This article studies how the fight against poliomyelitis has been articulated in Spain and how such struggle demanded a combination of education and re-education tasks involving not only health professionals and polio victims but also their families - particularly mothers - and other members of the society. This work analyses solutions offered during its epidemic phase under the Franco Dictatorship (1939-1975) and also showing the response to this disease from 1929 until the beginning of the Spanish civil war in two different historical and political contexts (part of Primo de Rivera's Dictatorship and the II Republic). We used different sources: documents from archives and from international organizations - WHO (World Health Organization), EAP (European Association for Poliomyelitis) and others -, means of scientific press, general information and oral sources. Our methodology is based on the analysis of discourses from those sources contextualised in each historiographical framework.
poliomyelitis; education and re-education of polio victims; Francoist Spain; 20th century