Rescued from oblivion: Antoni Benaiges and transgressive pedagogy in El maestro que prometió el mar (Font, 2023)

Authors

• Parker Lawson, Belmont UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Publication Title

Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies

Abstract

Patricia Font’s historical drama, El maestro que prometió el mar (2023), focuses on the pedagogy of Antoni Benaiges (1903–1936), a Republican educator who served for two years at a school in rural Burgos prior to being assassinated just days after the Nationalist uprising in July 1936. Focused also on the efforts to recuperate the legacy of Benaiges, whose body was deposited in a mass grave and has never been identified, the film employs a dual timeline narrative, telling interconnected stories in the past and the present to shed light on pre-Civil War education and contemporary discourses and practices of historical memory in Spain. Benaiges embraced the pedagogical principles of Célestin Freinet, who advocated the use of manual printing presses which students used to create their own publications. By conducting a close reading of the film alongside the historical record, this article posits that Benaiges was a transgressive pedagogue, one who challenged the status quo and ultimately paid with his life. The article ruminates on Benaiges’s transgressive approach and use of Freinetian methods to argue that the film enhances our understanding of educational innovation in pre-Civil War Spain and the ongoing efforts to recuperate the memory of victims of Francoist violence

Recommended Citation

Lawson, P. (2026). Rescued from oblivion: Antoni Benaiges and transgressive pedagogy in El maestro que prometió el mar (Font, 2023). Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 27(1), 37-59. https://doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2026.2623690