Hygiene and hygienism in the Modern School at Barcelona: between the transformations of customs and the tension over traditions

Abstract

This text aims to investigate the ways in which the hygienist rhetoric, prominent at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, it was adapted to the purposes of the Modern School of Barcelona (1901-1906), an anarchist school experiment. Based on Social History concepts, especially from English tradition, the aim was to capture this hygienist trend in the prescriptions produced by the aforementioned school and present in its official journal, the Boletín de la Escuela Moderna, between 1901 and 1906, as well as in the work La Escuela Moderna de Barcelona (1907), published by its founder Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (1859-1909). It was possible to verify, in that school experiment, there was an investment in instilling new knowledge and behaviors in students, since the “old” habits had to be overcome in favor of an improvement in their physical, intellectual and moral health. However, this process was not impassive.