Mutual to all parents so as to provide access to Catholic education.Footnote 25 This overall objective included an ambitious plan that sought to provide Catholic education at all levels, including a university and programs for career planning.Footnote 26 The archbishop directed the Mutual to register as an organization independent of diocesan affiliation. Since the government did not allow participation of parents belonging to the official Confederation of Fathers of Families, members of the Mutual, as an independent group, could then seek positions on public school boards.Footnote 27 To address the immediate threat to the religious schools, the Mutual prepared to take over all nine schools in the archdiocese, but actually managed only three colegios.Footnote 28 Other Catholic schools in the city used alumni organizations or, in the case of the Christian Brothers, used their own La Instrucción Pública S.A.Footnote 29
In July 1933, a group of parents went to see Emilia Frías, the community's prioress, to propose that parents formally take over the school.Footnote 30 With support of the archbishop, the Company of Mary in Valladolid legally turned over its colegio to the Mutual and changed the school's name to “Colegio de la Enseñanza, Filial de la Mutualidad de Padres de Familia de Valladolid” (School of the Educators, Affiliated with the Mutual of Fathers of Families of Valladolid).Footnote 31 Plans to move the school to Portugal by January 1934 could be shelved for the time being.Footnote 32 Technically, Fernando Carro Izquierdo served as the director of the colegio and Fidel Legido of the free school for the poor.Footnote 33 The Mutual and the community formulated new statutes that declared the principal end of the group to be “the complete education of young girls, attending simultaneously to the moral and religious formation . . . and their physical development.Footnote 34 It appears the school continued to offer the same curriculum as before as well as the extra classes in art, sewing, music, and other manual arts.Footnote 35 Overall, the new arrangement with the parent group allowed the school to function with little substantial change.
As ordered by the archbishop, the sisters dressed in secular clothing, but they refused to break with rules of enclosure. They managed to enter the school early in the morning behind an existing wall in the front of the chapel that allowed them to pass from the convent to the school unseen.Footnote 36 In a letter to the Archbishop, Frías explained that the sisters “sneak into the school without actually leaving the cloister.”Footnote 37 After completing the day's work, the narrow passageway allowed the sisters to return once again to regular community life. The need to remove the habit, however, clearly signified a tremendous sacrifice for the sisters who called it “a bitterness felt deeply in their hearts.”Footnote 38 One sister expressed her dismay in a sixteen stanza poem. Accounts report that girls wept at the sight of their teachers. The prioress's response to students' shock epitomized what the sisters believed was at the heart of the struggle with the government: “my daughters, for your souls alone do we make this sacrifice; for you and your salvation are we ready to do this and much more.”Footnote 39
The community acquiesced to an increased presence of lay people in the school. The city's enforcement of Republican secondary educational reforms passed in 1931 necessitated that the school employ credentialed teachers for the core subjects of the bachillerato program.Footnote 40 The 1931–1932 report sent to the director of the “Institute of Secondary Education of Valladolid” listed four laymen as instructors.Footnote 41 The following year, the school added one other layman and laywoman.Footnote 42 It is unclear how many secular teachers taught during the critical school year of 1933–1934. The Carta Anual (Annual Letter) of the community mentions the instructional assistance of five alumnae with the proper credentials, although the years of their employment were not given.Footnote 43 According to documentation of the mutual, five laymen from the organization acted as instructors in the school beginning in October 1933, three of whom had been listed as faculty during the previous two years.Footnote 44 During the 1934–1935 school year, the prioress wrote that the sisters were able to assume full teaching responsibilities.Footnote 45 The school, however, legally continued under the auspices of the Mutual. Although the documents do not specify, it appears that the instruction of the students in the free school continued under the direction of the sisters.Footnote 46
The fact that day-to-day operations remained, by in large, in the community's hands may explain why the Carta Anual does not mention the male teachers from the mutual. Frías informed the archbishop of the smooth operation of both the school and convent. Lay teachers and members of the board for the mutual entered through a special door so as to respect the rules of religious enclosure.Footnote 47 In fact, preserving enclosure became a significant issue for the sisters for whom cloister constituted an essential part of their religious life. Valladolid, along with the community of Tarragona, was one of the forty houses worldwide that rejected the 1921 union of the Order that would have ended papal enclosure.Footnote 48 A secondary reason for the community's insistence on maintaining enclosure should be understood as a communal form of protest to the political situation that they saw as hostile to faith and the lifestyle they chose as an expression of that faith.
