The origin of social work in Catalonia: the school of social assistance for women (1932-1939)

Abstract

The article describes the circumstances that gave rise to social work training and early professional exercises in Spain and try to understand its meaning given the specific context of the Second Republic. The birth of the first school of social work in Barcelona (1932) can be interpreted as an attempt to update the intervention of the Church at the very time when it is questioned their monopoly of social work. The political split in Spanish society of that time and the Civil War (1936-1939), polarized social positions and, it, allows us to better understand the currents of “social Catholicism” that led to these early experiences. After Franco’s victory (1939), the “National Catholicism” returned to more traditional forms of care.