6533b7d1fe1ef96bd125d541

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Workers’ Institutes: envisioned community, living community

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This article focuses on the Workers’ Institutes (WI), one of the most important educational initiatives undertaken by the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936–1939). After framing their creation within the context of European trends in higher education for the working classes and within the Spanish socio-political context, this article examines the role of these institutions as an envisioned community and as a living community, dedicated to serving the Republic as an imagined community. Legal documents, political and pedagogical speeches, as well as opinion pieces, portray the WI as an envisioned community. As such, they represented the transformations and disseminated the aspirations of the new political regime. Furthermore, the experiences of those who studied in the WI, collected via a range of texts, as well as oral and written interviews, portray the institution as a living community. Accordingly, this article describes students’ attitude regarding the political discourse on the WI as envision...