The lay teachers from the mutual, it seems, did not teach on a daily basis, entering only “some days to give some lesson.”Footnote 49 In order to keep up appearances of a lay school, leaders of the mutual believed that lay teachers must teach in the actual classrooms. The rules, however, included most of the school grounds as part of the cloister and the interns were expected to live a modified enclosure during the school year. Frias obtained permission from the archbishop to require the male teachers to hold their classes in the parlor. On days an outside instructor was scheduled to teach, a sister accompanied the students into the parlor with the lay teacher remaining on the other side of the grill. A blackboard was placed inside where the sister wrote the notes from the lecture. Once the instruction was over, the sister finished the lesson by providing individual help or giving further explanations of the material covered.Footnote 50 In this way, the nuns could continue as the principal teachers in most cases, yet give the appearance of compliance with the law.
The uncertainty from 1931 to 1933 affected the number of interns and fee-paying day students. No new girls matriculated in 1933 and the subsequent three years saw only three new students added to the rolls.Footnote 51 The number of students attending the free school, on the other hand, greatly increased, making it necessary to hold classes in the gardens and any spare spaces.Footnote 52 CEDA (Confederatión Española de Derechas Autónomas) election gains in 1933 and the forced removal of socialist mayor Antonio García de Quintana and his supporters on the city council the following year gave the sisters confidence to remove the walls that they had been forced to build that separated the convent from the school.Footnote 53 In February 1934, the archbishop gave the sisters permission to don their habits once again, although it appears he only gave permission to the Company of Mary, believing that enclosure exposed the nuns to less governmental scrutiny.Footnote 54 This, no doubt, contributed to the decision to take over the teaching responsibilities for the 1934–1935 school year.Footnote 55
The school officially remained in the hands of the Mutual of Fathers of Families until 1937. The February 1936 election of the Popular Front returned former mayor García Quintana to office. Local authorities announced their intention to expropriate the entire school to which the prioress responded that the Company had legally ceded the colegio to the mutual.Footnote 56 The government attempt became a moot issue three months later when Nationalist forces took control of Valladolid. The community revised the statutes of the school according to the new political situation, adding patriotism as an educational objective, specifically “respect and love for the Patria, its flag and the Caudillo” alongside the goal of moral and religious formation.Footnote 57
Overall, the community in Valladolid had the necessary resources both in personnel and money to weather the difficulties it faced. Close cooperation with the archbishop and his more conciliatory attitude toward the government helped avert more serious problems. The quick and effective organization of the laity on the diocesan level, moreover, provided expertise and assistance allowing the nuns to maneuver in an unstable political and social environment.
The community in Tarragona had similar diocesan support when facing the new political situation. It also turned to a mutual to provide the front organization to run the school. What made its situation more tenuous was that the community consisted of fewer personnel and the local government was more aggressive in implementing reforms.
