Chapter 6
Return to Oralism and Descent into Chaos
1814–1835

In what constitutes the essence of this science, nothing has surpassed what the Spaniards taught in the Golden Age of our literature.
—Tiburcio Hernández

If they do not leave magnificently educated, at least they will take with them the means to subsist.
—Tiburcio Hernández

When the Royal School was reestablished in 1814, Tiburcio Hernández, the new head master, decreed a return to Spanish oralism, a politically motivated decision that significantly altered the course of deaf education in Spain. The experiment was short-lived, however, for less than a decade later Hernández himself became a victim of Spanish politics when he found himself sentenced to death. The instruction of deaf people was disrupted yet again, and the Madrid institute began a descent into chaos that did not end until 1835, when order was restored, and the preprofessional period of deaf education came to an end.

Following the war of independence, the Royal School reopened in May 1814, once again under the auspices of the Friends of the Country. The few surviving students, along with Prádez, the art teacher, and Ugena, the servant, left the Hospicio for the establishment's new location at number eleven on the Calle del Turco, a building that had formerly served as a glass warehouse.^[1] The official opening ceremony was held in

Figure 14.
Royal School for Deaf-mutes, on the Calle del
Turco. From Miguel Granell y Forcadell,  Historia de la enseñanza
del Colegio Nacional de Sordomudos desde el año 1794 al
1932  (Madrid: Colegio Nacional de Sordomudos, 1932). Biblioteca
Nacional Madrid.

October of that year and featured speeches by the duke of Híjar, then director of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, and by Tiburcio Hernández, the new head teacher.

Tiburcio Hernández y Hernández had joined the Friends of the Country a decade prior to taking charge of instruction at the Royal School.^[2] He had served together with José Miguel Alea on the establishment's board of directors, but the two men could hardly have been more different. Alea was a man of the Church and an intellectual who supported himself with his pen, while Hernández held a law degree from the University of Alcalá de Henares, and was a member of the Colegio de Abogados, lawyer to the Royal Council, and relator to the Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, the body charged with criminal jurisdiction in Madrid and its environs, second in importance only to the powerful Council of Castile.^[3] As an abate Alea was bound by vows of chastity, but his successor was a married man and the father of two children, María Antonia Jacoba and Antonio Fernando, both of whom would follow in

their father's footsteps to become educators of deaf children.^[4] By the time the Royal School reopened in 1814, Hernández was in his early forties; Alea, who had fled to France one year earlier, was in his mid-fifties.^[5] And while the older man had concerned himself with "general laws of the art of criticism," seeking reason, moderation, and decency as his guide, the younger one would prove to be a fiery, flamboyant orator, plain-spoken to the point of bluntness, with little use for tact or diplomacy, boasting that his "never prostituted pen" would "tell the truth in energetic tones."^[6] Nevertheless, the two men shared an interest in education—Alea had written at length on the topic, and Hernández maintained that the Friends of the Country's first priority should be to establish a normal school to train teachers with the best methods available and produce elementary texts, for he held that teaching was the nation's most important profession.^[7]

In the instruction of deaf people, Alea, as we have seen, had drawn freely from a variety of sources, using Bonet's Arte to loosen deaf tongues but favoring the French method to educate deaf minds. Tiburcio Hernández would scrap this eclectic approach, rejecting the French system altogether and reverting instead to methods advocated by Juan Pablo Bonet two hundred years earlier. The new head teacher's motives for returning to the earlier Spanish tradition were more political than pedagogical: the country that had so recently expelled the French forces of occupation was ill-disposed to employ that nation's pedagogy. During the eighteenth century many Spanish intellectuals had looked to France for guidance, but after the Napoleonic invasion the French model was out of the question, and some Spaniards—patriot Hernández among them—would now seek inspiration in an idealized vision of their nation's glorious past. Indeed, Hernández went so far as to claim that the method used in France to teach deaf people during the 1700s was essentially no different from that employed by Pedro Ponce two centuries earlier, contending that "in what constitutes the essence of this science, nothing has surpassed what the Spaniards taught in the Golden Age of our literature."^[8] But in the intervening centuries the Spanish doctrine had been corrupted by foreign influence, he believed, and he set out to remedy this situation by studying Bonet's Arte .^[9]

The result was the Plan de enseñar a los sordomudos el idioma español (Plan to teach deaf-mutes the Spanish language), which was now adopted by the Royal School. Hernández had composed the manual during the war of independence, inspired, he explained, by an "interest in the welfare of deaf-mutes, coupled with the necessity to which the terror

condemned us of not attending public gatherings or going out at night except in case of emergency."^[10] He had submitted his work to the school's governing board in 1809, but apparently that body did not deign to consider it, for a resentful Hernández later complained that his offering had been "elaborated with earnestness and scorned to the extreme of not even being reproved"^[11] —in all likelihood because of political as well as pedagogical differences between the author and fellow board members. But Hernández eventually found a way to bypass the board and in 1811, even as the Friends of the Country labored to relieve themselves of responsibility for their deaf charges (an effort that, it will be remembered, culminated in the children's move first to the municipal school of San Ildefonso, then to the Hospicio), a special committee, which included no members or former members of the board save the society's director, was named to examine Hernández's Plan . The acting teacher, José Miguel Alea, protested that according to established tradition, anything concerning the school should be evaluated by the board, and he attempted to have two or three of its most senior members appointed to the committee that would pass judgment on Hernández's manuscript, apparently to no avail.^[12] The Plan was finally approved, but not until 1814,^[13] by which time Spain's political situation, and along with it circumstances at the Economic Society, had changed dramatically. The reign of Joseph Bonaparte had ended, and the afrancesados no longer held sway among the Friends of the Country. Alea had been forced to emigrate and Hernández had been named to succeed him at the Royal School. The composition of the board of directors, too, had changed almost completely since the new head teacher had first submitted his work in 1809, for when the establishment reopened in 1814, the nine-member board now included only two of the men who had sat on it five years earlier, a certain Manuel de la Viña, and Tiburcio Hernández himself. And the ouster of French sympathizers from the Economic Society was soon followed by the ouster of French methodology from the classroom.

If the choice of the Spanish tradition over the French was understandable, given the political mood of the times, one question still remained. Why should Hernández have preferred Bonet's approach over that of Hervás y Panduro, whose book he had also read?^[14] Bonet's Arte continued to be rare,^[15] but his fame as a teacher of deaf people far exceeded Hervás's. (After all, de l'Epée himself had acknowledged his debt to Bonet.) Thus, Hernández may have been influenced by Bonet's greater prestige, which, coupled with his own lack of firsthand

knowledge about the teaching—at the time his Plan was approved, it had yet to be tried with deaf children—may have moved him to opt for the method contained in the Arte .^[16]

Hernández's view of deaf people could have also led him to favor Bonet's approach over Hervás's. It is evident from his writings that the Madrid school's new teacher viewed deaf people primarily as defectives, and like Bonet before him, he defined the lack of audition as "an illness."^[17] The equation of deafness with illness and pathology often goes hand in hand with an unwillingness to accept deaf people—and their language—on their own terms, and this in turn influences the choice of pedagogy. According to this school of thought, if the illness cannot be cured, that is, if hearing cannot be restored, the solution lies in getting deaf people to lip-read and to talk.^[18] Moreover, it is often expected that such individuals, once rehabilitated, will abandon their sign language—which Hernández dismissed as a mere "shorthand of gestures," and supplementary to the language of articulated sounds."^[19] This way, so the reasoning goes, deaf people will at least be less conspicuous, and they will blend in and appear to be as much like "normal" people as possible. Bonet's emphasis on speech and his adamant rejection of signs were compatible with the pathological view of deafness and the concomitant suppression of sign language. In contrast, Hervás's ready acceptance of deaf people's language as the foundation of their instruction—and indeed, the pleasure he took in observing them communicate manually—is compatible with the view of deaf people as members of a linguistic minority, whose language is neither better nor worse than that of the hearing majority. For Hernández, the choice between the two approaches must have been obvious. If the "illness" could not be cured, with Bonet's method it would at least be dissimulated; the "defect," if not totally eliminated, would at least be rendered less obvious.

