STEP - Science and Technology in the European Periphery

This paper analyses Spanish films on infant protection belonging to the first third of XXth Century. We place our contribution in the context of the study of the means of institutional health education used in Spain from that date until 1936, the year of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The first third of the past century was the period when was launched the public health Spanish system. One of the main public health actions set up by Spanish health authorities were health campaigns to cope with specific problems as infant mortality. We are developing a research project in order to analyze the use of new media in this temporal and institutional context. Now, we study two health educational films on child protection, produced in 1928 and 1936 respectively in very different political scenarios but with common features. The aims and the contents of educational messages followed similar paths than in other countries.