Soon after the promulgation of the constitution, Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer and top advisors began planning ways to save Catholic schools through the use of the mutuals that consisted of parents, relatives of the sisters, and prominent lay people. The cardinal first presented his proposal in March 1932 at a meeting of the Metropolitan bishops.Footnote 58 In October 1933, the new Mutual Educadora (Educational Mutual) submitted its statutes to the government. To ensure the continuing influence of the religious community in the school, board members were carefully selected. The board of the Mutual included the following members:
Out of this list, two men, Masip Sas and Güell Filella, were brothers of community members and Llaurado Freixas and Angles Pamies relatives of others. Pau Bru i Rossell was the nephew of Josep Bru Ralduà who served as both the community's chaplain and secretary to the cardinal. The archdiocesan vicar and future auxiliary bishop, Manuel Borrás i Ferré, although not officially on the board, attended meetings. He was the nephew of María Freixas Mestre, a member of the governing council of the community.Footnote 60 The statutes of the Mutual further required that at least four founding members remained on the board at a given time. Lastly, honorary members could join the board, which enabled diocesan officials or the school's director and/or prioress to attend meetings, thus protecting the interests of the community and its ministry.Footnote 61
In wording similar to the statutes of the Valladolid mutual, the stated objective of the organization was to provide access to education for the children or relatives of its members according to the pedagogy chosen by the board of directors or by those the board delegated, that is, the nuns who taught in the school.Footnote 62 The mutual further committed itself to free education for poor children. A key difference between the mutuals of Valladolid and Tarragona is that the word “Catholic” or even “Christian” was never used. Instead, the statutes for the Mutual Educadora referred to the goal of providing children “academic and cultural instruction . . . that will comprise all levels of intellectual instruction and moral and physical education.”Footnote 63 This difference reflected the political and social atmosphere in Tarragona, where the government, while not exactly hostile to the Church, was far more intent on carrying through republican reforms than many other cities. This reality required a more elaborate front than was necessary in other places. Technically, the Company of Mary ceded the use of the school first to the diocese. The Mutual Educadora searched for a place to begin its educational project and heard the news that the community had relinquished the school. Consequently, they then “asked” Vidal i Barraquer if they could use the location as it met its needs perfectly.Footnote 64
The basic agreement mirrors other arrangements used by front organizations in that the community maintained ownership of the properties, but turned over full usage of the buildings and the materials within them. The mutuals promised to use them only for educational purposes and would be responsible for all costs incurred. Lastly, the mutual promised to make no modifications to the buildings without the express consent of the cardinal, nor would it seek any recompense for the expenses.Footnote 65
The arrangement with the Mutual Educadora permitted the community to remain intact and to avoid the more drastic option proposed by the Company of Mary community in Barcelona of installing private schools in other locations under the names of those nuns with teaching credentials.Footnote 66 In compliance with directives from the Ministry of Education, religious orders increased the numbers of their members sent to study in the local Normal Schools. The prioress of the Tarragona community sent those sisters who lacked the requisite formal education to the local Normal school for training. This entailed attending classes, exams, and then student teaching in a public school.Footnote 67 One of the young sisters, Encarnación Saldaña, chose to leave the community soon after her program ended. The writer of the community journal placed the blame for the “loss of her vocation” on the Republic and the “diabolical liberty and debauchery that the Republic has sheltered.”Footnote 68 This assessment of the Republic illustrates the tension between the religious community's desire to adapt to the modern world and the sense that this world was a threat to its way of life and educational mission.
The ruse of compliance required greater modifications on the part of the community than in the other two schools. As was the case elsewhere, the nuns in Tarragona presented themselves as laywomen by removing their habits, but they had to employ a further deception that signified the greatest sacrifice. In January 1934, eighteen of the nuns submitted petitions to the cardinal seeking dispensation from their vows in order to continue teaching.Footnote 69 Although the request for dispensation was not sincere, the petition included a letter from the prioress assuring the sisters' good character and an attestation from the Religious Apostolic Visitor confirming that the request was genuine.Footnote 70 Manuel Borràs i Ferré, the vicar general of the diocese, and José Bru i Ralduà, the bishop's secretary, signed the document granting their petitions on February 3, 1934.Footnote 71
The Mutual Educadora formally took over the school in January 1934. In February, the Mutual affiliated itself with the Federació Catalana de l'Ensenyament Lliure (Catalan Federation of Free Education), the Catalan version of the FAE.Footnote 72 The community made the necessary alterations to the buildings that completely separated the school from the convent. The eighteen sisters who continued teaching lived in a special section of the school, apart from the cloistered areas of the community. To attend services or join the community when it was deemed safe required that they enter the chapel from the street, an action that cost them dearly since they placed such a high value on their rules of enclosure.