Finally, Bonet's approach offered what may have been perceived as yet another advantage over Hervás y Panduro's. Its emphasis on speech dovetailed with the official state policy of employing Castilian Spanish as the sole language of instruction, a measure intended to promote national unity. The Methodical Spanish of the Royal School's first decade of existence had been but a manual translation of the national tongue, a pale imitation, but the Arte promised to deliver the genuine article, thus bringing deaf education more closely into line with that of other linguistic minorities. In compliance with the kingdom's longstanding mandate, deaf Spaniards would now be taught in the same fash-

ion as speakers of Spain's "other" languages like the Basques, the Galicians, and the Catalans, for example.

While we may never know for sure why Hernández selected Bonet's method over Hervás's, this much is certain. Upon adopting the new teacher's Plan, the Royal School for the second time missed an opportunity to employ a well thought-out approach that began with the language of deaf people themselves, bypassing both the rigid oralism of Bonet and the complicated methodical signs of the French abbés.

As was entirely befitting one who equated deafness with illness, Hernández, before ever attempting to teach the deaf children of the Madrid institute, had sought to cure them. "If someone were to say it would have been better to think about curing muteness than about teaching mutes, let it be known that my earliest efforts were directed toward this end," he explained.^[20] Those efforts dated from November 1808, that is, shortly after Hernández joined the school's governing board.^[21] The lawyer-turned-teacher claimed to have noted that deaf-mutes had very little of "the humor we call wax," and what there was lay deep within the ear, and it was almost liquid. These individuals, he stated, rarely—if ever—cleaned their ears with their little fingers or some other object. His observations led him to suspect an obstruction of the canal through which the humor was intended to flow, and this obstruction, he reasoned, might be the cause of deafness.^[22]

After consulting with a medical doctor, Antonio Torrecilla, Hernández devised an experiment. At bedtime at the Royal School, steam was funneled into students' ears, which were then covered with a cloth. The water temperature and duration of the treatment were gradually increased for twenty days, then decreased for another twenty. "The results," Hernández exulted in February 1809, "have exceeded my expectations."^[23] Angel Machado, the teaching assistant, reported that after but two sessions Jacobo Moreno felt pain behind the ears when the vapor was administered and a sensation that ran through his chest, and Juan Alvarez trembled at the noise he heard—and the pain. After ten days, Machado informed Hernández that Alvarez could hear shouts at a distance of four to six paces, as could Manuel Muñoz, and Domingo Pérez, who before had heard in only one ear, could now hear in both. By the twenty-third day of the experiment, it was reported that Jacobo Moreno, Manuel Echevarría, and Ramón Vidal had likewise begun to hear. The treatment was interrupted, however, from late November through early December when Joseph Bonaparte, at the head of his

troops, entered the Spanish capital.^[24] But by mid-December the experiments had resumed, and Hernández was notified that Juan Alvarez, Domingo Pérez and Manuel Muñoz could hear words, many of which Muñoz could also repeat.

The man whose first priority was to find a cure for deafness was initially reluctant to accept these results at face value, surmising that the effects Machado described might be attributable to factors other than the restoration of audition. "I have seen that deaf-mutes, without hearing noises, suddenly turn their heads in the direction of a sound, which may be due to the vibration of the air," he wrote. "Because of a vehement desire to comprehend what is said to them, which for their good fortune they possess, they are not reliable witnesses as to whether they have understood something or not," he continued, "and as for the things they have understood, it is very difficult to ascertain how they did it, because the lack of one sense is, it seems, compensated for by the extraordinary sensitivity of the others."^[25] In order to probe further the results of his experiment, Hernández shut himself in a room with several deaf students, positioning them so they could not see the door, and when an assistant stationed outside knocked, now softly, now loudly, the youngsters were able to count the knocks on their fingers with no mistakes. And by now several could also repeat some words whose meaning was familiar.

The outcome of this last experiment sufficed to convince Hernández of the effectiveness of his treatment. "I believe I can affirm that in many deaf-mutes, deafness is due to an obstruction of the auditory canal, and based on the result of these first tests, I do not consider their cure to be hopeless," he concluded.^[26]

This writer would later boast—inaccurately, as it turns out—that his experiments had antedated those of the celebrated French doctor Jean-Marc Itard, of the Paris Institute for the Deaf. Itard had initiated his efforts at auditory rehabilitation in 1805, although perhaps unbeknownst to Hernández. It seems unlikely, however, that the Spaniard could have been unaware of a paper by Itard on auricular training that was read at the Economic Society in 1807.^[27] Nevertheless, Hernández complained that the French physician had appropriated his methods. The Friends of the Country published the results of Hernández's investigation in 1809, and the author later recounted, "I received 1,000 acknowledgments from the most learned persons and a French doctor visited me several times, bombarding me with ponderings and demanding the explanation of my experiments. Three years later Mr.

Itard ... came out with the account of a cure, published on November 11, 1811, whose only note of originality has been to add to my invention the notable peculiarity of perforating the ear; that is, that professor would endeavour to persuade us that he has cured a sense by destroying its mechanism, like one who would cure visual ailments by removing the eyes. And to think the ambition for glory goes so far as to regard with contempt the censure of all nations!" Hernández fumed.^[28]

When the Madrid school reopened in 1814, five years after Henández had first undertaken his experiments, we find him still seeking a cure for deafness and calling for the continuation of the research.^[29] (By 1816 he would abandon any pretense of curing his pupils by directing steam into their ears, however, having concluded that "the most general causes of deafness ... cannot be ascertained without discovering in practical fashion the anatomical particulars"; to that end, he now advocated the dissection of deaf cadavers.)^[30] But as head teacher, Hernández's job was to minister to those students whose hearing had not been restored. To instruct his "uncured" disciples he used his Plan de enseñar a los sordomudos el idioma español . The text was divided into ten chapters. Borrowing liberally from Bonet's Arte, it began by teaching the written letters and their corresponding hand shapes in the manual alphabet, together with their pronunciation. Hernández made virtually no use of the finger alphabet, however, relying on it only to "assist the mute's memory" or to reach those in whom "a defect of organization or the disciple's absolute dullness of intellect makes its use necessary."^[31] The Plan next progressed to the teaching of syllables, then vocabulary and the parts of speech, and it ended with a discussion of how to promote students' command of spoken and written Spanish. Descriptions of articulation were clearly based on Bonet's, but Hernández parted company with the author of the Arte when he shunned the leather tongue, noting that it was not possible to represent its position in relation to the lips, teeth, and so on. He also vetoed the mirror, arguing that it could not reveal the inside of the mouth, unless the teacher resorted to affectation and ridiculous grimaces. He further stipulated that the instructor should never touch the student's mouth, either with his fingers or with any type of instrument. In lieu of these familiar methods he proposed the use of engravings to illustrate articulation of the various sounds. Although Hernández never acknowledged the source of his inspiration, this suggestion had appeared two decades earlier in Hervás y Panduro's Escuela española de sordomudos .^[32]

For teaching speech, Hernández offered the usual advice. The teacher should sit facing the light, the student should sit facing the teacher so as to see the position of his lips, tongue, teeth, and so on. He counseled that in the early stages, it was best to instruct only one pupil at a time, lest the slower ones become resentful of their more advanced companions: "With all children, and especially with mutes, the teacher's main task is to avoid arousing violent passions in them," he cautioned.^[33] The need to work with deaf students in small groups or even one-on-one when teaching articulation did not constitute a problem for private tutors like Ponce and Ramrez de Carrión, but in public schools with many children, such individual attention would of necessity take up an inordinate amount of time. Indeed, these were precisely the considerations that had led the abbé de l'Epée to judge speech lessons impractical for his deaf pupils.

