Civic and citizenship education has long been a field of political and moral contestation in Spain (Vázquez Ramil & Porto Ucha, 2020; Groves & Navarrete-Sánchez, 2025). Building on previous research on the historical evolution of citizenship models in Spanish education policy, this paper argues that these controversies cannot be portrayed as a clash of ideologies over values and moral content alone. Rather, they are recurrently articulated as struggles over the legitimacy of knowledge: who is entitled to define civic aims for schooling, on what epistemic grounds, and through which forms of expertise political choices appear acceptable, neutral, or inevitable (Burnham, 2001; Porter, 1995; Biesta, 2007; Tröhler, 2023).
The paper takes the confrontation between two different conceptions of citizenship embedded in the education reforms enacted by a progressive government in 2006 (LOE) and a conservative government in 2013 (LOMCE) as its analytical core, situating this peak episode within a longer historical trajectory that includes the comprehensive education reforms of 1970, 1985 and 1990 (Espigardo Tocino & Cabrera Montoya, 2016). This genealogical perspective allows the study to trace shifts in the regimes of epistemic authority through which civic education has been justified over time (Tröhler, 2006). These shifts include (González-Moreno, 2021) developmentalist and technocratic rationales linked to modernisation (1970), democratic participation and rights (1985), pedagogical professionalism and comprehensive schooling (1990), and, increasingly, evaluative, competence-based and performance-oriented frameworks from the 2000s onwards (Ydesen & Andreasen, 2019).
Engaging directly with the conference theme, the paper treats education as an arena where past, present and future are entangled rather than sequential (Cowen, 2002). Historical reforms are approached not as closed episodes, but as repositories of justificatory strategies, categories and unresolved uncertainties that continue to shape contemporary debates (McCulloch, 2016). In this sense, the study responds to calls within the history of education to interrogate how knowledge of the past is mobilised—or selectively forgotten—in the governance of educational futures (Westberg, 2021).
The European and international dimension is central to this analysis. Consistent with earlier findings on the internationalisation of Spanish education policy discourse, the paper examines how transnational references (OECD recommendations, PISA results, EU coordination frameworks) are mobilised as sources of epistemic legitimacy in national reforms (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Grek & Ozga, 2010). These references function as technologies of synchronisation, aligning national policy with globally circulating narratives of quality, effectiveness and evidence (Porter, 1995). At the same time, they open new spaces of contestation, as political actors challenge the neutrality, applicability or democratic legitimacy of international benchmarks in the civic domain.
This contextualisation allows us to explore the extent to which contestations over citizenship education in Spain address not only specific curricular contents, but also the epistemic frameworks through which certain orientations are presented as objective, neutral or evidence-based, particularly via appeals to expertise, evaluation and international comparison (Tröhler, 2023). Accordingly, the objectives are threefold: to map historically the dominant regimes of epistemic authority invoked to legitimise civic education across key reforms; to analyse how LOE (2006) and LOMCE (2013) deploy technical vocabularies and transnational references to justify divergent normative projects; and to identify forms of resistance that target not only civic contents, but also the claims of neutrality and objectivity underpinning curriculum design (Biesta, 2007).
The theoretical framework combines scholarship on depoliticisation and technical governance, studies of numbers and audit cultures as sources of authority, and research on globalising education policy (Burnham, 2001; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Together, these perspectives enable an analysis of citizenship education as a historically situated field in which normative conflict is repeatedly reconfigured—rather than resolved—through technical forms of legitimation (Ball, 2003; Tröhler, 2006).

This paper adopts a historically informed policy analysis with a qualitative discourse-analytic strategy (McCulloch, 2016). Sources are organised by reform episode and include the education laws themselves (LGE 1970; LODE 1985; LOGSE 1990; LOE 2006; LOMCE 2013); pertinent associated curricular decrees, with particular attention to provisions related to civic education, values, competences, standards and evaluation; and parliamentary speeches linked to each reform, including plenary sessions and education committee debates. Parliamentary material is selected through purposive, theory-driven sampling aimed at capturing explicit justificatory and contestatory arguments. Priority is given to ministerial interventions and main education spokespersons; to debates at key legislative moments (opening framing, ministerial defence, final approval); and to passages containing triggering terms that indicate disputes over epistemic legitimacy, such as neutrality, objectivity, indoctrination, quality, evaluation, standards and competences, as well as references to OECD, PISA and EU frameworks (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Grek & Ozga, 2010). The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, a genealogical mapping identifies, for each reform episode, the dominant regime of epistemic authority invoked to legitimise civic formation in schooling, focusing on who speaks with authority and on what grounds (Cowen, 2002; Tröhler, 2013). Second, a focused comparative analysis of the 2006–2013 period examines the mechanisms through which technical vocabularies and transnational references support or challenge normative commitments (Porter, 1995). Coding categories include: type of authority (technocratic, democratic-legal, pedagogical-professional, evaluative/accountability, transnational); technical devices (competences, standards, external evaluation, indicators); political operations (legitimising change, delegitimising opponents, claiming neutrality, invoking international necessity); and forms of resistance (indoctrination claims, neutrality disputes, critiques of measurement and Europeanisation). Credibility is strengthened through source triangulation (law texts, curricular decrees and parliamentary debate) and transparent sampling and coding rules enabling analytical replication (Westberg, 2021).

The paper is expected to demonstrate that conflicts over citizenship education in Spain are best understood as historically shifting struggles over legitimate authority, rather than as episodic ideological confrontations (Tröhler, 2013; Navarrete, 2023). Across successive reforms, technical expertise and transnational comparison have increasingly functioned as key legitimising resources, particularly in the period surrounding the 2006–2013 confrontation (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Grek & Ozga, 2010). For this period, the analysis is likely to show that technical vocabularies—competences, standards, evaluation, quality and evidence—do not neutralise normative disagreement, but rather reconfigure it (Ball, 2003; Biesta, 2010). Political conflict is displaced towards disputes over objectivity, neutrality and epistemic authority, visible in parliamentary debates through accusations of indoctrination, appeals to constitutional limits and critiques of evidence-based or internationally aligned governance (Burnham, 2001; Flinders & Buller, 2006). By embedding this analysis in a longer historical trajectory, the paper highlights how contemporary modes of governing citizenship education draw on earlier justificatory logics while responding to new uncertainties linked to globalisation and measurement (Cowen, 2002; Van Ruyskensvelde et al., 2021). In line with the conference theme, the study uses historical inquiry to inform future-oriented debates about legitimacy, transparency and democratic accountability in educational policy, particularly in normatively charged curricular domains such as citizenship education (Westberg, 2021).

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