This chapter addresses the role played by language and schools in the history of Spain’s nineteenth-century liberal nation-building project. Both the Spanish language and the public school system were strategic sites where national consensus could be built and, consequently, the achievement of linguistic homogeneity through education became a central goal for the state. In particular, I examine the conditions that favored the linguistic norms developed by the Royal Spanish Academy and the debates that surrounded their officialization and imposition in the emerging national school system. While the historiography of Spanish has traditionally described the selection and implementation of the RAE’s norms as if they were undisputed and ideologically neutral, this study will emphasize the political complexity of the standardization process by approaching the archive with an ethnographic and historical-materialist perspective.