In matters of articulation, Hernández was a demanding taskmaster. He borrowed Bonet's analogy of the musical instrument, but his criteria for "tuning" were much stricter. While Bonet had depicted both master and disciple as musicians striving to tune their respective instruments to the same pitch when neither one could hear the other, Hernández reserved the role of tuner for the teacher alone and assigned to the mute the passive role of instrument, remarking that "if [the instrument] is not tuned to perfection, it will sound harsh." He insisted that each sound must be produced "without regard for the bother it occasions the disciple and the number of repetitions required, without excusing him in the least until he pronounces the letter in question correctly" (13). (After just two years of experience, however, Hernández had modified his expectations considerably: "[Deaf-mutes'] teachers are, in a manner of speaking ... musicians who wield instruments incapable of being tuned," he wrote. "Experience has taught me that if many efforts are expended to correct [pronunciation] defects, [students] only fall into other greater ones, or lose what progress they have made," he stated, allowing that "the music of a language depends on ... the usual way of pronunciation; and since for the mute the national tongue is a dead language, if he does not hit the right tone by chance, it is impossible to teach it to him.")^[34] . Yet Hernández never doubted that deaf children, assuming they had no defect of the speech organs, should be taught to speak: "They will talk provided their intelligence is stimulated," he affirmed (4). And to loosen ligaments unaccustomed to speech and thus increase agility in articulation, he advocated that pupils carry a fruit pit or a toothpick in their mouths, "turning it round and round as do those who have this vice" (97).

Concerning the feasibility of teaching deaf people to lip-read, Hernández disagreed with Bonet. While Bonet had maintained that this skill could not be taught, Hernández asserted that "with proper guidance and practice, [deaf people] exercise this faculty with the same facility with which we [hearing people] read." The only difference, he proclaimed, was between reading an "inanimate book" and an "animate" one (4). Nevertheless, he advised the teacher to refrain from speaking during the course of the mute's instruction in articulation and grammar, reasoning that the student would not yet have sufficient command of Spanish to comprehend what was said and would thus lose confidence in his own abilities, and with it his enthusiasm for learning. But once instructed in the language, Hernández hypothesized, the pupil would supplement whatever he missed in lipreading with his own linguistic knowledge, supplying through intelligent guesswork what the lips alone did not reveal.^[35]

Not only was Hernández convinced that lipreading could be taught, he maintained that this skill could be acquired only through instruction, and he discounted the possibility of unschooled deaf persons who could lip-read. The only uninstructed mutes who have understood from the movement of the lips, he argued, were those who "because they were accustomed to dealing with certain persons, or because they had some previous knowledge of the substance of a given discourse, deduced what was said or what was ordered of them. This is the most that can be conceded," he believed (107). To prove his point, he related an anecdote (attributed to "a reliable person") about a mute, the cousin or brother of a presbyter, who lived a short distance from Madrid. This deaf youth, after visiting the home of two individuals from the town, deduced correctly, and even announced to his circle of friends, that there was to be a wedding, and that time was of the essence, due to the bride's physical condition. "And what would he have understood from the action of the lips?" Hernández asked sarcastically. "It is certain that for such comprehension they need not be taught, but to my way of thinking," he declared, "the conclusion that the mute understood from the movement of the lips is false." How, then, to account for the deaf lad's feat? "In the final analysis," Hernández asserted, "[this] is not understanding from the movement of the lips, but rather, it reveals a depth of observation and reasoning, with a streak of great malice, which is common to all mutes" (107–108).^[36]

In its pedagogy the Plan relied heavily on rote learning—small wonder Alea had opposed its adoption when the author first submitted it to the Friends of the Country. Hernández acknowledged that such

memorization was "arid" and "extremely tedious" and that what students learned in this fashion would be easily forgotten, yet he nevertheless insisted, "There is no way to save steps, or to spare them from it" (45). The Plan provided little in the way of grammatical explanations, and the few it contained were always presented by way of demonstration, for the object, Hernández wrote, was not to "tire [the learner] with rules" (43). He held that the pupil would by himself "deduce with time the rules which, if given by the teacher, would have confused him," and for this reason he omitted even the simplest generalizations (62). For instance, students were expected to memorize the grammatical gender of every noun they encountered, unaided by straightforward guidelines such as, words ending in -a are usually feminine, and words ending in -o are usually masculine. Similarly, students were left to ferret out for themselves the rule for forming the plural of nouns: add -s if the word ends in a vowel, otherwise add -es . Bonet's Arte, in contrast, had provided a clear account of grammatical gender and pluralization.^[37]

During the early stages of instruction, pupils must have understood little, if anything at all, but Hernández, like Bonet before him, trusted that comprehension would eventually come by itself. For instance, verbs were assigned to lists entitled "pertaining to men" and "pertaining to women" according to the gender of their presumed subjects, but these lists were presented "without bothering that they understand at first the meaning of said titles," in the belief that "they will take effect someday" (55). And verbs whose meaning could not be acted out were simply not taught at all.

To hasten their learning, students were often made to write words and paradigms, but for the teaching of prepositions and conjunctions, Hernández, while continuing to insist that memorization held the key, suggested a way to "sweeten" the process by exciting learners' interest and amusing them (85). Having noted that the pupils were highly skilled at card games—so much so that the head teacher himself was unable to trick them—he wrote on each card in the deck a maxim containing a preposition or conjunction, granting students access to the cards only after they had memorized all the savings and could pronounce them and act out their meaning. Proficient scholars were rewarded with a permit allowing them to play with the deck in their free time, and made to consider this a great privilege. The teacher cautioned, however, that care must be taken to curb any sign of excess, and to see that pupils never played for money or bet anything more than their desserts.

In addition to teaching prepositions and conjunctions "without fatigue," Hernández assured his readers that the method also provided a useful measure of education, for the maxims were designed to imbue the young card sharks with proper manners as well. The words to live by included the following: five of hearts: "Eat your soup with a spoon, and your stew with a fork"; seven of diamonds: "Upon seeing someone enter the room, stand up, and even if he tells you to be seated, don't cross your legs"; eight of diamonds: "Among your diversions, don't harm anyone, or soil your clothes"; queen of spades: "After blowing your nose, don't look at the snot, since to do so is disgusting" (88, 87, 91).

For Hernández, the ultimate goal of this instruction was to teach students to speak, lip-read, and express themselves in writing. Once acquainted with Spanish grammar, they were to begin writing diaries describing familiar activities. (Here again the author of the Plan took his lead from Bonet.) Their initial attempts, he wrote, would provoke laughter, but he cautioned against making fun of them, observing that "man is hurt when his efforts are belittled" (108). The teacher was to amend each error by patiently repeating the correction until the learner grasped it, or until it was clear that he could not, for as Hernández explained, "it is not desirable to torture the understanding" (109). And when the original composition had been completely revised, the pupil was to recopy it.

