El Escolar and El Faro de Veiga, two school newspapers in the origins of the local Galician press

Abstract

Although the didactic and moralizing desire is basic in the conception and development of the children's, youth and school press, its growing importance as an instrument for inculturation must also be pointed out, fundamentally in those communities that, having their own language and culture, are they were forced to educate their children in the majority and imposed common language. It is for this reason that, from the middle of the 19th century -when the movements to revitalize the personality and national consciousness of these communities begin to be successful (often through the recovery of their own language for cultural creation and literary) -, the use of the children's and youth press will be taken into account to make the heritage of the country's cultural tradition reach the youngest. Catalonia and, in general, the Catalan language showed a special predilection for these youth channels, a predilection that continues to take place and is present today. In other communities -such as the Galician-, it will be fundamentally the school press that will give rise to the first and very genuine samples of the local press, with entire regions involved in the publication of newspapers that transcend the scope of the school and the natural region itself. . This is the case of the newspapers El Escolar and El Faro de Veiga, published in the first decade of the 20th century in Ortigueira, a municipality in the province of A Coruña with an interesting tradition of sponsoring and maintaining peculiar local press initiatives. Linked to this tradition, and with the economic support of the Galician societies and centers of Havana and Buenos Aires, these school newspapers were able to overcome the dimension of more or less advanced pedagogical experiences to become, within their limits, a document and chronicle of his time. They will be, on the other hand, the precedent of an interesting production of school press in Galicia that is maintained and renewed today.