It took a long time before Franco's death in 1975 was recognized as a caesura in Spanish history classes. Up to this day, the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship remain sensitive topics that are taught in as neutral and non-judgmental a fashion as possible – in the name of the societal consensus.

"The student should consider the democratic system as the most suitable for peaceful cohabitation and develop a positive attitude toward the constitution." In this frank manner, a 1983 draft underlined the democratic postulate of the PSOE’s educational reform, which was then not implemented until 1990. In the history lessons of those years, the democratic transition following 1975 was not yet taught as a clear caesura between dictatorship and democracy. Instead, Spanish textbooks included terms such as "economic development" and "social change," suggesting a gradual process of liberalization even during the dictatorship. It was not until the turn of the millennium that the Transición was conveyed as a political upheaval. Franco's dictatorship, however, is still often divided into the "bad" years of dearth after the Civil War and the "good" growth years of the 1960s. The Civil War is still treated in ambivalent terms. Thus, although the motivations of the 1936 coup are increasingly discussed, they are not normatively evaluated and judged.

Moreover, a peculiarity arises from the fact that, in Spain, history classes in middle school are traditionally divided into world history and national history, with the global contexts being taught first. This arrangement always allows Spain to be portrayed as a latecomer to the major European developments of the 19^th and 20^th centuries – bourgeois revolutions, industrialization and the labor movement, world wars, decolonization, and the Cold War. Rather than being able to shape such events, according to this determinist logic Spain would only feel their impacts. Following this notion, the Franco dictatorship is treated in world history merely as a side note to the European forms of fascism in Germany and Italy. In the higher grades, national history – in contrast to world history – is a compulsory subject. Given the wealth of topics covered in the final school year, however, it is left very much up to the teacher to decide how much space the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship actually occupy.

If Spain’s colonial conquests are taught within the framework of national history, the decolonization of the Spanish colonies in America remains a marginal note. Instead, the collapse of the British and French colonial empires tends to be taught in the framework of 20^th century world history. Independent Latin America also reappears in the context of world history, with the continent's extremes – the Cuban Revolution, Perón's populism in Argentina and Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile – presented as negative counterexamples to the democratized and economically successful Spanish model. A completely different picture of Spanish history is presented in Catalan and Basque textbooks, where the "historical region" becomes the national frame of reference. The frontrunner position of the aforementioned regions as regards industrialization is emphasized. The Spanish Civil War is thus regarded as the defeat of the progressive autonomous regions by Franco's backward nationalist Spain.