The school was able to function with few significant problems. Owing to a lack of credentialed teachers, at least two seminarians and one lay woman taught courses in rooms set up in the parlor area of the convent.Footnote 73 The community proudly reported that the school offered everything that the public schools did. The sisters, nonetheless, clearly lived in fear that they would be discovered. They began to use the title “señorita” even when gathering with the rest of the community in locations where someone might be listening from the street.Footnote 74
Visits from city officials were often a cause for alarm. One arrived in January, soon after the turnover of the school, demanding to inspect the hygienic conditions, not only of the school, but the cloister as well. Diocesan officials contacted the mayor who assured the community that no such order had been given.Footnote 75 Other similar examples demonstrate that the cover the diocese and community had conjured had to be carefully guarded. The school functioned in a precarious situation with many people closely watching. The cardinal warned the prioress to exercise “greater caution . . . in answers given, either orally or in writing, to questions, requests or communications from any persons or entities.”Footnote 76 To avoid revealing sensitive information when city officials demanded immediate answers, the prioress was to direct them to diocesan representatives. Soon, diocesan officials accompanied inspectors who visited the school.
The November 1933 elections resulted in a victory of the right in the province of Tarragona. Five of the seven deputies elected to the Cortes belonged to the more conservative coalition, Unión Ciudadana.Footnote 77 The city of Tarragona, however, still voted strongly republican, making it necessary for the community to maintain the façade.Footnote 78 The January 1934 municipal elections further confirmed its republican stance as Pere Lloret continued as mayor with a majority of the council from the left. Lloret's support of Lluís Companys's declaration of the “Catalan State in a Federal Republic” during the October 1934 uprising, however, resulted in his dismissal after troops quickly moved in to quell the unrest.Footnote 79 A new “Managing Commission,” formed mostly by members of the Lliga Catalana and the Radical parties, ran the municipal government until the elections of 1936, which returned Lloret as mayor with a decidedly leftist council.Footnote 80
The July coup spelled the end of the Company of Mary's presence in the city. Troops quartered in Tarragona remained loyal to the government, keeping Tarragona within the Republican territories until the end of the Civil War. Catholic leaders called for a new compromise with the government that would truly remove the religious from teaching while protecting the right to maintain Catholic schools with their own academic programs. The proposal, however, fell on deaf ears.Footnote 81 The government ordered the confiscation of Catholic schools. Municipal authorities informed the community that they were to vacate by July 21. The city turned the facilities into a graded school for the duration of the war.Footnote 82 This left the school intact, but not the community's chapel. Soon after the nuns left, crowds attacked the area of the city known as the “little Vatican,” destroying the interior of the recently renovated cathedral and stripping the nuns' chapel of all ornamentation. They burned religious images, including the remains of Saint Ursicina, the prized relic of the community, whose life the teachers encouraged their students to emulate.Footnote 83
The sisters fled to their families while some congregated in an apartment owned by one of the sister's families. For reasons not explained, a small group of them were detained for a time by authorities, with two of the sisters jailed for two months before finally seeking refuge with relatives. Only three of the nuns escaped to other houses of the Order, one to Limoges, France and two to the community in Vergara.Footnote 84 They returned after the war was over and reestablished the school under the new regime.
IV. Tudela and the Role of Alumnae
In the cases of Valladolid and Tarragona, the Company of Mary, in cooperation with their respective bishops, kept schools open with the aid of diocesan organizations made up of parents of students, family members of the sisters, and prominent men in the diocese. Another common approach was to draw on the resources of former students. The sisters in Tudela relied on the Liga de Mujeres Tudelanas (League of Women of Tudela), an association founded by a former student, María Gaztambide. The League was first established to aid in the Church's campaign to rechristianize society. The association would soon become the front organization for the school.
