Photograph loaned by CEIP Gabriel Janer Manila
During the 18th century, also known as the century of the Enlightenment, a new concept of education began, understood as the basis of the future society. Around this movement of European reformism, led by authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, throughout the 19th century, the guidelines began to be defined to configure a new school system. Until then, illiteracy had been a serious problem, with figures exceeding one third of the Spanish population.
Finally, at the beginning of the 20th century, an educational reform was carried out in parts of Europe. In Spain, for the first time, there was talk of compulsory education and appropriate architecture for this purpose, with the State committing itself to the creation of budgets specifically earmarked for the creation of school buildings. The fight against illiteracy thus became a matter of State. The government obliged each town council to build and maintain primary schools. To this end, the School Building Commission was set up at the provincial level and mass construction was launched on the basis of well-defined general guidelines.
As Jaume Mayol, architect and researcher of Guillem Forteza’s school architecture, rightly points out, in the case of Mallorca, in a context of modernization of the island at the beginning of the 20th century as a result of Mallorcan Regionalism, new schools were promoted and demanded where the latest European trends would be applied. Within this framework, the pedagogue Joan Capó, the school teacher and inspector Fernando Leal and the architect Guillem Forteza, appointed in 1921 as the State Architect Director of School Construction, carried out this task and, following the models set by the Ministry’s Technical Office for School Construction, made possible the construction of 126 school projects on all the islands, thus representing the majority of schooling in the Balearic Islands.
In Marratxí, the Town Council was responsible for building at least one school in each of the four main population centres at the time: Pla de na Tesa, Pont d’Inca, Sa Cabaneta and Pòrtol. Between 1927 and 1933, all these new buildings were built. The first project to be carried out was the Unitary School Group in Pla de na Tesa, in May 1927. It will be a unitary school for boys and girls, with two identical classrooms separated by sexes and with a teacher for the dolls and a teacher for the boys.
Regionalist in style, it is defined to follow the principles of modern architecture, where form and function go hand in hand. Aspects such as optimum lighting, hygienic structures, good orientation and lower construction costs stand out, based on a simple, compact and austere architecture, where the few decorative motifs are used exclusively to dignify access to the building. 1929 saw the inauguration of most of the new schools in Marratxí, marking a great milestone in the improvement of education and the evolution towards a better society.
