Courtship and the beginning of the first sentimental relationships are relevant processes in the social life and climate of classrooms and educational centres, configuring a new axis from which new forms of interpersonal interaction of great interest to adolescents will develop. Personal variables, the direct social context of peers, as well as developmental contexts, and even historical-cultural variables would influence this process of formation of competence for sentimental relationships and intimacy (Connolly et al. 2003). Courtship can be considered a psycho-evolutionary task from whose success would derive the opportunity to develop a good management of relational competence for intimate life (Dávila et al. 2009); but it is also an important psychosocial and educational challenge, which is not alien to the risks of rude (Pellegrini, 2003) or violent behaviours (Viejo, 2014) that could be in the psychogenesis of gender violence (Ortega-Ruiz et al., 2010).

From this conceptual framework, the symposium presented here aims to deepen the analysis of the process of adolescent courtship, understood as a developmental task that is addressed within the relational system that constitutes the peer group. We start from the hypothesis that the mastery of sentimental competence plays an important role as a necessary tool for an adjusted social development in adolescence, without forgetting one of the main risks involved in this relationship: assuming violent patterns within the juvenile couple.