Tudela had formed part of the Diocese of Tarazona since 1851, when it lost its independent status in a forced restructuring of dioceses. Technically, the bishop served as Apostolic Administrator, allowing the dean and staff of the local cathedral to retain many of the privileges they once held. The actual bishop, until 1933, was the traditionalist Isidro Gomá. While bishop of Tarazona, he focused on organizing the laity of his See. Like many other bishops, he believed that the Confederation of Fathers of Families, established in the diocese at his insistence in 1930, could serve as a significant force in stemming the tide of liberal reforms that Gomá saw as detrimental to Spain.Footnote 85 Gomá left Tarazona for Toledo in 1933 when the Vatican appointed him to fill the vacancy left by Cardinal Segura's expulsion. It took two years before Nicanor Mutiloa e Irurita succeeded him as bishop. The lack of a bishop for nearly two years hindered a more coordinated diocesan plan and reinforced the development of very local responses to the challenges faced by the Church in the Ribera region of Navarre.
The enforcement of the Republic's anticlerical legislation and secularization policies in a small city such as Tudela evoked a period of intense mobilization of Catholics on the local level. Nationally, Catholic women's groups organized at a rate not previously witnessed in Spain. Although the anticlerical presses viewed such mobilization as a further example of the social control exercised by the Church, Inmaculada Blasco and Monica Moreno Seco have demonstrated that these women acted out of a politicized sense of mission and should not be dismissed as lacking independent action.Footnote 86 The formation of the Mujeres Tudelanas supports their findings of Catholic women who adhered to traditional feminine roles in marriage and family, yet claimed an active role in the public sphere of social action based on a belief in a special call to reform society and defend faith and family.
The women of the Mujeres Tudelanas interpreted the events of 1931 in the light of a general attack on religion. El Ribereño Navarro, the local conservative newspaper, even went so far as to characterize the present struggle as a “hostility never known in history . . . forming an atmosphere saturated with anti-Christian hatred and a sectarian spirit.”Footnote 87 Although the newspaper greatly exaggerated the actual situation, the perception of persecution acted as a powerful force. As Maria Thomas demonstrates in her study over the battle for the public sphere, symbols and public space became key battlegrounds in the Republic's wider program of secularization.Footnote 88 In Tudela, one of the earliest confrontations was the protest by thirty-six men and women over the city's removal of “religious emblems” (mainly crucifixes) in the schools, for which the protesters received a substantial fine. Those very crucifixes were then used for the new Catholic boys' school sponsored by the local chapter of the Fathers of Families.Footnote 89 The governor levied fines for displaying religious symbols from one's balcony.Footnote 90 Even smaller gestures seemed to convey the message that the Republic wanted nothing to do with God. The government in Pamplona and the municipality of Tudela, for example, did not dispose of the stationery and form letters from the days of the monarchy. Officials of the new government simply blotted out the cross atop the crown and the words “May God keep you for many years” inscribed on the letterhead. Catholics interpreted these actions as open hostility to faith.Footnote 91
In response to the perceived dechristianization in Tudela, local Catholics organized themselves into new associations such as the Liga de Mujeres Tudelanas. María Gaztambide formed the Liga in December 1931 with the purpose of “defend[ing] the central interests of the Catholic Religion.” Those interests, according to its statutes, gave preference to “all questions related to teaching, especially at the primary level in this city, and to see that it conforms to Christian doctrine and morals.” The women also labored to “defend the sanctity of marriage . . . and to guard against practices condemned by the Church, in particular, divorce.”Footnote 92
Reports stated that the Liga's inaugural meeting of March 6, 1932 was well attended.Footnote 93 The former episcopal residence served as the base for lay groups such as the Liga, indicating ecclesial support and a desire to oversee these associations. Gaztambide clearly saw the Liga as a sort of “feminine arm” of the Church and even sought the blessing of the pope, which the group received.Footnote 94 The membership roles of the Liga included many from the working class as indicated by the lauds given in the local confessional press for the charity work it did on behalf of its own members.Footnote 95 By July 1934, the Catholic newspaper, Navarra, reported membership had grown to approximately 1,500.Footnote 96
