This article explores the political, religious, and ideological backdrop to psychology and pedagogy under Franco's dictatorship. To this end, it analyses the important research carried out between 1940 and 1944 by the psychologist and pedagogue José J. Jover y Piquer into the intelligence, mentality, and moral judgement of a large number of abandoned and vulnerable postwar children. The article demonstrates how, although the approach adopted by Piquer was a scientific one -- with the usual aims, techniques, and methods -- the research contents were subordinated to ideological and religious considerations and aimed to determine the extent to which these children could be re-educated and integrated into the new regime. Thus, psychology became the scientific packaging for studies that were eminently ideological and politically subservient, turning pedagogy into a key instrument of the "biopolitics" aimed at building Franco's New Spain.