Spain
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| Vallores V - Educación para la convivencia - 5 - E.G.B. Madrid, Bruño, 1991. 64 p. |
The Brothers of the Christian Schools arrived in Spain in 1877 when three French Brothers accepted to assume the management of the Sagrado Corazón Orphanage of Madrid. It offered the program of vocational schools, which included a printing shop that would constitute the starting point of an adventure leading to the printing of millions of copies of textbooks by the Brothers of Spain.
According to the information we have, confirmed by the present catalogue, the Brothers published, as soon as 1887, Ejercicios de cálculo sobre las cuatro reglas fundamentales de la aritmética, which is a translation of a manual originally published by the Brothers of France, before composing their first textbook Lecciones de lengua castellana, which is undated but attributed to Brother Joseph Josserand, Superior General. It is therefore anterior to 1897.
Although the authors were almost always Brothers teaching in various colleges, their names did not appear, at least until the decade of 1960. The manuals were rather attributed to the Superior General at the time of the publication. Sometimes there were only initials, for instance Hermano J.J. for Brother Joseph (Joseph Josserand), Superior from 1884 to 1897, who is mentioned above. The better known case is that of Brother Gabriel-Marie (Edmond Brunhes), Superior from 1897 to 1904. The Brothers combined his name in religion and a hispanized modification of his surname to create the name Gabriel-Marie Bruño, before using the word Bruño as the corporate name of their publishing house. Thus appeared hundreds of works «written» or «published» by G. M. Bruño. Another way to avoid identifying the author was the use of the expression «Hermanos de las Escuelas Cristianas», appearing in the textbook of 1887, the oldest known.
Those publications were intended for the primary education, at least in the beginning, and they had an immediate success.
The Brothers and Bruño settled down, grew stronger, and expanded in the educational field in Spain during the first third of the 20th century. Over that period, the publishing house had two headquarters: one in Barcelona (the Condal College, Cameros Street), and one in Madrid (the Maravillas College, Cuatro Caminos).
By the end of the 19th century, Brothers had created a company called La Instrucción Popular, S.A., which was the legal owner of their academic institutions. In 1931, with the instauration of the Second Republic, the Bruño publishing house passes under the legal control of that society. This is why the corporate name of that company appears as the publisher of the textbooks of the Brothers between 1932 and 1939. (The very rare books published by La Instrucción Popular, S.A. and wearing an ulterior date are late reprints.) In 1939, the Bruño publishing house literally rises from its ashes, with unified headquarters. They are located on Marqués de Mondéjar Street, in Madrid, since 1941. Starting in 1953, the textbooks published by the Brothers are linked to the program of the Department of Education and are intended for new customers, the students at the baccalaureate level.
Over the years, the management of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Spain has undergone various changes that influenced the structure of the production of textbooks. In the beginning, there was only one administrative unit, the District of Spain. The territory was divided for the first time in 1892 to form the Districts of Madrid and Barcelona. The District of Valladolid is detached from the District of Madrid in 1923 and the District of Bilbao is detached from the District of Valladolid in 1939. Finally, in 1955, the District of Barcelona gives birth to the District of Valencia, and the District of Seville is detached from the District of Madrid in 1967. The Brothers of the Christian Schools of Spain had two major production centers for textbooks: Madrid and Barcelona. The subdivision of the Districts was accompanied by the creation of new centers that operated as bookstores, not as publishing houses. That explains the use of names of cities at the bottom of the title page of thousands of textbooks: Valladolid (District of Valladolid), Zumárraga or San Sebastián (District of Bilbao), Paterna (District of Valencia).
Surprisingly, except for a few publications such as the Catecismo de recapitulación - Llamado de los principales misterios [...] (1923), the Brothers had written and published few religious books before 1950. A first significant foray in that field is made in 1957 through Catequética La Salle, in the District of Barcelona. In 1957 also, the Brothers of the Christian Schools establish in Salamanca the Instituto Superior San Pío X, which they mandate to give to young Brothers a better theological, catechistic and educational training. In 1964, that institute is incorporated to the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical University of Salamanca, which can deliver university titles and, at the same time, reach an audience much larger that the Brothers of the Christian Schools only. In the middle of the decade of 1970, the Institute moves to Madrid. During the whole existence of the Instituto Superior San Pío X, its professors wrote the major part of the textbooks of religion published by Bruño.
The 1970 reform of the educational system forced the Brothers to reconsider thoroughly their publishing production. Bruño came to produce three lines of textbooks for each subject matter of the baccalaureate. There was a major change: for the first time, Bruño undertook co-publishing, especially with Ediciones Don Bosco (EDB) and Magisterio Español.
From 1988, sensing the arrival of new teaching methods, Bruño begins to publish documents somewhat related to textbooks: books for school libraries, books for the training of teachers, collections of literature for the youth, reference books, and so on. In the production of teaching tools, Bruño is at the vanguard with innovative material such as the Programa de Enriquecimiento Instrumental (PEI) and Lectura Eficaz. Both are now mandatory references for the cognitive development of the students and are a guaranty of the acquisition and the reinforcement of the basic techniques and abilities for reading.
In 1992, the Bruño publishing house moves to a building made especially for it. That is a manifestation of its growing importance and the beginning of a new expansion period. The educational reform had something to do with that move since it pushed Bruño to develop and diversify even more its publications, which contributed to place the publishing house of the Brothers among the first publishers of educational material in Spain.
Although their textbooks were primarily intended for students who were speaking Castilian (Spanish), the dominant language in Spain, the Brothers did not forget the students who were speaking regional languages. After the publication of a few books in Basque, the first books in Valencian appeared in 1984, followed by publications in Galician in 1988. But, among the regional languages, the Catalan had the largest place. In the beginning of the decade of 1980, Bruño published a few books in Catalan in Madrid. Since the publication of books in regional languages was growing quite fast, a branch of the publishing house (Brúixola) was created in Barcelona in 1994.
Besides Bruño, the great publishing house, and Brúixola, its branch for the Catalans, the Brothers also used two other channels for the edition of religious textbooks. For the publication of religious textbooks, they used the names Catequética La Salle at the end of the decade of 1950, and Ediciones San Pio X thirty years later. In both cases, they were publishing houses belonging to the Brothers.
The Brothers of the Christian Schools of Spain never had their own printing plant for their books. As it was mentioned above, they began using the services of the printing workshop belonging to the foundation that managed the Sagrado Corazón Orphanage. For many years, that printing workshop, now known as Villena, Artes Gráficas, printed the largest part of the books published by the Brothers.
Finally, in 2000, the Brothers of the Christian Schools sold the Bruño publishing house to the Hachette group, the undisputed leader of schoolbooks in France. By doing so, the Brothers wanted to assure the continuity and the vitality of a publishing house more than one hundred years old by integrating it into a powerful publishing group… which is also more than one hundred years old.
Brother Francisco Cilleruelo