José María Albareda (1902-1966) and the formation of the Spanish

1
SEMINARI D’HISTÒRIA DE LA CIENCIA
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA
José María Albareda (1902-1966) and the
formation of the Spanish Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas
Antoni Malet
Preprint 1
Febrer 2008
2
José María Albareda (1902-1966) and the formation of the
Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Antoni Malet*
[email protected]
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Departament d’Humanitats
carrer Ramon Trias Fargas 25
08005 BARCELONA
Introduction
During the first decades of the 20th century, Spain knew an important scientific
development. Starting in 1907, the year in which the Junta para la Ampliación de
Estudios (JAE, or Board for the Promotion of Advanced Studies) was created, a small
group of open-minded, reformist intellectuals under the direction of the Nobel prize
winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) effectively promoted Spanish scientific
research. The JAE, endorsed by the Rockefeller Foundation (which financed the
building of a Physics Research Institute in Madrid in the late 20s), made possible the
flourishing of several research schools in the country. The Civil War (1936-1939),
which Francisco Franco won supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, meant a
decisive break with the science policy implemented during the first decades of the
century. A substantial number of scientists, artists, and thinkers, including some 200
*
Research for this paper has been partially supported by research grants from the Spanish MEC
(Hum2005-05107/FISO) and the Catalan DURSI (Grup de recerca consolidat 2005SGR-00929).
3
university lecturers and professors left the country at the end of the war.1 Moreover, in
contradistinction to an extended cliché, the Franco regime accorded political priority to
the institutionalization of scholarly and scientific research. Outstanding among the new
Francoist organisms was a new and highly idiosyncratic scientific institution, the
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (usually known by the acronym CSIC),
created just months after the end of the war in November 1939. Many people took part
in its gestation, but in many senses it was the brainchild and the lifelong project of a
single man, the applied chemist J.M. Albareda, an specialist in pedology or soil science.
In this paper we provide first a short biographical sketch of Albareda based on
secondary sources as a background for his views on science policy and his way of
implementing them.
Before the Civil War
José María Albareda Herrera was born on April 15, 1902, in Caspe, a small town in
Aragón, northern Spain. He was the son of a well-to-do, close-knit, conservative,
strongly religious family. His father was a pharmacist, agricultural developer, and
landowner who set up a factory for food related products.2 As we shall see, Albareda's
1
F. Giral, Ciencia española en el exilio (1939-1989) (Barcelona: Anthropos-Centro Estudios
Republicanos, 1994); J.J. CARRERAS; M.A. RUIZ, eds. La universidad española bajo el régimen de
Franco (1939-1975) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1991); R. MONTORO, La universidad
en la España de Franco (1939-1970) (Madrid: CIS, 1981); notice that the last two books fail to take into
account the CSIC's decisive role in university research.
2
The main sources on Albareda's life are E. Gutiérrez Ríos, José María Albareda. Una época de la
cultura española (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1970); A. Castillo, M.
Tomeo, Albareda fue asi : semilla y surco (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas,
1971); G. Marañón, “El profesor Albareda ... ingresa en la Real Academia de Medicina”, Arbor (June
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family and social background strongly shaped his scientific and science policy agendas,
for he developed his father's interest in industrialization and the agricultural
development of his town into a priority both for his own research and for the scientific
development of Spain. In his student years Albareda got in close contact with
"regionalists", a peculiar political reformist movement that had circles in Saragossa, the
provincial capital of Aragón, and whose major figures were the antiquarian and law
professor Juan Moneva (1871-1951) and the law scholar Salvador Minguijón (18741959). While conservative in religious and social matters, they were pushing for an
overhaul of the corrupt Spanish political system in the direction of devolving powers to
provinces with historical and cultural unity.3
Out of Albareda's juvenile infatuation with politics came in 1921 and 1922 a
series of articles in a major Saragossa newspaper, El Noticiero, and his first book,
Biología política (1923), adorned with an introduction by Minguijón himself.4
Albareda's main contention is that societies and nations are like living organisms, each
endowed with its own character and vitality. Each one needs freedom to organize itself
1952), 246-250; Solemne sesión necrológica en memoria del Excmo. Sr. D. José María Albareda :
celebrada por las Reales Academias de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Nacional de Medicina y
Farmacia ([Madrid] : Cosano, 1966). These are hagiographic accounts of Albareda's biography; for a
critical view of Albareda's involvement in the creation of the CSIC see J.M. Sánchez Ron, "Política
cientifica e ideología: Albareda y los primeros años del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas",
Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 14 (1992): 53-74.
