Ir a la escuela en la guerrael reflejo de la cotidianeidad en los cuadernos escolares

Abstract

This article is based upon the analysis of 70 school exercise books that were used in village public schools of Spain between 1936 and 1939. We have compared the texts written in the republican and the francoist areas. Our starting point is that the school exercise books form an almost unknown and unexplored source for the Spanish researchers until now, that can be really useful for approaching the daily life during the Civil War and for analysing the deep existing differences between the two sides in conflict. We have studied these documents in three different ways. First, we explored the way in which, from the perspective of the school, everyone of both Spains was defined in front of the adversary. Second, we have done a specific analysis of the private letters included inside the school exercise books that became very important in moments marked by the absences and the distance of the beloved ones. Finally, we used some testimonies about the daily life in the period of war �the so called «banal writings»� that gave us some valuable information about the way in which anonymous people had lived the tragedy of the war.