The idea of a public education comes from the liberal revolutions of the ends of 18th century. In France, under the Ancient Regime all the schools were run by the Catholic Church. After the 1789 French Revolution, the National Assembly declared the right of all citizens to a public and freeeducation.

The Public Education Act of 1857, best known as Moyano Act, was the first law to set the educational levels and compulsory primary education. But there were numerous problems to implement it, among them the following ones: the lack of schools which coupled with separate education for boys and girls, and the focus on boys schooling that led to lower schooling rates among girls.

From the beginning of the twentieth century, until the Second Republic, the Galician emigrants in America sent money to build schools in Galicia.

Most of the Galician emigrants were illiterate. So, they were well aware of the difficulties of emigrating without having an education. Therefore, they financed the construction of schools, as a way to guarantee the training of the new generations and to pull young people out of illiteracy.

These emigrants wanted to bring to Galicia a neweducational model, based on the most advanced educational systems of America: the ones from the United States and Uruguay. The main principles of these educational systems were:

• The elimination of corporal punishments in school.

• A more experimental teaching, new learning materials.

• A reason based teaching,.

• New architectural design of schools.

• Providing schools with bigger classrooms, ligth, bathrooms and shower rooms.

The educational reform was meant to be the engine of social change aimed by the Republic. During this period, more schools were built than ever before, teacher training was improved, active teaching methods were encouraged, the freedomto teach was respected, the neutrality in teaching was obliged. Two capital objectives were, the improvement of school access opportunities and the achiement of free access to primary education. The reform was inspired and supported by the Free Learning Institution, founded in 1876 by Francisco Giner de los Ríos and others.

Pedagogical Missions were formed by teachers, professors, students, artists and intellectuals. These pedagogical missions travelled all around the country, to rural areas carrying out cultural activities such as film showings, theatre plays, puppet theatre, musical auditions or lectures.

Since the beginning of the Civil War in July 1936, Galicia was incorporated into the insurgent camp. The destruction of the civil society began. Terror and education were key tools to achieve it. Many teachers were punished, even shot dead. The indoctrination: the education was carried out within the frame of the national Catholicism. It sought to eliminate critical thinking. It conveyed the idea of an only valid single world view.