Open AccessThe article carries out a review of school management in Spain and its future lines of development, situating the analysis within the current European educational policies. A peculiar history makes the model of election by colleagues, with little autonomy, outdated and incapable of pedagogically leading the educational effort of the school. Throughout the article, there is a presentation of the tensions and dilemmas of the current school management in Spain: instructional leadership versus a leadership more focused on administrative tasks, on the one hand, and a greater capacity to make autonomous decisions versus normative regulation by the educational administration mark the main future tendencies in school management in Spain. The author argues that, duly situated and based on the lessons learned at the national and international levels, educational leadership is a tool that can be used to energize the public educational institutions.