Institución Libre de Enseñanza

La Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE) or The Free Educational Institution was an educational project that developed in Spain for the half a century of about 1876–1936. The institute was inspired by the philosophy of Krausism which was first introduced to the Complutense University of Madrid by Julián Sanz del Río, and which (despite being subsequently ejected from that university) had a significant impact on the renovation of the intellectual life within the Spanish culture of the time.

The institution was founded in 1876 by a group of disaffected university professors including Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Gumersindo Azcarate, Teodoro Sainz Rueda and Nicolás Salmerón among others who distanced themselves from the main university campus of Madrid to achieve academic freedom. They declined to adjust their teaching to any official religious dogma or the moral and political imposition of the time. Consequently, they had to continue their educational work outside the state sector by creating a secular private educational institution, starting with university level instruction and later extending their activities to primary and secondary education.

They supported and seconded the intellectual ideas of Joaquín Costa, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), José Ortega y Gasset, Gregorio Marañón, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Antonio Machado, Joaquín Sorolla, Augusto González Linares, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Federico Rubio, among others who were involved in educational, cultural and social renewal.

Following the implementation of the political model of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo whose idea was to secure a fundamentalist nation as ordained by the divine will, which project was to be implemented in 1875 by "Royal Decree issued by education minister Manuel Orovio Echagüe. This regulation severely limited academic freedom in Spain "if it went against the tenets of faith" meaning the contemporary and deeply conservative (Roman Catholicism in Spain).

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