3
On Moneva, see his Memorias (Saragossa, 1952); L. Horno, En torno a Don Juan Moneva (Saragossa,
1983); on Minguijón, see J. Orlandis, «Juan Salvador Minguijón Adrián», Anuario de Historia del
Derecho Español, 29 (1959), 763-766; S. Minguijón, S. Aznar, Los intelectuales ante la ciencia y la
sociedad ; discurso leído en el acto de su recepción celebrada el 15 de Junio de 1941 (Madrid: Real
Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, [1941]). For information about the Saragossa provincial
circles shaping Albareda's early political thought, see also Albareda's Biología política (below).
5
in the way that best suits it nature, character, and geography. Only in this way can
nations prosper. This is why, argues Albareda, Spanish "artificial" political system is a
major cause of Spain's moral, economic, and military decadence. It is a centralist
system that imposes from above the same uniform political structure upon all the
Spanish provinces. And since it does not respect their natures, it generates malfunctions
and corruption. The way ahead, says the young Albareda, is shown by Catalonia. There
the Catalanist (Catalan nationalist) party founded by Prat de la Riba, which won local
(ayuntamientos) and county (diputaciones provinciales) elections in 1904, has been
cleverly using whatever opportunities the present legal system offers to put these
administrations to the service of Catalan society. And the results are telling—new
cultural and educational institutions, better roads, and so on and so forth. The Spanish
political system needs reform in the direction of granting political autonomy to the
different societies now artificially uniformized under Madrid's corrupt power.5 As far as
we know, Albareda's youthful political commitment had no continuity. After he got his
pharmacy degree and up to the Civil War he wholeheartedly turned to science.
After graduating in 1923 from the Madrid School of Pharmacy (Facultad de
Farmacia) Albareda went back to Saragossa to get a second undergraduate degree
(licenciatura) in chemistry in 1925. The Saragossa Science School (Facultad de
Ciencias) was something of an anomaly in Spanish undergraduate science education in
that it featured two chemistry research laboratories, one headed by Antonio de Gregorio
Rocasolano (1873-1941), the other by Antonio Rius Miró. They were small
4
For details on Albareda's some 15 newspaper articles, see Castillo, Tomeo, Albareda fue así, p. 40.
5
J.M. Albareda, Biología política (Saragossa: El Noticiero, 1923), passim; references to Catalonia on p.
94ff.
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laboratories set within the university premises but mainly supported by Saragossa's local
authorities and a few local firms. They had a strongly applied character, Rocasolano's
working mostly on methods to improve soil fertility, Rius's on electrochemistry and
chemical engineering generally. Both Rocasolano and Rius had traveled abroad and
done original research. 6 They felt badly treated by the Spanish administration, which
had historically assumed a hyper-centralist science policy. According to it, Spain's
scarce financial support to scientific research was always and exclusively allocated to
the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) and its Madrid-based laboratories, and no
support went to provincial research teams.7
Under Rius's supervision, Albareda wrote a doctoral dissertation on the
electrolysis of oxygenated water, which he defended early in 1928 in the Madrid School
of Pharmacy. In June of the same year he traveled to Bonn to specialize in agricultural
chemistry at the Institute of Agricultural Chemistry of the Landwirtschaftlichen
Hochschule, under the direction of Hubert Kappen (1878-1949). When he was already
there he received a JAE fellowship. He was in Madrid from mid August to mid
November 1928, where he passed the examination (oposiciones) for a high school
teaching post (cátedra de instituto de enseñanza media). Back in Bonn on November
14, he worked there until October 1929. From there he moved to Switzerland, always
supported by the JAE, to work at the Zurich Polytechnic with the professor of
6
On Rocasolano, see M. Tomeo Lacrué, Rocasolano. Notas bio-bibliográficas (Saragossa: La
Académica, 1941). On Rius, see A. Rius, F. Navarro, Discurso leído en el acto de su recepción por
Antonio Rius y Miró ... el día 21 de noviembre de 1945 (Madrid : Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas,
Físicas y Naturales, 1945).
