Literacy in Spain: Research Approaches and Recent Publications

Abstract

The 1980s saw a revival of studies on literacy in Spain, thanks partly to the convergence of economic history and the history of education but above all to the emergence of young historians in conjunction with prestigious specialists in the history of education. This article analyses the latest research to be published in Spain and the part that it has played in the shift from traditional approaches to new methodologies. Against the background of the history of education in Spain, the article assesses such key aspects as the controversial relationship between human capital and literacy, the importance of long‐standing cultural factors in literacy and its geographical distribution, the need for a qualitative history of literacy within the more general framework of the written culture, and the relationships between literacy and modernisation.