Spain: phantom government and popular initiatives
Spain’s low levels of literacy
Spain is one of the worst-performing countries of the European Union. This is not surprising, since at the beginning of the 20th century 60% of the people were illiterate, as in other Southern-European countries such as Italy and Portugal.
Moreover, there are huge differences in the levels of functional literacy between the various regions. The effects of these low levels of literacy are easy to spot: high rates of unemployment, socio-economic disparities and early school leaves represent a pressing problem for the government.
Policies adopted
What has been done to improve the situation?
Illiteracy was not considered an urgent issue for decades. Just after the end of Franco’s dictatorship (1975) it became a public problem. As a consequence, university students, teachers and other associations started to adopt popular initiatives to promote adult education. These projects grew and developed without any form of state control, from the seventies to the nineties.
First, we find The Peasant Schools, structures located in rural areas of the region of Castilla-Leon. They were introduced to protect the ‘rural way of life’, and they have represented for several years important centers of adult education. Second, the Workers’ Permanent Education Service in Catalonia, encouraged adults to continue their education. It was modeled to offer adult education and prepare people to work.
Popular Universities also represent an important initiative stimulate interests of people at a local level. Last but not least, there were some campaigns promoted by the teachers. Their aim was to provide and entire education system to adults, and they are commonly known as Pedagogical Renovation Movements.
All those projects with had purpose to offer long-life learning, and they were not limited to obtaining a diploma and training for a job. In contrast, those seem to be the focus of modern initiatives.
Explaining the differences
However, it is still not clear why there are very different performances between the regions. Is there not a single national law?
The differences are explained by looking the Spanish state structure. Spain is divided into 17 ‘Autonomous Communities’, that have legislative power in areas such as education, health and social policies. Every region legislates on literacy matters, and the policies can be very diverse, because of the highly divided nature of the territory. The central government has no power to act to tackle illiteracy in a centralized, national way.
Nor in the nineties, nor now, has the Spanish government played a part in Spanish literacy levels. Illiteracy levels still represent a pressing problem for the country.
Photo credits:
Photo 1: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash / Photo 2: Photo by me / Photo 3: Wikimedia
Hi Anna, what an interesting post! I do have a question, because in your text you first write that initiatives without government control developed until the 90s, but you also say that modern initiatives do not seem to focus on long-life learning, and that the Spanish government still does not play a part in literacy levels. So who organises these modern initiatives?
Hi Julia! Thank you for you comment 🙂
Yes, exactly, the government does not have the power to organize a coherent policy at national level to harmonize and improve literacy levels. The reason lies in the fact that each of the Autonomous Community, like Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia, has legislative powers on the matter! Therefore, they legislate however they think is best to tackle the issue.
If you would like to know more about the subject, I highly recommend this article by Guimaraes, Lucio-Villegas & Mayo (2018) https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2017.1283584.
Thank you for your reply, I will take a look at the reading you recommended!
Hi Anna!
You write in your blog that Spain is one of the worst performing countries in the European Union, since, if I understand correctly, the beginning the of 20th century. However, since I assume that was around a hundred years ago, I was wondering how Spain is doing these days? What is the percentage of illiterate people now?
Thank you!
Hi Rozemarijn! The exact percentage depends a bit on the statistic you look at and the survey methods that have been used. To give you an idea, in 2020 the percentage of adult literacy was registered at 98.59 % (https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/literacy-rate-adult-total-percent-of-people-ages-15-and-above-wb-data.html). However, this statistic does not tell you much on the real situation. I suggest to look at PIAAC surveys on adult literacy skills. The most recent I could find dates back to 2020, and the main point is that Spain shows behind-proficiency rates in literacy and numerical skills compared to other participant countries: https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20Spain.pdf.
Hi! You wrote an interesting blog. Since you mention a couple of initiatives that (have) promote(d) adult education, I was wondering whether you have explored the results of those adult education initiatives: have they helped with decreasing the level of illiteracy, and if so, were they really effective or could the level of effectiveness still be improved?
Hi Isis! Thank you for your comment 😁
I think they did surely help to raise awareness on the topic, and gave an opportunity to adults to continue their education path. However, due to several other sectors among which the entrance of Spain in the EU, the scope of those initiatives has changed a bit. By that I mean that the popular initiatives I have mentioned in the blog aimed at providing people with education in a broad sense, focusing (in different manners of course) on individual interests and passions, giving people the opportunity to achieve some kind of self-development. EU initiatives, on the other hand, were mostly focused on making people obtain a diploma and inserting them on the labor market.
I personally think that the first aspect, regarding the self-development and personal dimension, should not be ignored when designing literacy policies. However, the administrative division fo the country certainly does not help in offering an uniform pattern.
Hi Anna! Really liked your piece! I still find it unbelievable that the Mediterranean countries are doing so so terrible at literacy levels… You mentioned that one of the problems could be that the government has nothing to say in the aspect of education and health because this is a local responsibility. What is your opinion about centralizing those policy areas? Do you think that will be feasible or do you think the principle of subsidiarity is justly adhered by leaving it to the communities?
Hi Judith! I appreciate your interest on the topic! First of all, gif you like, I would advise you to have a look at Gonzalo’s post ‘The effect of decentralization on Spanish literacy’ to have a more comprehensive picture on decentralization. In my opinion, it is true that in Spain the regions are very differentiated from each others, and therefore granting such a high degree of autonomy in legislation on health and literacy matters can be beneficial in better tackling specific problems. A central government might not have the same intuition and contact with the people. If I can offer my view on Italian history based on high school knowledge and experience, maybe right after the unification of the country (1861) and the beginning of legislation on the topic, a decentralization of powers could have solved many issues we have now. However, in the case of Spain I believe that the central government maybe should not be deprived totally of its legislating powers on education, if not to set some basic requirements and guidelines.
I hope this answers your question!
Hi Anna, a very interesting and well written blog indeed! At the end of your post, you mention how the government has not played any part in lowering the illiteracy levels in the country at any point in time. What would you say is the biggest reason for this? Could they start doing something now to help their nation?
Hi Gabbie! I would say it is because the government has actually no power to act and the legislation on education is formulated exclusively by the regions. I think the central executive could start by adopting some guidelines or fund national initiatives, or promote awareness campaigns that have a far-reaching scope, but I would say it is quite difficult in such a divided terriroty to effectively tackle the problem in an uniform way.