Holy Family Professional Schools Foundation

SAFA is the acronym (SAgrada FAmilia) for the Holy Family Professional Schools Foundation, a non-profit, private, cultural institution founded in 1940 by the Jesuit Rafael Villoslada Peula. The institution currently has 27 educational centers scattered throughout the eight provinces of Andalusia and serves some 20,000 students.

Origin of SAFA

Fundación Escuelas Profesionales de la Sagrada Familia was founded in 1940, months after the end of the Spanish Civil War. In that socioeconomic context, a young Jesuit Father Rafael Villoslada Peula proposed providing vocational training to children who otherwise had no opportunity to receive a basic education.

The founding charter defines SAFA as an institution whose teaching work, always free, aims to promote and create the future workers of the Province of Huelva, among the impoverished classes of the Andalusian towns and fields, It offers Christian and social education, as well as the human and social promotion of its beneficiaries, with special emphasis on professional education. The work as defined in the charter continues into the 21st century, through cooperation between the Foundation and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Council of Andalusia.

The SAFA Foundation offers primary, secondary, and technical training, including adult education, throughout Andalusia, in twenty-seven centers: Alcalá de los Gazules, Alcalá la Real, Almería Andújar, Atarfe, Baena, Bujalance, Cádiz, Chiclana, Écija, El Puerto S. María, Huelva, Jerez, Las Lomas, Linares, Málaga (ICET), Montellano, Osuna, Pedro Abad, Sevilla (B. Paloma), Sevilla (N.S. Reyes), Sevilla (P. Vereda), Úbeda, Valverde del Camino, Villacarrillo, Villanueva, Centro Naturaleza Constantina, and Centro Universitario Úbeda.

Centers