Although Hernández's Plan did not make use of Spanish Sign Language, it did allow for natural gestures in the beginning stages. But once the rudiments of grammar had been presented, the author recommended—again following Bonet—that students be obliged to make all requests orally, and he counseled teachers to pretend not to understand their signs and gestures. "[The disciple] will make foolish mistakes, it is true, but it is by making them that we all learn our language," he wrote (109). As soon as the children could write fairly well, they were to be taught to lip-read and to respond orally to common phrases, set forth in the form of a dialogue. Their next hurdle was to communicate via speech and lipreading with the school's employees and outside visitors. The objective was to induce pupils to give up their signing and talk, and staff members were expected to feign incomprehension until the deaf youngsters expressed themselves aloud. "I consider that in this situation the mutes will have a kind of furor to speak, and from this great benefit, with which no one at the school should interfere, will accrue admirable advantage, for the persons with whom they converse will perfect their instruction through the care they take to understand them,"

Hernández wrote (110). In requiring that hearing persons use speech to communicate with deaf students, Hernández showed himself to be even more of an oralist than Bonet, who had advocated that members of a deaf person's household address him by way of finger spelling.

This portion of the instructional program concluded by having students converse with their teacher for half an hour each day on trivial matters that were easy to comprehend; once they could do this satisfactorily, they progressed to taking oral dictation on these same topics.

Just as the title implied, the Plan de enseñar a los sordomudos el idioma español was concerned solely with teaching deaf children the Spanish language, an educational goal entirely in keeping with the author's beliefs. The educator of deaf students should not venture beyond language instruction, Hernández maintained, for to do so constituted nothing less than abuse. Moreover, he favored "reducing" the target language as much as possible, reasoning that "the greater the burden, the greater the impossibility of progress."^[38] Yet even with these limited objectives, Hernández soon found himself obliged to incorporate manual signs into his teaching, signs that functioned as, in his words, the "interpreter of the communication of knowledge".^[39] Initially he employed only the students' own gestures: "With regard to signs, I adopt no conventional ones ... [but] I do observe those the disciple uses, and I try to retain them in my memory to make myself understood to him," he explained in 1816.^[40] But by 1820 he was using methodical signs as well^[41] —around this same time he requested copies of de l'Epée and Sicard's manuals^[42] —and the following year he pronounced himself in favor of a combined method, albeit diffidently: "I do not know if I am mistaken," he wrote, "but I believe ... with all due respect to those who think differently, that the least defective way of teaching mutes is to combine manual signs and written signs with sounds."^[43]

When he first began teaching, Hernández apparently assumed that the language of deaf Spaniards was transparent and readily comprehended, a naive view that can be maintained only by those who have had little or no contact with sign language. Deaf students "have the ability to be so picturesque in their gestures that, even though one may not deal with them, they are easily understood," he wrote in 1816, seeming to imply that sign language consisted of little more than pantomime.^[44] But a few years later he conceded that the "language of action" was far from transparent, adding that hearing observers can comprehend but a "minimal part" of it.^[45] Even so, he remained convinced that the spoken word was the "Ideal signifier," and based on this chauvinistic view of

speech, he reached the patently absurd conclusion that manual communication was "absolutely useless for anyone who has no natural or artificial idea of sound" (8).

For Hernández, then, there was simply no getting around it: deaf people had to learn to talk. The training was long and arduous, and he did not deceive himself about the results: "Two things can easily happen," he explained. "First, the disciple after much work may not be able to form the sounds. Second, he may form them defectively. From the former it follows that he is absolutely useless for this instruction; and from the latter, that he will pronounce badly, that is, in a fashion that is [only] more or less intelligible," he wrote (8). "Those who learned the sounds defectively will not speak clearly," he continued, "they will be scarcely intelligible to those unaccustomed to their speech, but they will form an idea of manual and written signs, and they will enter at last into our artificial way of thought and communication" (9).

Speech training, as Hernández recognized, was not especially pleasant, nor was it necessary for deaf people to communicate among themselves—for that purpose, their sign language has always served them beautifully—but rather, it was for the benefit of the hearing: "Working a great deal with these unfortunate ones, not so that they might understand each other, but that we [hearing people] may understand them, we make them suffer great pains," he acknowledged (10). And what was in it for deaf people? Once they could talk, Hernández predicted, they would be able to "partake of social pleasures, and sally forth from the colony that limited their communication to that of other participants of their misfortune" (7). In other words, they could assimilate to the society and culture of the hearing majority.

Although convinced of the desirability of speech training, Hernández nevertheless knew there was no correlation between a pupil's ability to pronounce well and his intelligence. "I have disciples who have been taught by the same method, [yet] some speak more clearly than others," he explained, concluding that a student's merit could not be judged by the intelligibility of his speech. By way of illustration, he noted that while Agustán Peláez was the pupil who pronounced most clearly, his intelligence was no match for that of another, Manuel Echevarráa.^[46]

And well might Hernández defend young Echevarría, his less-than-perfect pronunciation notwithstanding, for he was Hernández's most accomplished student. At the school's public examination in 1816, Echevarría performed brilliantly, displaying his knowledge of Spanish grammar, geometry, and religion.^[47] He was asked difficult questions

concerning abstract ideas and the Trinity, and when he answered well, his examiners reproached him, deliberately trying to rattle him, but still he came through admirably, and was lauded as "his teacher's laurel."^[48] Little documentation remains in the archives of the Economic Society concerning Echevarría. There is an account of his first confession, a note he penned to Hernández denying that he and his classmates had been spitting out the windows at passers-by in the street, and a few other items.^[49] Yet despite the paucity of information, this much is clear: Tiburcio Hernández's "laurel" had had other teachers before him, for he had been among the students sent to the Hospicio in 1811.^[50] There he was no doubt instructed by Roberto Prádez, and prior to that, he had quite likely been taught by José Miguel Alea, and possibly by Lieutenant Colonel Loftus as well. Thus, he had had at least three or four years of schooling under one or more instructors before he came under Hernández's tutelage.

When the emphasis at the Royal School shifted to artificial articulation, this change brought about the predictable result. Because the training is so time-consuming, it is all too often imparted at the expense of intellectual formation, and under Hernández, a major portion of students' academic preparation seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of articulation. True, the Reglamento prescribed instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar and orthography, elementary geometry, drawing, and religion, in addition to articulation and lipreading,^[51] but it was plain that for this follower of Bonet, what mattered most was speech. "When the disciple is able to talk, he will become a philosopher, he will become a mathematician, and he will learn whatever we want to teach him, but these disciplines cannot be characterized as essential or as related to the marvelous art of overcoming the obstacles of muteness," he wrote.^[52] The instructor's task, as he saw it, was to teach deaf people enough Spanish to enable them to receive academic and religious instruction, but it did not entail actually teaching such subjects. If speech was this teacher's first priority, vocational training, not academics, was the second: "Let us not expect to make of them orators, historians, or philosophers," he urged, "but let us turn our attention toward their usefulness in the social order. Once they learn to communicate with us more or less well, depending on their respective dispositions, let us try to teach them to earn a living" (10).

And for what sort of work should they be prepared? "They are very well suited for the imitative arts and for mechanical labor," Hernández opined. While this characterization was no doubt related to the students'

socioeconomic level, their teacher clearly believed they were capable of little else: "Their academic instruction," he claimed, "does not outlast the lesson" (11). Hernández's lackluster results were most likely attributable to his preference for articulation over cultivation of the mind, but apparently he never made the connection. "Their free time," he advised, "they will put to good use learning crafts and trades, [so that] when they depart from the school, if they do not leave magnificently educated, at least they will take with them the means to subsist" (11).^[53]

In an approach that placed such a high premium on speech, what provisions were made for students who, for one reason or another, simply could not learn to talk? Hernández judged them to be of two types: those suffering from organic defects that rendered articulation impossible, and those afflicted with a "kind of fatuity, which is dreadful." The former he deemed capable of limited instruction, but the latter he considered "sick people," mentally defective, and he concluded that "it is necessary, although painful, to abandon them" (8). Thus, if their teacher attributed their inability to speak to "fatuity," these students ran the risk of dismissal.

