Science and sciencie teaching in Spain: a historical perspective

We believe that teaching about the nature and the methods of sciences at an early stage of education is as important as teaching the content of scientific disciplines. From this pedagogical standpoint, we review the ideas on science held by the main scientific schools of modern era Spain, the "scholastic" and the "eclectics", who stood against each other during the XVII and XVII centuries, and those of the "progressives" and "conservatives" of the XIX century. That double confrontation was recorded in a series of writings which was called 'The polemics of Spanish science"at the end of the XIX century. This polemics show with surprising clarity the good and evil of today's cultural heritage in Spain. Among the good we emphasise the important contributions that some XVI century Spanish philosophers made to the initial phase of the European scientific revolution. Among the evil, the lasting anachronism of the above mentioned scientific communities, which, as Cajal said, professed a "dead science" and the low yield of Spanish science from the XVII century until, at least, the beginning of the XX century. We relate this low yield to the fact that Spanish thinkers ignored or misunderstood the philosophies and methodologies of the sciences which emerged in Europe from the XVIIth century and, in parallel to this historical review, we draw some conclusions that could be useful to the teaching of sciences in Spain.