Sometimes, as Bourdieu pointed out, to understand the evolution of a society over time the ideal is to approach the history of something specific; from a family saga, a building or, as in the case at hand, a school. Because that small story limited to a place and a space in the magma of great events can offer with greater clarity, and example, the certainties of how we have changed and, furthermore, make that change more understandable. It is almost always the small traces that help us understand the world better, and Bourdieu was absolutely right about that.
It is relevant due to the formidable history of the San Antonio de Padua School in Carcaixent, known as the Padres Franciscanos school, which this month celebrates a century of existence, one hundred years of teaching activity that began under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and continues all the Spanish tragedies, and not a few hopes, until today. The center, once only for men and currently mixed, in teachers and students, continues to be an educational reference in the region, although its role was key for the generations known as the "boom" of the sixties and seventies, when it was yet to be developed. the public education system in Spain that extended during the 80s.
The school of the Franciscan Fathers experienced the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the turbulent 1930s, the Second Republic, the tragedy of the Civil War, which left its mark on its walls; the Franco regime (with a strange episode that we will detail later), the classes of forty children in uniform with the images of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco in the classrooms, Democracy with the change of model, until today it became a charter school , mixed, of great educational quality and, as a curious fact, with Valencian as the vehicular language.
Moisés Morales, a professor at the center, has prepared an article that will be published in the magazine prepared for the anniversary, in which he precisely details its origins. It all begins with Agustín García Oquendo, a native of Carcaixent, who was a "well-to-do and devout man who in his 1913 will gave two of his ancestral houses (nos. 38 and 40) on Santa Anna Street to the Franciscans, so that schools will be founded." On November 12, 1923, "the San Antonio de Padua School, or as we say in the town "els frares", opened its doors to children and young people from our town and its surroundings."
The friars Francisco Ferrer, Samuel Leal and Francisco Oliver "worked very hard to carry out a new educational system for the time. This first year, Primary education and Higher education in Commerce, Accounting, Commercial Law, English and French were taught." We are talking about exactly a century ago. The Civil War came, and the Franciscan community had to "leave in a hurry," says Moisés; and the school was burned and the Church was devastated. The friars regrouped at the convent of Sant Llorenç de València. The return to reopen the educational center took place on October 4, 1939, with the war already over.
During the Franco regime, the school was a place where many families in the region wanted to place their male children. It was a center of strict discipline with the students, where one could breathe a certain military aroma and physical punishments, but where not a few teachers, religious and lay, already worked to open themselves to changes that would mark many students who achieved great social prestige in their respective Professions.
It is also worth highlighting a curious story that happened during the Dictatorship that has a certain relationship with the school and that was detailed by the Valencian journalist Francesc Bayarri in his book Appointment in Sarajevo (Montesinos). In 1969, Vjekoslav Luburić, who had been the head of the concentration camps in Croatia, an ally of Nazism, during the Second World War, and a refugee in Franco's Spain after the war, was murdered in Carcaixent. His grave is in the Carcaixent cemetery.
His murderer was Ilija Stanić, also a Croatian. There are abundant police documents that relate Luburic's stay in Carcaixent due to his friendship with Miguel Oltra, born in Benifairó de la Valldigna in 1911 and died in Valencia on October 31, 1982, a Franciscan father who became director of the school. The Croatian also had a printing press in Carcaixent from which he provided services to the educational center. A curious story.
Among the many activities that have been carried out over time in this school, Moisés highlights the participation in the popular TVE program Cesta y punto during the years 1967, 1969 and 1970 "with unbeatable results, which contributed to the center a national level recognition". In the 70s, the CSA basketball club (Colegio San Antonio) was founded, "where Guillermo Fabregat began this sporting adventure, with the intention that the school teams could access different competitions; it came to have 37 federated teams in different categories, both male and female.
The San Antonio de Padua School is today a center that educates men and women, with a pedagogy approved among the best, with a vocation for internationalization and with a history that few schools in the Valencian Community have. To celebrate its centenary, a multitude of activities and a large gala dinner have been organized for alumni and teachers. Hundreds of them are organizing for an event that will also be the history of Carcaixent and its region, and that tells like no other about the evolution of Education in Spain.