During these years, the Royal School's economic situation continued to be precarious. Monies from the bishoprics of Cadiz and Sigüenza generally arrived about a year and a half after they were due, and although paying students' fees provided an additional source of revenue, the result, as Hernández noted, was a debt amounting to "a terrible sum," and a predicament "capable of contributing to the absolute decline of the school." Physical conditions too left much to be desired, for the establishment was housed, according to head teacher Hernández, "in a small enclosure with only two wretched patios; in a house whose winter dormitories have extremely low ceilings, and with rooms situated so that they cannot be inspected unannounced" (12). (Nevertheless, Don Tiburcio noted with satisfaction, the boys lodged in this less-than-ideal setting had suffered neither illness nor vices, thanks to the constant vigilance of the school's spiritual advisor, Vicente Villanova y Jordán [12–13].) Moreover, the Reglamento mandated that poor students be taught a trade at the school's expense, but in such cramped quarters there was no room for workshops.^[54]

By 1820 enrollment had risen to some thirty disciples, five times the original number, but Hernández would not accomplish his goal of establishing a separate section for girls.^[55] At a time when coeducation

was strictly prohibited in Spain, girls would have had to be housed and taught in an entirely separate wing—a wing so isolated, it would allow no communication with the boys' quarters, not even through a window, and food and laundered uniforms would have to be delivered on a dumbwaiter^[56] —and this was clearly impossible, given the school's physical limitations. Still, the Friends of the Country took seriously the proposal to extend the teaching to females, petitioning Ferdinand VII in 1816 for funds to begin a special class for them, and revising the Reglamento two years later to include numerous articles governing virtually every aspect of their still nonexistent life at the school.^[57] In a speech delivered in 1821, Hernández spoke of the need to educate them, and by 1824 a few girls were reportedly receiving daily lessons, albeit in a separate classroom and without the possibility of residing on the premises (12).^[58]

As for the role of deaf adults at the Royal School at this time, the 1818 Reglamento specified that the positions of mayordomo, valet, servant, and concierge were to be filled by deaf people whenever possible, and the school did manage to employ a deaf helper, a certain Becerro, for menial chores in the kitchen.^[59] But the Reglamento made no mention of hiring deaf teachers, or even teaching assistants. The exclusion of deaf educators often goes hand in hand with oralism, because of its emphasis on speech training and its insistence on the spoken word as the sole medium of instruction. Tiburcio Hernández, as we have seen, although initially embracing Bonet's unyielding oralist methodology, soon relented and came to support a combination of manual signs, writing, and spoken language in the classroom. Yet speech training remained the core of the curriculum, and it may well be for this reason that the hiring of deaf professors and assistants was not given serious consideration.

The only deaf instructor at the Royal School during these years continued to be Roberto Prádez, the art teacher, and in the documentation from this period his name appears frequently. He prepared teaching materials, wrote weekly reports on his classes, attended meetings, and served on committees alongside his hearing colleagues. And in addition to instructing students in drawing and penmanship, he took on the duties of teaching assistant as well.^[60] Nevertheless, the record suggests that his unique status as the establishment's only deaf professor was hardly cause for preferential treatment. In 1816 he was granted a room at the school, but two years later it was given to another employee, Ignacio Gato, and the deaf artist was assigned other quarters. Prádez asked

to have his old room back, complaining that the new one was extremely dark and small, and worse yet, it was in ruinous condition, all of which, as he explained, "impeded his carrying out with exactitude and delicacy the work of drawing and engraving, in which he has always taken such great pains."^[61] To this petition Tiburcio Hernández replied that according to the Reglamento, the art teacher was not entitled to any room at all, and that furthermore, he was "more than sufficiently rewarded, considering what he does. Tomorrow he will come with another impertinence," he continued, "and if the board is disposed to favor him over Gato, between the two of them they will stir up proceedings whose just resolution would be to leave them both without a room."^[62]

Tiburcio Hernández was a prominent figure at the Economic Society, and in addition to serving as the Royal School's head teacher, over the years he was also elected to a variety of other posts, including secretary of the class of crafts and trades, librarian, and the influential position of censor . Eventually he rose to the rank of vice director.^[63] His contributions were rewarded in 1818 when the Friends of the Country named him an "outstanding member," or socio de mérito, "in recognition of his services on behalf of deaf-mutes and his knowledge of the art of instructing them."^[64] But in 1823 his participation in the society, together with his career at the Royal School, came to an abrupt halt when the head teacher was sentenced to death for his crucial role in some of the most important political events of the day. Up to that moment, he had managed to survive the political upheavals of the times. He had stayed on at the Economic Society when Napoleon's troops had occupied the Spanish capital in 1808, continuing to serve as relator to the Sala de Alcaldes, the body charged with criminal jurisdiction in and around Madrid, during the reign of the intruder.^[65] (This at a time when, in the opinion of one scholar, "the real members [of the Economic Society] were absent from Madrid fighting against the French.")^[66] But if Hernández cooperated with the government of Joseph Bonaparte, he did so more out of convenience than conviction, as would later become clear. Moreover, during the occupation he was nearly arrested, along with other members of the Royal School's board of directors, when Lieutenant Colonel Loftus, disgruntled at having been suspended from his post, told authorities that these men had given their deaf charges "ideas inconsistent with the circumstances of the day," and his assistant Angel Machado alleged that the board included individuals opposed to the new government.

Complaining that their honor had been offended "in the most delicate part" and "making ostentatious display of being good and honorable vassals," board members—Hernández and Alea among them—responded by contacting the Ministry of Police, the agency responsible for "matters of adhesion, or aversion, to the government," and offered to submit their conduct to official scrutiny.^[67] The Friends of the Country apparently managed to convince the government of their loyalty, but Hernández later summarized events as follows: "We tried to get rid of [Loftus], his ignorance triumphed over us, and had we been careless, with the help of his assistant Machado, he would have subjected us to a trial by the police."^[68] Thus, Hernández weathered the French occupation, but not without a close brush with authorities that nearly resulted in his arrest.

In 1814 Ferdinand VII returned to Spain. The monarch had passed the war years as Napoleon's captive at Bayonne, converted by his absence into El Deseado (the desired one). During the conflict, delegates representing the legal government of independent Spain had met in Cadiz in 1812 to draft their nation's first constitution, which embraced the doctrine of the sovereignty of the nation. Upon reentering his kingdom El Deseado immediately abolished the constitution and reinstated absolute rule, repudiating the work of those who had fought to restore him to the throne. Then began the persecution of Spanish liberals. Those who escaped imprisonment were forced to emigrate, with many of them joining their afrancesado compatriots who had fled to France one year earlier. Hernández, however, remained in Madrid when the Spanish king returned, somehow escaping the persecution that befell first afrancesados, then liberals. Around this time the name "Don Tiburcio Hernández" (along with that of "Prádez") appeared on an index of "purification agreements" pardoning certain individuals who had been associated with the government of Joseph Bonaparte.^[69] Shortly after Ferdinand VII's return, Hernández was granted the honorary title of Auditor de Guerra Honorario de los Ejércitos Nacionales (military judge advocate of the national armies) and allowed to retire from the Sala de Alcaldes at full pension in order to devote himself completely to deaf education.^[70] During his tenure as head teacher at the Royal School, the establishment was honored by a visit from the king himself, accompanied by his brother Carlos, the monarch looked on with admiration and approval as Hernández explained the details of the teaching and put his pupils through their paces.^[71]

