Memories of primary schooling in Spain during Francoism and the democratic transition: A latent profile analysis

Abstract

This article analyzes how retrospective memories of primary schooling are structured across generations educated during and after Francoism and the democratic transition. Its objective is to identify patterns of memory about schooling and to explore their distribution across generational cohorts. Based on a retrospective questionnaire administered to adults born between 1942 and 1993 (N = 295), the study uses latent profile analysis to identify configurations of school memory across dimensions related to school practices: teaching methods, curricular content, school organization, environment, innovation, and disciplinary practices. The analysis identifies two distinct profiles of remembered school experience. The first is characterized by a greater presence of traditional, punitive, and moral-religious practices, whereas the second presents higher levels of participatory practices and a more open school climate. The generational distribution of these profiles shows differences across cohorts, suggesting the coexistence of elements of continuity and change in remembered school experiences. The findings challenge homogeneous representations of schooling in these periods as remembered by those who experienced them and highlight their heterogeneous, situated, and reconstructed nature. These results should not be interpreted as direct evidence of the historical functioning of the educational system, but rather as retrospectively constructed patterns of memory regarding school experience, distributed across generational cohorts. By examining Spain as a historically specific European case, the study contributes to broader European research on educational memory and the legacies and transformations of schooling across authoritarian and post-authoritarian contexts.