This article analyses the concept of the state as represented in primary school social science textbooks in Spain during the transition to democracy. The analysis of textbooks during this period has tended to focus on the importance of National Catholicism (Nacionalcatolicismo) or the technocratic vision in the framing of their representations. This article points to how such representations should be viewed from a more complex perspective that lays the emphasis on how the dictatorship understood education within the context of the Cold War. The first part of the article analyses the explanations given by textbooks during the transition. The second part dissects the subsequent evolution of the representations. Lastly, we attempt to explain why these representations and changes came about.