Under the French occupation, Spanish liberals and absolutists had laid aside their differences, making common cause to defeat the intruder, but once Napoleon's soldiers had been expelled, the struggle between the two groups began anew. In 1820 the liberals triumphed over the absolutists, ushering in the Liberal Triennium (1820–1823). A constitutional government was formed and Ferdinand VII was forced to swear allegiance to the constitution of 1812, the same document he had abrogated a few years earlier. Members of the Economic Society, their right hands upon the Bible, likewise swore to uphold the constitution, and Tiburcio Hernández. was most likely among them. A contemporary would later accuse the Royal School's head teacher of having been an afrancesado, shaming him with references to "patriots who because of his counsel were executed during the time of the French domination." This author charged that subsequently Hernández had gotten along all too well with despotism, noting that it was under absolute rule that he had been awarded the title of auditor and had retired from the Sala de Alcaldes, at full pension.^[72] Yet during the triennium, this same Hernández would passionately defend the cause of Spanish liberalism. At this point the head teacher threw his customary caution to the wind and revealed his true colors, no doubt believing that Spain's form of government had been decided for the foreseeable future. In earlier years he had played along with those in power, most likely to avoid persecution, but only now would he go on record, passionately defending a political system he supported wholeheartedly. Thus, even a speech delivered at the public examination of the Economic Society's stenography students became, for Hernández, occasion to mount a verbal attack on despotism, while in speeches prior to the triennium, he had omitted any reference to politics.^[73]

Although Hernández had retired from his legal career to work full time at the Royal School, in 1821 he was persuaded to reenter the court of law. This time, he had been appointed by the constitutional government to serve as prosecutor in the notorious case of the priest Matías Vinuesa, on trial for conspiring to restore absolute rule.^[74] The man himself, it is generally agreed, was no more than a pobre diablo, an insignificant fellow, but the Vinuesa affair, because of its repercussions, was destined to become one of the most important events of the triennium, and as prosecutor, Hernández would play a prominent role. Commenting on the twist of fate that had thrust him back into the courtroom, he wrote, "It is hard luck that a man retired from the criminal courts, to

which he had only intended to return in defense of his fellow men, is today obliged in spite of himself to prosecute a culprit whose character and crimes cause the pen to drop from his hands. The nation nevertheless demands this sacrifice of the will, and the job requires that one who yesterday and tomorrow defended and will defend transgressors must today defend the law."^[75]

Matías Vinuesa, the accused, had fought with distinction against Napoleon's troops in the war of independence, and when the French withdrew, he had been quick to support the absolutist regime, both from the pulpit and in print.^[76] His loyalty was not lost on Ferdinand VII, who rewarded his faithful subject by naming him archdeacon of Tarragona, and honorary chaplain to the palace. When constitutional government was reinstituted under the triennium, Vinuesa responded by plotting, along with Ferdinand VII's brother Don Carlos, to overthrow the liberal regime and return to absolutist rule. The plan called for parading the constitution through the streets of Madrid, then burning it in a bonfire at the hands of an executioner, and sentencing liberal Spaniards to exile or death. But before these activities could be carried out, thousands of printed copies detailing the scheme were confiscated in the priest's home, and he was thrown in jail. As an indignant populace clamored for justice, Hernández vowed to lay aside "all my passion, all my fire, all the affection that because of my principles I have for the present system ... in order to exercise the formidable ministry of prosecutor with the cold impartiality that characterizes me."^[77] We can only wonder to what extent he managed to do so: when he presented the charges, Hernández himself noted that the amount of material involved was enormous, and he had had only seventy-two hours in which to prepare the case. Furthermore, Vinuesa had refused to testify, maintaining that because he was a priest, the constitutional government had no right to prosecute him on criminal charges. Hernández countered that since the accused would not submit to the law, he should have no defender. This raised the question, the lawyer acknowledged, of whether the priest could be sentenced without having been defended. But this doubt would be valid, he declared, only if there had been no hearing, and in this case, he wrote, "There is no lack of a hearing, but rather, the scornful renunciation of a hearing. It would be just great if when such a thing happened the penalty could not be imposed and executed," he concluded caustically, for then, "criminals would know how to evade it."^[78] Prosecutor Hernández demanded that the accused be put to death.

Figure 15.
"Assassination of Matías Vinuesa." Reproduced in  Boletín de la
Real Academia de la Historia,  1928.

On the morning of May 4, 1821, the very day on which Ferdinand VII had abolished the constitution seven years earlier, word of the sentence circulated through the streets of the Spanish capital, announced first by blind people who banded together to eke out a living selling newspapers, reciting verses, and singing ballads. ("The crowd listens to them, the crowd heeds them, and the crowd pays them," commented one observer.)^[79] Vinuesa had been condemned to ten years in the penitentiary—in that era, a mere slap on the wrist. That same afternoon, an angry throng gathered in downtown Madrid at the Puerta del Sol, their fury at the priest's sentence no doubt further fueled by deeply anticlerical sentiments; then they headed for the royal jail amid shouts of "Long live constitutional monarchy" and "Death to Vinuesa." Determined that the conspirator should receive his just desserts, the crowd broke down the door to the jail and seized the key to Vinuesa's cell. They found the prisoner on his knees, clutching a small portrait of the Virgin Mary. The priest begged for mercy, but to no avail. One of the assailants struck him a mortal blow to the head with a hammer, another cleaved his chest with a sword, and a third shot him several times. The cadaver was then dragged through the streets. "Thus died one who had schemed to spill the blood of thousands and thousands of liberal,

virtuous, and innocent patriots, a victim of the people's furor. The populace had a thirst for revenge, and they have satiated it," editorialized a liberal newspaper of the day.^[80] In the aftermath of the affair, gleeful exaltados, the most radical of the Spanish constitutionalists, adopted the hammer, the implement with which the priest had been bludgeoned to death, as their badge, but in other European courts, the brutal assassination was evoked to denigrate Spain's constitutional regime and thus helped set the stage for the foreign invasion that was soon to overthrow it.

The treacherous plot for which Vinuesa paid with his life had been thwarted, but it paved the way for another attempt at counterrevolution, known as the Seventh of July. This was the most important absolutist conspiracy of the Liberal Triennium, and in the trial that followed Tiburcio Hernández would once again find himself thrust into the limelight. The uprising began in Madrid on May 30, 1822, when, as Ferdinand VII returned from parliament, a crowd stoned the contingent of Royal Guards escorting him.^[81] The guards broke rank, attacking their tormentors at bayonet point, firing into the crowd, and assassinating one of their own officers, a certain Mamerto Landáburu, who was loyal to the constitution.

The famous Landaburian Society, a liberal debating club of exaltado persuasion, was established shortly thereafter and named in honor of the martyred officer. The society's purpose was to inform the populace and to attack the abuses of those in power, and in truth, it was highly influential. Its public sessions were attended by huge audiences that included the most enlightened supporters of Spanish liberalism, among them representatives to parliament, other high-ranking public officials, military officers, and many women—most of them violent supporters of the constitution. One of the most impassioned Landaburians was Tiburcio Hernández. Speaking from a rostrum inscribed with the words "Constitution or Death," the Royal School's head teacher by day and exaltado by night revealed himself to be an audacious and provocative orator and an ardent supporter of Spain's constitutional government.^[82]

The uprising of the Seventh of July was soon defeated, and in the legal proceedings instituted in its wake, Tiburcio Hernández was appointed auditor, or judge advocate, responsible for interpreting the law and proposing appropriate application. Once again he had been cast in a highly visible public role as defender of his nation's constitutional system. The case of this latest conspiracy was followed widely, and the people demanded that the guilty be brought to justice. Involved in the

treachery were members of the government, the Church, high-ranking military officers, the royal family, and the king himself, but in the end, all escaped punishment, save three insignificant souls who were made to pay the supreme price: two Spanish soldiers and a French national who held the rank of first lieutenant.