The activities of the Liga reflected both a conservative outlook and innovative approaches that characterized most lay groups within the Church and illustrated the paradoxes of a Catholic understanding of citizenship, especially in regards to women as identified by Inmaculada Blasco.Footnote 97 The fulfillment of their goals required that the women of the Liga act in the public sphere. Some of the Liga's earliest members received their political initiation in a signature campaign in May 1931 against anticlerical policies of the government. Gaztambide, although not an organizer, was a signatory to the petition.Footnote 98 The mayor summoned thirteen women to appear and charged them with holding an unapproved meeting designed to plan a campaign against the government. Inspired by a similar action in Madrid, the women had intended to send the petition “in defense of religion” to the new central government. The spokesperson, Juana Sanz, denied the charges levied against them, explaining it was a friendly gathering during which the idea surfaced to follow the example of a group of women in Madrid.Footnote 99 Interestingly, many husbands and fathers went to the city hall demanding that the signatures of their daughters and wives be removed as “they did it without their authorization.”Footnote 100
The position taken by male family members sheds light on the challenge the political situation posed where the Church needed women as allies who would be active in the public sphere versus the desire to maintain traditional gender roles. Despite the quashing of the women's signature campaign, the need for active Catholic women continued to challenge stricter understandings of gender roles. The Liga, for example, organized numerous seminars to propagate its ideas and to provide its members with opportunities to learn about “cultural” topics. These conferences focused on the traditional roles of women in the family, morality, and the central role of faith and citizenship. The Liga also invited representatives of conservative political parties, such as the future deputy Luís Arellano of Acción Ciudadana and Santiago Guallart, deputy in the Cortes elected in 1931, to address the membership. Arellano spoke on Catholic feminism and the defense of traditional values while Guallart exhorted the audience to live up to their responsibilities as Catholic citizens during the coming 1933 elections so that “the enemies of the Church would see that we know how to defend our ideas and fulfill our responsibilities.”Footnote 101
The Liga also teamed up with the Fathers of Families to organize a three-day conference on education in May 1934, for which they obtained the services of the well-known Catholic pedagogue Enrique Herrera Oria, SJ.Footnote 102 They prepared veladas, musical and theatrical entertainment, as a means to catechize or expose members to the arts.Footnote 103 In May 1934, the Liga used scarce funds to start a daycare for working mothers who “sought honorably to earn bread for their children” and needed a safe place for them that could provide for their physical needs.Footnote 104
The rapid growth of Catholic associations such as the Liga also illustrated the dilemma of republicans who called for civil liberties, yet feared granting them to all Spaniards. Azaña, in his 1931 speech in the Cortes, had called for strong measures against conservative forces that might use an open political process to defeat the constitution. The Church did, in fact, call for Catholics to become involved, resulting in a politicized laity that could then be mobilized in defense of its ministries and privileges. While defining itself as a non-political organization, the rules also stated that the Liga would support any candidate that furthered its social and religious agendas. The members of the Liga exemplified the Catholic marshaling of women's votes in the 1933 election that contributed to a CEDA victory. José María Gil Robles, leader of the party, even gave special recognition to the Liga for its telegram of support and the letter the organization had sent providing an account of its charitable work in Tudela.Footnote 105
The close relationship between the Liga and the Company of Mary began when the superior of the community, Leona Zabalza, and Gaztambide worked together to establish night classes for young working-class women. The promulgation of the Law of Congregations in June 1933 required that the Company of Mary work even more closely with the Liga. The two parties had a second contract drawn up through which the Order ceded the school to the group. Under the arrangement the Liga obtained full use of the school, including instructional materials, while title for the buildings remained in the hands of the community.Footnote 106 Gaztambide technically served as president and Felicitas Preciado as the onsite Liga representative. Preciado, who had her teaching credentials, was actually a young professed sister portraying herself as a laywoman. The congregation reserved the right to inspect buildings and materials, a provision that permitted the former director to continue in her responsibilities in an indirect way.
