Educación física e inicios del proceso nacionalizador en las monarquías española y francesa del siglo XIX: una aproximación comparativa con el caso alemán

Abstract

Following the crisis of the Ancien Regime, the monarchy was forced to adapt to the liberal revolution and had to diversify its sources of legitimacy, turning to new propaganda strategies to reinforce its authority over its subjects. Taking a comparative European perspective, this article analyses the foundations of the system of physical education developed by Francisco Amoros, a utililitarian method geared towards instructing the young and the army. It focuses on the gestation process for this method in Spain, born within the Pestalozziano Royal Military Institution, under the auspices of Charles IV of Bourbon, analysing his Cantiques religieux et moraux (Paris, 1818), the media repercussions of which enabled the Bourbon monarchy of Louis XVIII to finance the Gymnase normal militaire et civile in Paris, aimed at training the future physical and moral educators of the French monarchy, and one of the most prolific breeding grounds for French patriots in the 1820s. The urgent need for a good national system of exercise became patent during the Second Empire, when, in 1868, the Minister for Public Instruction under Emperor Napoleon III sent a committee to several European countries to study which system would best feed into the internally strengthen the State. The Prussian patriotic model of exercise would be present, as a gold standard, in almost all European projects of nationalisation.