The dictatorships of Mussolini in Italy, Salazar in Portugal, and Primo de Rivera and Franco in Spain used a wide range of repressive mechanisms to achieve political-social control over teachers, which presents both notable analogies and divergences between the three countries. The new governments - aware of the powerful instrument of socialization and nationalization that education is - did not want to leave in the hands of anti-fascist professors - the "apostles of reason", identified with the enlightened ideology of the 18th century - the formation of future ruling elites. . For Mussolini, Salazar and Franco, secondary education had to have a strategic function of double importance. On the one hand, as a generator of consensus favorable to the stability of their respective regimes and, on the other, as a space for the formation of the ruling classes, related to new political projects that would guarantee their durability over time. Francoism and Salazarism followed the model of Italian fascism and adopted very similar educational policies to reshape society and create new citizens in which the Catholic Church played a dominant role. However, in the political cleansing of the teaching staff, there is no doubt that the Franco dictatorship launched a more systematic repression aimed at expelling the teachers defeated from the Civil War from the "new order". This work thus offers an approach to the contemporary history of these three countries in a comparative perspective little explored in historical studies, through a solid and well-documented analysis of education and repression in the dictatorships of southern Europe.