This article focuses on the Workers' Institutes (WI), one of the most important educational initiatives undertaken by the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936-1939). After framing their creation within the context of European trends in higher education for the working classes and within the Spanish socio-political context, this article examines the role of these institutions as an envisioned community and as a living community, dedicated to serving the Republic as an imagined community. Legal documents, political and pedagogical speeches, as well as opinion pieces, portray the WI as an envisioned community. As such, they represented the transformations and disseminated the aspirations of the new political regime. Furthermore, the experiences of those who studied in the WI, collected via a range of texts, as well as oral and written interviews, portray the institution as a living community. Accordingly, this article describes students' attitude regarding the political discourse on the WI as envisioned community, and their memories of their lives in the Institutes. It also conveys the WI students' perceptions of themselves as part of that community, a representation shared by the political discourse on WI as envisioned communities. The article concludes by confirming the existence of these organisations as imagined communities and reflecting on the way that WI communities have been relived from the point of view of the present.