The next step was obtaining government permission. The process was rather bureaucratic as the petitioners needed to submit the following paperwork:
• Official petition requesting permission to open a new school, including authorization by the previous director
• Documentation that the school had been operating legally
• Reports attesting that the building met health and building code specifications
• Floor plans showing that the convent was completely separate from the school
• Birth certificates, proof of credentials, and attestations of good character for each teacher
• Class schedules and curriculum
• List of all teaching materials in the school
• School regulations
• Official permission from the local government.Footnote 107
It appears the plan faced limited opposition even though the mayor as well as eleven of the seventeen council members belonged to the leftist block that won the 1931 elections and the city's representatives on the school board included two socialist council members.Footnote 108 Following city approval, the Liga filed the necessary papers in Pamplona, Navarre's capital. The conservative central government elected in 1933 gave its authorization on January 8, 1934.Footnote 109
In its application, the Company of Mary declared that it was completely pulling out of instruction and ceding all its work to the Liga de Mujeres Tudelanas. The Liga, moreover, declared that it would employ secular teachers only.Footnote 110 This was far from the truth as the Tudela sisters also found ways to circumvent the law. The government in Madrid required that each community submit a detailed membership list and financial reports. Trusting that the government could not keep track of thousands of names from over 3,200 religious communities, the superior simply did not include younger community members who held teaching credentials.Footnote 111 The Liga's paperwork submitted in Pamplona listed seven women as petitioners, yet three of them were actually religious.Footnote 112 Those listed further illustrate the advantage to belonging to the 1921 union of houses that abandoned full papal enclosure. Felicitas Preciado, presented as a member of the Liga, arrived to the community in September 1933.Footnote 113 When the Liga and the community received all necessary permissions, the sisters completed the charade of being laywomen by removing their habits and donning secular clothing. Daily, they walked out of one side door onto the street, rounded the corner, and then reentered through the front doorway of the school.Footnote 114
The organization of the school appears to have remained the same. Classes were divided using the traditional cyclical method with four levels, each with a separate instructor.Footnote 115 The Liga also submitted a list of eleven instructors, six of whom were nuns.Footnote 116 According to oral testimony, the five laywomen of the Liga were remembered as having been former students, with two of them living in the boarding school to care for the interns.Footnote 117 Sisters without the necessary credentials taught the extra classes such as sewing, foreign languages, and so forth, as well as assisting in the night and Sunday schools that the community operated with the assistance of the Liga. Lastly, sisters without certification helped “unofficially” with the approximately 600 students that attended the school as interns, fee-paying day students, or students in the free school. The total number of pupils in the different categories attending the Company of Mary school, now called “Colegio de la Liga de Mujeres Tudelanas” actually rose in comparison to pre-Republican days.Footnote 118
In general, the colegio operated with minimal interference. This was, of course, primarily a result of the 1933 elections and the fact that Navarre, as a whole, tended to side with the right. The northern and central areas of the province continued as Carlist strongholds, although it should be noted that the left remained fairly strong in Tudela. Other factors included an ineffective local government weakened by contentious political battles among council members. Significant labor unrest reported in newspapers and council meeting minutes often diverted the attention of local officials. The formidable task of fixing the extremely weak public school system during a serious economic downturn further contributed to keeping the government's focus elsewhere. Lastly, it should be noted that the nuns had a long and positive relationship with the city at large, spanning some 250 years, and had a reputation for providing a quality education to both paying and free students.