At the Landaburian Society, where those in attendance debated all the important topics of the day, according to an English visitor, with "unbounded freedom, not to say licentiousness," and speakers often resorted to "extremes of declamation," one citizen expressed outrage that the culprits were strolling the streets of Madrid, and another demanded to know why only "two wretched soldiers and a foreigner without protection" had been executed.^[83] In London the Morning Herald reported on the garroting of the convicted Frenchman, Théodore Goiffeux, in the following terms: "The First Lieutenant of the Guard, Don Theodore Goiffeux, has been executed. The sentence is still more unjust, because he has not been judged by a Council of War. As he went to execution he was insulted.... The moment this unfortunate officer was strangled, the descamisados cried out, 'Vive la Constitución.' The Confessor, during these exclamations, could not forbear crying out, "Vive Dieu.' In consequence of this exclamation he was exposed to great danger, and is still under arrest." The reporter confided to his readers, "It is impossible to give an idea of the depravity of this populace."^[84] Thus, the events of the Seventh of July, like the Vinuesa affair, served to fan the flames of anti-Spanish propaganda abroad and helped seal the fate of the constitutional government.

The failure of the Seventh of July and the liberal victory persuaded the Spanish monarch and his absolutist supporters to seek assistance abroad. Members of the Holy Alliance, a union of European absolutist nations meeting at the Congress of Verona in the fall of 1822, recognized the danger the Spanish revolution posed to their own self-interests and agreed to intervene on Ferdinand VII's behalf. The possibility of foreign invasion was evident to the Landaburians, and in January 1823 Tiburcio Hernández warned, "Let tyrants understand that no one dominates the Spanish nation (if you don't believe it, just ask Napoleon), because there are many unencumbered arms that will know how to kill their oppressors a thousand times over."^[85] His words turned out to be little more than saber-rattling, however, for when in the spring of that same year France sent the so-called One Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, the troops encountered little resistance from the nation that had fought bitterly against Napoleon fifteen years earlier. By fall the

constitutionalists had been easily defeated, and the Liberal Triennium came to an end. Ferdinand VII was restored to full power, legislation from the triennium was annulled, and the persecution of liberals began anew.

Tiburcio Hernández, because of his high-profile involvement in the trials of Matías Vinuesa and the Seventh of July (and no doubt because of his unambiguous pronouncements before the Landaburian Society as well), became, in the words of his son, a "victim of his love of liberty." He was condemned to death by the very Sala de Alcaldes that had formerly employed him as relator . Along with others linked to the constitutional government, this teacher of deaf children now fled for his life. Like his rival and predecessor José Miguel Alea, Hernández never returned to his homeland. After escaping to the British colony of Gibraltar, he died there of an aneurysm in 1826, at the age of fifty-three.^[86]

With Hernández's departure, the Royal School for Deaf-Mutes was left without a head teacher, but the worst was yet to come. In 1822 the school had been placed, along with other educational establishments sponsored by the Friends of the Country, under the authority of the Dirección General de Estudios, which was first presided over by the writer, educational reformer, and tertulia host Manuel José Quintana. But with the return of absolutist government the following year, this body was abolished. The Economic Society, too, was dissolved, due to the liberal views of some of its members (Tiburcio Hernández was a prime example). Administration of the deaf school then felt to its spiritual advisor, Vicente Villanova y Jordán. Villanova, a native of Huesca, was an official of the Inquisition in Aragon, presbyter of the archiepiscopal church of Saragossa, and a recipient of the Cross of Honor, awarded for his role in the defense of Saragossa against the French.^[87] He had first been appointed to the school's board of directors in 1812. Four years later he was made spiritual advisor, then he took on the job of mayordomo as well, seeing to the school's administration and managing its accounts, all without financial compensation. Eventually he was named,rector, or principal. His devotion to the school was genuine, for when resources had been exhausted and the Friends of the Country had been faced with the prospect of dismissing the students and closing the doors, Villanova had come to the rescue, spending his patrimony to ensure the establishment's continued existence.^[88]

Villanova alone steered the Royal School until 1827, when the duke of Híjar asked Ferdinand VII to appoint him director of the establish-

ment.^[89] The king consented to his courtier's request, vesting in him the authority that had previously pertained to the school's board. The duke continued at the helm until 1835, and under his stewardship the establishment's financial situation took a turn for the better.^[90] Despite improved economic conditions, however, the meager documentation that remains suggests that the reign of the duke of Híjar left much to be desired.

In 1826, one year prior to the duke's appointment, Antonio Hernández Blancas, Don Tiburcio's son, had approached the king, seeking to be named head teacher at the Royal School. His petition was granted "in consideration of his merit, service, intelligence, and his considerable experience in the good discharge of the profession his father exercised."^[91] Hernández Blancas was barely seventeen years old at the time. As a child, he had himself been a pupil at the Royal School, studying under his father's tutelage alongside the deaf disciples.^[92] Like the celebrated Roch-Ambroise Bébian, the abbé Sicard's hearing godchild who as a youth attended classes at the Paris institute, lived among the deaf students and staff, and learned their sign language, Hernández Blancas might well have become a friend and champion of Spanish deaf people.^[93] Instead, he would leave his post at the Madrid school in disgrace nine years after his appointment.

Following the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833, the Friends of the Country reorganized their society, and in 1835 the Royal School was once again entrusted to their care. One of their first acts was to name a committee to evaluate conditions at the school. Their conclusion: Instruction there was suffering because of Hernández Blancas's "limited aptitude and excessive abandonment."^[94] To make matters worse, the students were in a state of insubordination. The Friends of the Country held the head teacher responsible for this situation, and seeing that he could not restore order, they fired him.

The only remaining account of events leading to his dismissal was written by Hernández Blancas himself, in his plea for reinstatement.^[95] From this document emerges the story of the deaf children's abuse at the hands of their hearing "benefactors," and of their determined resistance. Hernández Blancas reported that some time before the society resumed oversight of the school, the principal, Vicente Villanova, who the Reglamento charged with supervising students' conduct and curbing their passions,^[96] had been "obliged" to administer severe punishments. "It seems ... the floggings had the desired effect, in spite of the resentment they produced at the beginning," the head teacher commented. (While legislation of the day concerning corporal punishment

of students cautioned that "care shall be taken not to inflict any injury," it also stated, "Let the children know they may be punished in this way, and let this serve to restrain their misbehavior and their pertinacious disobedience or lack of studiousness.")^[97] . While expressing reservations about such measures—"I have never believed that youth should be addressed by any means except persuasion, leaving coercive means for desperate cases," Hernández wrote—he nevertheless seemed to defend Villanova's tactics, and he based his defense on the old lie that deaf people were incapable of abstract thought:

Those of us who have observed the deaf-mutes' character with care will always agree that the means sufficient to direct other youths are ineffective with them; even with the greatest care, the director of a deaf-mute will never manage to imbue in him certain ideas that are difficult to comprehend, because of their abstraction and subtlety, and to harvest their fruit by way of spontaneous submission. The deaf-mute lacks many ideas because it is impossible to communicate them to him, and in all his decisions the heart exercises more influence than the head.^[98]

The problems had begun, Hernández Blancas related, after Ferdinand VII's death, when word had circulated that direction of the school would be returned to the Friends of the Country. The anticipated change, he asserted, "created in the disciples the presentiment of a new order ... and from there was born their insolent sedition and the relaxation of discipline." Shortly before the board of directors took over, he continued, "there occurred the first excess against the person of the principal," when, "at the very door of the room where he had presented himself to prevent them from continuing to create a disturbance," the students wrested from his hand the scourge with which he was wont to flog them. For this act of rebellion the offenders were expelled, but their expulsion, the head teacher maintained, served only to provide "the best incentive for repetition of the excesses: in [such misconduct] the deaf-mutes saw an easy means of shaking off the yoke, and returning to the idleness and liberty so beloved at their age of indiscretion."

