[5] After a brief period of decline between 1914 and 1919, it received support from the Directorio Militar of Primo de Rivera during the 1920s, experiencing a change of educational direction and, consequently, a strong increase in personnel, in what could be considered the golden age of the institution.

It was the initiative of Pedro Roselló Axet, Cavalry captain, friend and colleague of Teodoro Iradier; together with Ramón Solé i Lluch—an enthusiastic worker of scouting—and Narcís de Romaguera, among others.

[15] Parallel to the Exploradores Barceloneses, there were other less successful Catalan initiatives such as the Jovestels de Catalunya of Ignasi Ribera-Rovira in 1912, related to the Republican Nationalist Federal Union,[16] and with two groups, Cataluña and Canigó.

[21] In Iradier's words: "Scouting is life in the open, the learning of useful things, the doing of good works",[22] as well as "the explorador of today will be the practical man of tomorrow" and "will proudly hold the title of transformer of our homeland".

[25] By the end of 1912, the first steering committee and executive council of the institution was constituted,[26] including the following personalities: On 27 April 1913, 2397 exploradores gathered at the Atlético Madrid field for the promise ceremony, with the attendance of the kings of Spain.

[29] In January 1914, there were already 68 Exploradores en España committees and in July the first national camp was held in Riofrío, Real Sitio de San Ildefonso,[30] in which 580 troops from 18 towns from Aragón, Asturias, Barcelona, Burgos, Galicia, Granada, Guadalajara, Madrid, Murcia, Palencia, Salamanca, Santander, Valladolid and Zamora participated.

José María Quintana Cabanas cites a period of disagreements with the Church which, as was happening in other countries, accused the Explorers of Spain of naturalism and of hindering the religious practices of children.

[8] On the other hand, a series of internal conflicts in the organization forced the resignation of Iradier as secretary-commissioner in February 1915 and, in solidarity with him, also that of the president of the explorers, José Messía y Gayoso, duke de Tamames.

The new governing board was formed by Antonio Trucharte Samper as secretary, Arturo Cuyás as general commissioner and Teodoro Iradier y Herrero as member.

[46] In those early years of the Dictatorship, Francisco García Molinas, vice president of the National Council, made the Exploradores de España available to the Government as a means for civic education, a school of citizenship for the "improvement of the race" and an example of solidarity between classes.

The idea was well received by the Directorio Militar, which began to propose a national plan of physical and pre-military training among young people, and by royal order of May 1925, a commission of various ministerial departments and civilian entities was created for this purpose.

[51] The golden age in Minas de Riotinto was under the leadership of Francisco (Frank) Timmis (d. 1931), president of the Local Council, English national and great connoisseur of Baden-Powell's work.

It was the first of international character to be organized in Spain and also the last, held in Montjuïc, with the participation of 2000 scouts, Spanish and foreigners, from fourteen countries:[65] England, France, Hungary, Germany, Tangier, Poland, Chile, Holland, Sweden, Romania, Scotland, Australia, Brazil and Portugal.

[66][67][68][69] In 1927, Josep Maria Batista i Roca founded the Minyons de Muntanya,[70] and in the early 1930s, the first Catholic confessional groups appeared, which would be constituted as the Scouts Hispanos in 1934 by the priest Jesús Martínez and a former commissioner Mario González Pons—an institution of ephemeral existence.

"[74] By Decree of the provisional Government of the Republic, it was transmitted on 21 May 1931 to the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts how many attributions corresponded to the Presidency, in relation to the Exploradores de España.

[79] The politician and founder of the exploradores de Granada, Luis López-Dóriga, was the translator of Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys from English into Spanish in 1934, a work that was never published in Spain.

In the opinion of Félix Cucurull, "as a consequence of the oppression to which it was subjected",[82] legacy of the Directiorio Militar, considering that "a nationalist sentiment such as the Catalan one could be sacrificed by violence and silence".

[83] However, Juan Peiró blamed such behavior on the fact that "the freedom of Catalonia was not achievable except by a procedure of direct action", the result of "centuries of submission under the yoke of magistrates, military and stowaways incapable of understanding the soul of the Catalans".

[87] Among the demands of the breakaway group was to dispense with the use of the national flag in the activities of the association and total independence in its institutional relations with the International Scout Bureau in London.

[90] After the split, the Exploradores de España en Cataluña were reduced to a minimum, their presence limited to the municipalities of Barcelona and Tarrasa, and the autonomous English and French groups.

The Boy Scouts españoles de Barcelona, like those of the rest of Spain, absolutely alien to all partisanship, scrupulously abstain from participating in political acts, of any kind whatsoever, which is also forbidden by their Statutes.

Although almost all managed to return to their towns without major difficulties, the exploradores of the Zaragoza Troop who were in the Odesa National Park were evacuated to Barcelona where they found refuge and were placed under the custody of the Boy Scouts de Catalunya.

The Exploradores de España, in accordance with the principles of their statutes, remained distanced from any political ideology, and wherever the local council considered it possible, offered their collaboration to the legally established authority to perform services of a humanitarian nature.

[110]and the response of Fernando Molina-Niñirola Sánchez (Tigre en Acecho), then commissioner of the Murcia Group:If official Spanish scouting must disappear, we will always be reverent towards our Caudillo and the national authorities, following the patriotic principles that we can never set aside.

[112] José María Gutiérrez del Castillo (known as Chemari in his native Valladolid) was the creator in 1937 of the OOJJ, turning all his efforts to eliminate the boy scouts and any other direct competition to his purpose, to unify them into a single entity: La Falange.

[112] José María Gutiérrez del Castillo (known as Chemari in his native Valladolid) was the creator in 1937 of the OOJJ, turning all his efforts to eliminate the boy scouts and any other direct competition to his purpose, to unify them into a single entity: La Falange.

Each troop added the coat of arms of the locality in the center with the inscription "Los Exploradores de España" in the upper stripe next to the badge of the association.

During the institutional decline between, 1914 and 1919, he was the critical voice of the association, and gave as reasons the resignation of Iradier,[135] which added to the lack of enthusiasm of the first benefactors and the weariness of the public who judged by what they saw.

He committed suicide one morning on 19 September 1935,[137] as quoted by José María López Lacárcel, during an allegedly long period of depression and emotional problems; after his death he was replaced by Isidoro de la Cierva.

[159] Francisco Medina signed the communiqués with Juan Antonio Dimas at the end of the civil war, as members of the general commissariat, seeking recognition and administrative permission to continue with the activities of the exploradores, but never received the desired response.