The Liga de Mujeres Tudelanas continued the direction of the school until the 1936–1937 school year.Footnote 119 The victory of the left in 1936 and the new government's expropriation order moved the community to investigate turning the school over to SADEL. The sisters hoped that a nationally strong organization would provide greater protection for the school. There is little evidence of enthusiasm for the expropriation decree on the local government level despite the election victory of the leftist coalition. The candidates of the Popular Front in Tudela's municipal elections made no reference to substitution in their platform.Footnote 120 In addition, Teófilo Martínez, who was president of the local council for elementary education for Tudela in 1936, clearly demonstrated his sympathies for Catholic schools. In 1932, he had been one of two teachers accused of protesting the removal of crucifixes from the public school classrooms.Footnote 121 In the end, the community had little to fear as Tudela fell to the Nationalists in the first stage of the Civil War.
V. Conclusion
This article presented the three houses in this study as generally representative of the response of religious communities to the Law of Congregations: ceding schools to front organizations and then reentering as lay staff members. The local context, however, influenced which groups were chosen and the structures that they put in place. Both men and women's communities shared this experience, although it is safe to assume that day-to-day life in men's communities was more difficult as anticlericalism historically was directed primarily at priests and brothers, in particular, the Jesuits.Footnote 122 Despite the increased attention on women's education under the Republic, women's communities and the schools they staffed were often not a priority in comparison to boys' schools. As María Pilar Salamón Chéliz and Enrique Sanabria have shown, part of this reaction can be understood as based on old fears of the priest's control over women, especially through the confessional.Footnote 123 In addition, critics perceived Catholic boys' schools as maintaining a dangerous status quo by producing a passive working class and a domineering upper class. The clergy, therefore, remained the primary enemy.
The strategy of using this legal cover permitted religious men and women to continue the academic and faith formation of the students, but it required a greater willingness to collaborate with the laity in ways that were new to most communities. The overall approach of the Church toward the Republic brought together different sectors of the Church in an attempt to act as a well-coordinated entity that could maneuver effectively in the new political environment. In the case of the Company of Mary, this collaboration formulated the structures and provided community leadership with the counsel and social connections that enabled the sisters to keep the schools operational and to maintain a certain level of control over their ministries.
The plan required a very literal reading of the Law of Congregations and a pretense of compliance. Despite the desire to avoid a “legal fiction,” the nuns were not following the letter of the law and certainly not the spirit of it. Ultimately, the new government installed in 1933 chose to turn a blind eye to the subterfuge that made the ruse possible. One wonders how the nuns felt about employing such tactics. The sources that exist give little indication of whether the sisters felt any moral compunction regarding the façade they constructed. Rather than concern for ethical implications, one gets the sense that the sisters resented the political situation that put them in the position of resorting to such measures. Education of youth had become the principal battleground among groups seeking to establish their particular vision for the future. Despite any difficulty they may have felt, they saw themselves in a great struggle and their mission had to be protected despite the “thorns and bitterness” resulting from the “evil and disorder” of the times.Footnote 124
The two mutuals and the women of the Liga concretely illustrate the mobilization of the Catholic population whose members increasingly came to see the Republic as invading their private lives.Footnote 125 They reflect the growing alienation of Catholics that exemplifies the detrimental results of the Republic's religious policies. This article presented the two mutuals and the Liga as representative of moderate Catholic positions. These more moderate approaches, however, were eventually sidelined as integrist groups and their increasingly intransigent rhetoric began to find a more sympathetic hearing that ultimately hindered the stabilization of Republican institutions. Moderates increasingly came to believe, especially after the victory of the Popular Front in 1936, that a lasting accord with the government that protected Catholic ministries was doomed to failure. In the end, the extremes of both the right and left came to control the political discourse helping to spark the July 1936 coup. Once the uprising began, most former moderates applauded the Nationalist side as the surest means of safeguarding their causes. The hierarchy, however, would soon discover that Franco subordinated the Church to his needs, but, at least in the first decades of the regime, they preferred life under the dictator to that of the Second Republic.
