In early twentieth-century Spain the purveying of cultural capital to the pueblos by the Misiones Pedagógicas stands as an icon, and the provision of the Bibliotecas Populares a specific example of how they set out to make a lasting difference to the inhabitants of the pueblos. An initial figure of 3,506 pueblos that received libraries through this activity (Misiones Pedagógicas 1934: xxi) would grow so that, by June 1936, 5,522 villages had been reached by the libraries (Salaberria Lizarazu 2006: 306), an increase of 57.5 per cent.

The activity of the Misiones Pedagógicas extended well beyond the setting up of libraries, however, and the daring and enterprise involved in their activity of spreading culture to distant pueblos has captured the imagination. This is perhaps despite (or because of) the fact that much of the detail has been lost, and most of our information about the reception of the work of the Misiones comes from those who purveyed the capital, not from those who received it. Nonetheless, recent work on the Misiones and the visits to Las Hurdes, particularly that of Mendelson (1996, 2000, 2001, 2002), has thrown light on the complexity, in social and anthropological terms, of cultural outreach to the pueblo, and on how Las Hurdes became ‘contested territory’.