The ever-changing features of society and the ensuing social demands prompt an interesting reflection on the topic of initial teacher training. One of the requirements for a quality education system is the involvement of educational professionals beyond the mere transmission of knowledge, thus becoming enablers and promoters of the integral development of the students under their care (Day, 2011; Vaello, 2009).

Currently, there is plenty of research evidencing that the emotional intelligence of teachers influences the teaching-learning process, the academic performance of the students, the climate of the classroom and the quality of interpersonal relationships, while also preventing stress situations and teacher discontent (Pena & Extremera, 2012; Wong, Wong & Peng, 2010). However, there is scarce research on the impact of emotional education training activities for teachers on the level of emotional competence assessed (Bisquerra, Pérez González & García Navarro, 2015; López Goñi & Goñi, 2012, Tossavainen & Turunen, 2013).

On the basis of the contributions of authors such as Serrano (2013) or Pegalajar & López, (2015), we believe that the first recipient of emotional education must be the teachers, mainly due to two reasons: firstly, because they need emotional competences for the exercise of their profession, and secondly, so that they can contribute to the development of the emotional competence of their students, for only a well-trained teacher will be able to implement emotional education programmes in an effective way.

Under these premises, and considering the scarcity of specific programmes designed for the improvement of teacher emotional Intelligence, we proposed the implementation and assessment of a programme for the promotion of emotional competences entitled Pro-Emociona, designed on the basis of previous contributions, theories and studies conducted by experts on the field, and also taking into consideration our own experience as a research group who developed training programmes related to the improvement of coexistence and conflict resolution (Torrecilla, 2014, Torrijos & Martín Izard, 2014).

The implementation of the programme was carried out with pre-service teachers from the Faculty of Education of the University of Salamanca (Spain) who, in the academic year 2014/2015, were in the last years of the Pre-Primary and Primary Education Teacher Bachelor’s Degrees and the University Master’s Degree for Secondary Education, Vocational Education and Language Teachers. As an initial training initiative, and with the support of the Faculty and the University Institute of Educational Sciences (IUCE), we offered two free practical training courses, aiming to assess the impact of this type of training on the promotion of emotional skills such as emotional awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, and well-being, as well as the quality of initial teacher training.

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