Covadonga: birthplace of the Teresian Association

Pedro Poveda was appointed canon of the Shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga in 1906 and, in addition to his duties as canon, he became involved in the study of the educational questions of his times.

In his private diary, we find his own words on this stage of his life, “God knows what He brought me for, still in my youth, to this quiet and peaceful place”. Later on, he remembered, “Seven years of life in the confines of that blessed place can be very productive, and all that was generated there was related to my life’s ideal, which sprang up and crystallized looking at Our Lady, the “Santina”.

In 1928 he recognized that before that image “we prayed, we planned, we envisioned, so to say, the development of the Work.”

The historian Juan José Tuñón has described the Asturian region in Pedro Poveda’s times as a region, which had experienced great changes in a short time and “where the new ideological trends would easily take root”. He also pointed out that it was a promising period in the history of the Shrine of Covadonga because it had become a Diocesan project and its Basilica had been restored. As a consequence a greater number of pilgrims were visiting it.  This was an opportunity for Pedro Poveda to come into contact with the religious spirit of the local people.

Encarnación González, postulator of the Cause of Canonization of Pedro Poveda, considers that the writings of Poveda in this period of time can be grouped in two different blocks:

The initial works oriented to the evangelization of the common people visiting the Shrine of Covadonga, among them:

• Covadonga. Visit to the Santina (1909)
• The voice of the beloved (1908)
• For the wellbeing of the soul (1909)
• For the children (1910)
• A plan of life (1911)

Other writings were especially oriented to the religious preparation of elementary teachers working in public schools and as a way to present his educational ideas.

• Ventures in educational projects An Attempt on Pedagogical Projects (1911) (El Ensayo de Proyectos Pedagógicos).
• Diary of a Foundation (1912) (Diario de una Fundación). It describes the steps and scope of his first project “A Catholic Institution of Education”. (Institución Católica de Enseñanza). This educational project is conceived as encompassing the social, economic, intellectual and religious reality of the times.
• Pedagogical Simulacrum, (1912) (Simulacro Pedagógico) also entitled “Las Academias”,  (The Academies). He  describes a place where teachers are trained and supported. These ideas are later on made reality through the academies he would start.
• About a project Around a Project (Linares, 1913), (Alrededor de un proyecto), a summary of different newspaper articles published in the Spanish press between 1907 and 1912. They were published first by “El Universo” (Madrid, 7 November, 1912)

On July 15, 1912 he took part in the foundation of the magazine “La Enseñanza Moderna”,  (Modern Teaching) in Gijón, which was defined as a periodical of social education. It was edited by the teachers Luis Huertas and José Maria Palacios, his first collaborators. He also contributed to the magazine “La Enseñanza Católica” (Catholic Education), an educational magazine from Madrid, which, in 1912,was planning to create a Catholic Federation of Teachers, an idea that came from Pedro Poveda. This Federation would be extended to all educational centers in the nation as Poveda had planned in his Project.

From all this, it can be deduced that in the closeness to Our Lady (La Santina), Poveda not only assisted the pilgrims, but also reflected on the importance of education and the need to integrate faith and science.

Aware of the responsibility of the State in education, he insisted
on the role to be played by teachers and the need to have Christian educators in the public schools. He published several writings on the educational challenge of the training of teachers, and on account of this, UNESCO has considered him an Educator and Pedagogue.

Poveda did not remain isolated in Covadonga. He took advantage of his stay there and made it a center of operations from which to visit the University of Oviedo, a national center of cultural life, the city of Gijon, where he started his pedagogical projects, and he also made contact with Madrid and Linares, his hometown.

In 1911, he opened an  “academia”  (academy) for male teachers. He was interested in the advancement of women, whose importance and incidence in society he perceived, and so he also opened an academy for girls studying at the Teachers Training School. The “Academy” was conceived by Poveda as part of a wider plan for the Christian preparation and educational renewal of teachers. He intended it to strengthen their professional teamwork and to introduce them to European teaching methods within the context of their own national educational system.

Professor Armando Pego Puigbó has written about Poveda during this period and he points out that the image of Pedro Poveda is attractive “because he presents ambitious objectives, shared by other educators of his time, objectives such as the professional association of teachers and the renewal of teaching methods”.

He believes that, after the experience of Guadix (1894-1905) caring for the poor and supporting their social advancement, in Covadonga Poveda has a change of paradigm, and that in his Ensayo de Proyectos Pedagógicos (1911) “one can find in full bloom his idea on education assumed by the State and the active role of the laity in that process, following advanced professional criteria”

For the author of the book Modernidad y pedagogía en Pedro Poveda: the Experience in Covadonga, the originality of the young priest “consisted in analysing the reality of his times, its pedagogical dimension and to trying to respond to the challenges presented by it, not as an outsider but as a Catholic educator and a priest”. His proposal of a Catholic Educational Institution “ had the mission of organizing Catholic forces in order to offer an alternative Christian model of education to that presented by State schools, then pervaded with laicism, and the so called “neutral” schools of Giner de los Rios, very distant from the catholic ideals.

Speaking on the occasion of the closing of the one hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Pedro Poveda in Covadonga, the professor from the Ramon Lull University, in Barcelona, said that, instead of calling for the suppression of the atheistic schools, and promoting the creation of private Catholic schools, Poveda preferred to plan a way of transforming the public schools with a Christian presence.”

In this way, “Poveda joined faith and science and also took into account the role of women in education as professional agents“, he said.  He believes that, in Asturias, Poveda responded to “the call of Jesus Christ to have a life of faith in the midst of a secularized society” because in the Spain of the beginning of the 20th Century, he himself  “had travelled the road of opening his mind to the trends of his times and had entered into modernity, as a priest and educator”.

INFO-IT

Updates: 21/04/2007