"Many venerable institutions and many famous regimes, praised by men, perished in the storm, but the Boy Scout movement survived. Not only survived the Great War but the bungling of the post war times. While many elements of life and spirit of nations seemed to be mired in stupor, that one flourished and grew intensely. Its motto takes on new national significance as the years pass on our island. Bring to every heart its message of honor and duty: be ready to defend Law and Truth, whatever the whipping winds are”
(Great Contemporaries, Winston Churchill, 1937.)
The history of the Scouts in Spain began in 1912 and went through underground 1940 until the restoration of democracy. At present, it is in our country a voluntary education movement for more than sixty thousand children and young associates, which encourages commitment, freedom, awareness of social issues and helping others, with adapted, continuous an suggestive schemes of activities in areas such as health education, social equality, environmental culture, education for peace and development and promoting quality of life of children and adolescents.
The institution of the Scouts in Spain has gone through all the stages that the Spanish character goes printing along the time on any person or work. It creates it, animates it, rises it up, sinks it or forgets it. A day in Madrid, drumbeats and trumpets blowing crossed the streets by small boys wearing an uniform symmetrically formed. The year of 1912 in Spain saw the Scouts to take presence, under the initiative of its initiator Sir Robert Baden Powell and Don Arturo Cuyás.
Robert Baden, in view of the vicissitudes and hardships of the campaign against the Boers, understood the need and usefulness of educating youth in a positive and fundamental way by making them robust, enhancing their love of their country, preparing future citizens in all virtues and directing them to banish all evil. He thought that forming a strong, moral and educated youth. He would transform his country making it strong, free and independent. And effectively, England responded and still responds to these dictates. That was strong and rich was clear due to his army, the most efficient in the world, and its colonies, forming a grand empire. Freedom was and still is absolute, as citizenship rights are fully guaranteed. For all these reasons Scouts of Spain were a hope for our country, we just simply need to see the objects for which they were made and for which they were organized.
The life of Spain scouts was a school of class equality much more complete than the actual school where students used to be distinguished between those who attended the school for free and those who paid a fee to the teacher. Common and outdoor life matches from the first years of life the different social conditions. It's a little-known historical episode, as it's incredible, but Franco in 1940 banned the institution in Spain. In the late fifties, the regime opened the doors slightly to the scout movement but it was always under control and assigning the direction of the movement to the Church.
Sir Robert BAden visitó a los Exploradores de España en Madrid, en Octubre de 1918, en 1929 visitó Cádiz, Palma de Mallorca y Tenerife, en 1934 Gibraltar y al años siguiente volvió a Tenerife. Los Exploradores de España en esos años obsequiaron a su Majestad el Rey de Inglaterra con un sillón de nogal tallado y de cuero repujado de estilo Renacimiento Español.
When Franco blocks the life of to the most famous form of nubile socialization that had been established in Europe in the early twentieth century, he does because he perceives in this organization the seed of Freemasonry. Not even the sympathy of Baden-Powell to fascist European thoughts in the 30s in Europe, free him from judging the movement under the anti-Masonic personal phobia which devoured him.
In return for the disappearance of the young "masons" scouts Franco created the Youth Front, a kind of daughter of Falange. Over the time, the Youth Front became the OJE: Spanish Youth Organization. They changed some aesthetics of the scouts such as the salute with his left hand which was replaced by the much more vigorous Roman salute
Sir Robert Baden Scouts visited Spain, Madrid in October 1918, then Cadiz in 1929, Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife and Gibraltar in 1934, returning to Tenerife in 1935. Spanish Scouts in those days made a gift to His Majesty the King of England of a carved walnut armchair with embossed leather of the Spanish Renaissance style.
Algeciras, the fourteenth of January 2010.
By Jesús Castro.
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