Los periodistas y el derecho a la educación para todos

Abstract

After some blundering, the Spanish press became, from the 1780’s, one of the main means of diffusion for Enlightenment, that could not remain the prerogative of the Elite only. Many journalists indeed presented the newspapers as an extraordinary means for diffusing knowledge and progress, essential for all of those who wanted to contribute to a broad diffusion of this Enlightenment. In the name of the universal right to education, some publicists, dreaming of gaining new markets, decided to speak to those who usually had no access to knowledge (rural workers, craftsmen, women…). This paper presents and analyses the projects of these Don Quixote of the philosophical world, most of which were not carried out, but that show the evolution of society, and participated to the difficult construction of a new Spain that some (as Moratin) wanted to be more equalitarian.