Once the governing board began functioning, the next "excess" was likewise sanctioned with expulsion, and according to Hernández Blancas, "the deaf-mutes looked upon that punishment as if it were the reward of a vacation, since the two expelled students were later readmitted." Don Tiburcio's son insisted that it was the "rapid and inopportune transition from severe punishment to absolute impunity" that had caused the students' insubordination, but board members suspected that a "hidden hand" had induced their rebellion—that of Antonio

Hernández Blancas himself. For his part, Hernández Blancas complained that while the board blamed him for the breakdown of discipline, he lacked the necessary "repressive measures" to suppress it. The young teacher protested to the board:

Since ... you want to hold me responsible for the loss of order, subordination, and discipline, I will explain to you the means previously employed to conserve these three things. I never took part, and such severity always pained me, but the inflexible character of the disciples, and the cruelty of the employees, have at times reached painful extremes: Don Pedro Ortega has several times been tied hand and foot to the window grate, because since he is so small he would remove his feet from the pillory, which was useless for him; Don Benito Yagüe has been deprived of half his food for twenty days for having ripped a sheet, solely because of his restless sleep, and I shall not bother to relate other such monstrosities, which were, unfortunately, frequent.

The student rebellion escalated rapidly, and even before events came to a climax, Hernández Blancas himself conceded that there had already been "thousands of other incidents," such as "the insolent petulance with which [the students] obliged the principal to buy them suspenders" and "what transpired during the baths." All their behavior, he maintained, could be attributed to "the deaf-mutes' peculiar and audacious character and the dangerous impunity that produced our disorderly impotence, and the tolerance and levity of the board, which were their cause." Moreover, although the shenanigans Hernández alluded to were most likely minor, the minutes of the Economic Society also recorded an attempt by students to burn down the school.^[99]

The episode that would culminate in the head teacher's dismissal began when another instructor, Agustín Pascual, punished one of the scholars "with considerable rigor," Hernández recounted, at which point the boy's classmates "all rose up against this employee, and I could barely save him from the disciples' fury." The following afternoon two pupils escaped from the school—"they had done so before with impunity," Hernández said—and when they returned, they brought with them gunpowder and a small bronze cannon, which they had stolen from the provincial military barracks. "The next day the disturbances took a serious turn," he explained, "for I found them on the stairs lying in wait for Pascual, resolved to take revenge on him because they believed he was the one who had denounced their desertion of the night before to the board member on duty; and when I had managed to placate them and persuade them to go into the classroom, the disorder erupted again, to

such an extreme that I had to make Pascual leave under frivolous pretexts and then allow them to fire the cannon in the patio."

Having informed the board of what had occurred, Hernández Blancas later lamented, "I was assured that serious steps would be taken to put an end to the troubles, but I never thought that my suspension would be among the first, yet it was announced the next day." He pleaded to be returned to his post, invoking his father's memory and citing his need to support his wife, children, mother, and sister. He argued that he had been made a scapegoat for problems at the school, pointing out that he alone among all the employees had been suspended, but the board was unmoved and declined to reinstate him.^[100] In the aftermath of the uprising, the Friends of the Country also expelled four pupils they believed to be the ringleaders, returning them to their parents or packing them off to establishments of charity,^[101] and they quietly abolished the position of spiritual advisor as well. Board members professed that their motives for the latter move were purely economic, reasoning that the local parish priest could see to students' spiritual needs,^[102] but this was in all probability a face-saving measure to rid the Royal School of the sadistic Vicente Villanova y Jordán.

As for Hernández Blancas, his story did not end with his firing. He reappeared at the Royal School more than twenty years later, after having practiced law in the Spanish capital and in Havana, where he also directed a school for deaf children. He sought to be reinstated as director of the Royal School, or to be appointed supervisor of deaf education for all of Spain. Because he had previously been terminated for "ineptitude and abandonment," however, his request was denied.^[103]

In 1835 Roberto Prádez, then in his early sixties, was still employed at the school where he had taught continuously for the past three decades. It appears that he was somewhat marginalized by this time, however, for the following year a hearing man, Francisco Fernández Villabrille, replaced him as art teacher. (Prádez nevertheless continued to teach writing.)^[104] Villabrille was destined to have a brilliant career as the school's first professor and as a prolific author of articles and texts for both deaf and blind children, but there is no evidence whatsoever that he had any credentials as an artist. Prádez's presence at the Royal School is documented up through late November 1836, when his long teaching career came to an end.^[105] Most likely he left the school because of

ill health, for he passed away less than one month later, on December 7, 1836, at his home at number 14 on the Calle de Santiago, where he lived with his wife, Modesta Sierra.^[106] Of the three major figures at the Royal School during the first third of the nineteenth century—José Miguel Alea, Tiburcio Hernández, and Roberto Prádez—the art teacher alone had managed to end his days in the land of his birth. His death certificate records that he left this world without receiving the Holy Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, and that he was afforded free burial "out of pity," outside the walls of the cemetery of the Puerta de Fuencarral.^[107]

It is difficult to interpret the circumstances surrounding Prádez's death. The fact that he died without the last rites may suggest that the priest declined to administer them—or that Prádez himself refused them. Either way, the cause may have been liberal political leanings, which often went hand in hand with anticlerical sentiments, although we cannot know for sure.^[108] At any rate, this much seems clear Because he did not receive the Sacraments, Prádez was interred beyond the cemetery walls, in unhallowed ground. The life of the Royal School's first deaf teacher had ended without fanfare in a pauper's funeral.

In Spain today, historically prominent hearing teachers of deaf people are appropriately honored. In the nation's capital a school for deaf children bears the name of the Benedictine Pedro Ponce de León, and in the Plaza de Costa Rica in the famed Retiro Park a statue depicts the monk in the act of teaching a young disciple, and a plaque there pays homage to Juan Pablo Bonet, in whose memory a class for deaf adults has been named as well.^[109] These men, along with figures such as José Miguel Alea and Tiburcio Hernández, occupy an important place in accounts of Spanish deaf history. But tribute has yet to be paid to Roberto Francisco Prádez. No statue has been erected in his honor, no deaf school named for him. Although Prádez was a founding father of deaf education, his many contributions during the Royal School's first three decades of existence have never been properly acknowledged, and he has yet to assume his rightful place in deaf history and culture.

Prádez's death marked the end of an era at the Madrid institute. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, deaf education had been guided not by professional educators but by sympathetic intellectuals.

These were men of talent and achievement such as José Miguel Alea, the cultured abate who grappled with the concerns of the European Enlightenment, and Tiburcio Hernández, the famous lawyer who participated in two of the triennium's major political trials. The progressive Friends of the Country had recognized Prádez's deafness as a distinct advantage. During the second two-thirds of the century, however, deaf education would become the domain of "experts," men who no longer viewed deafness as a desirable quality in an instructor and who banned deaf teachers from the classroom. Thus, the time of meaningful deaf involvement in the educational enterprise came to an end with Roberto Prádez's demise, and no deaf person would ever again attain such a prominent position at the Royal School. Half a century would pass before another deaf artist would be employed there, and even then, the record suggests that at no time did he participate in the life of the institution to anywhere near the extent that Prádez did.^[110] Small wonder, then, that Roberto Prádez has been conveniently "forgotten," for the memory of his contributions could only prove a source of embarrassment to those who continue to close the door to deaf teachers.