EF Stock/ShutterstockThe Spanish civil war lasted from 1936 to 1939, and led to the repressive Francisco Franco dictatorship, which lasted until 1975. Today, 90 years after the war broke out, it remains a traumatic, controversial part of Spain’s collective memory, and still weighs heavily on ideological and political debates.Teaching it is vital, not just to understand the country’s relatively recent past, but also to lay the foundation of understanding on which civic and democratic education can be built.But Spanish students leave school having barely studied this crucial chapter of Spain’s past, along with its causes and effects. Gaps in teachingSpain’s education system is jointly managed by the national government and the government of each region. Although education laws have changed in recent years, none give the civil war the time or attention it deserves.The most recent education law took some steps in this direction, but there is still very little classroom time given to teaching what the civil war was, and how and why it came about.This period is only taught in the fourth year of high school (ages 15-16), the last year of compulsory education. It is taught in history, which receives three hours per week. But this subject does not just cover Spanish contemporary history – it also includes European history, including artistic movements and milestones. In some of Spain’s autonomous communities – such as Madrid, Murcia and Extremadura – the focus is narrowed to the 20th century, which grants more time to the civil war. Leer más: ‘Historical time’ helps students truly understand the complexity of the past – and how they fit into it After high school, students who continue into Baccalaureate (ages 16-18) study a second year of Spanish History. This focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries, though some regions cover earlier times. Madrid, for instance, also looks at prehistory, while Murcia’s curriculum covers ancient history.The result: it is very difficult to address the civil war and the dictatorship in any depth, leaving students with significant gaps in their learning. These include misconceptions regarding basic timelines, a failure to link the civil war to its wider European context, the moral equivalence of the warring sides, and a lack of understanding of how deeply Francoist repression affected Spanish society.This overall confusion leads some Spanish people to romanticise the Franco dictatorship.Beyond the classroomThese structural difficulties are not the only limitation in studying the Spanish civil war. Two other elements play a decisive role.First are the textbooks used in history classes. While they are undeniably better than they used to be, they still fail to address key issues like Francoist repression, gender, and the civil war’s social impacts.Textbooks do not closely examine the local reality of life under the dictatorship, nor do they use examples relevant to students’ lives. And when women are included in the historical narrative, there is little attention to gender-specific repression, or to resistance and acts of defiance.Second is teacher training. This is vital to filling the gaps in school textbooks, but it depends heavily on university courses. And many university history courses have similar problems to those of the 4th year of high school: syllabuses that are impossible to cover in full, and not enough attention paid to controversial areas of recent history.This means that not even history teachers have closely studied this historical period at university. Leer más: The 1930s municipal elections that put an end to the monarchy in Spain Uncritical narrativesWhen the civil war is taught in Spanish classrooms, it often leans on uncritical narratives. These include the idea that the conflict was inevitable, or that the Second Republic (the democratically elected regime that governed Spain in 1936) shared blame with the Francoist rebels who staged a coup against it. These versions of events were used by the Franco dictatorship to reinforce its legitimacy.The rise of the global and Spanish far right also poses a challenge, particularly because of its ambiguous or openly sympathetic stance on Francoism and its rejection of policies that address the dictatorship’s legacy. It has helped to normalise and legitimise conflict and hostility in the classroom, as students now encounter narratives about the war on social media that are typically far removed from decades of academic research. Leer más: Culture is the far right’s secret weapon – and it’s winning over some of Europe’s most educated youth How to teach the Spanish civil warGiven this reality, we have to pay attention to what teachers are actually doing in the classroom. This is what my recently published book, Teaching Francoism: Recent History and Democratic Memory in the Classroom (only available in Spanish), explores. Some teachers, particularly those committed to addressing democratic memory and to teaching history in a way that fosters critical citizenship, are making conscious decisions when dealing with the subject of the civil war. They are, among other things, approaching the subject from an international perspective, and through socio-cultural history. They also account for individual and collective choices during the war and dictatorship, incorporate the experiences of soldiers, women, children and exiles, or focus on repression during the dictatorship. In practice, they do this by using a range of historical sources beyond the “war canon” that predominates teaching about the war. Instead, they draw on the oral sources available in a wide range of repositories, and examine historical photographs. They also take students on educational walking tours to find visible remnants of the war in Spanish towns and cities (such as trenches and buildings), and use alternative sources like graphic novels.These practices highlight the need for teachers themselves to take deliberate action and address structural shortcomings in order to put Spain’s recent history on the curriculum. The civil war may still be a controversial subject, but teaching it is essential for equipping pupils with the tools they need to live in a democratic society. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!Néstor Banderas Navarro no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.