7
agricultural chemistry, Georg Wiegner (1883-1936), on the acidity of clays. Founding
Wiegner's approach too theoretical, by the end of April 1930 he left Zurich for
Königsberg to work in Eilhard Alfred Mitscherlich's (1874-1956) laboratory and learn
its methods for studying soil productivity and improving it. He had to shorten his stay
in Königsberg because of failing health and was back in Spain by the end of June 1930.
Putting together his researches in Bonn and Zurich, upon his return to Spain in October
1931 he defended a second doctoral dissertation, this time within the Faculty of
Chemistry of the University of Madrid.
Enrique Moles, a chemist who had seated in the committee of Albareda's second
doctoral thesis and one of the leading scientists working in the JAE's Institute of Physics
and Chemistry, invited Albareda in 1932 to give a series of lectures on soil chemistry
under the patronage of the Sociedad Española de Física y Química (Physical and
Chemical Spanish Society). Moles was also instrumental in securing for Albareda
another course of lectures on soil chemistry in 1936, under the patronage of the
Academy of Sciences (more about this presently). In the 1920s and until the Civil War
Moles did substantial original research on the determination of atomic weights. After
the war he was singled out as a republican and lost both his chemistry chair in the
University of Madrid and his position as a head researcher within the Institute of
Physics and Chemistry.8 The Institute had become part of the Francoist Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, of which Albareda was the all-powerful
7
On the JAE, see J.M. Sánchez Ron, Cincel, martillo y piedra. Historia de la ciencia en España, siglos
XIX y XX (Madrid Taurus,1999), p. 215-187; La Junta para ampliación de estudios e investigaciones
científicas 80 años después, 1907-1987, 2 vol., José Manuel Sánchez Ron, ed. (Madrid: CSIC, 1988).
8
General Secretary, but Moles was not helped by his former protégé. The success of
Albareda's lectures made him the winner of the 1932 Ramsay Foundation fellowship for
Spain, which was administered by the Spanish Academy of Sciences but financed by the
Ramsay Foundation in the U.K. For 2 years, from mid 1932 up through the Summer of
1934 Albareda worked in the Rothamsted Experimental Station on the chemistry of
clays and then visited experimental stations in Bangor (Wales) and Aberdeen
(Scotland). In Rothamsted he worked first according to the lines and methods
established by E.M. Crowther, head of the Rothamsted chemistry department, and then
at the physics department under the guidance of G.W. Robinson.
In spite of his visits to foreign institutions and his two doctorates, Albareda was
not yet a full member of the major national laboratory in chemistry the JAE run in
Madrid. In 1928 he had won a "chair" (cátedra) in the public high schools. Until the
early 1980s, Spanish high school "chairs" were similar to French "agrégations", i.e.,
they were allocated by highly competitive public examinations, were tenured positions,
and their intellectual and social status was similar to university lecturers, below
university chairs but much higher up than teachers of primary school. From 1928 to
1935 Albareda held a "chair" in the high school (instituto de enseñanza media) of the
provincial capital of Huesca, also in Aragon, not far from Saragossa. After his return
from the United Kingdom he applied for and got a "chair" in a high school in Madrid.
He moved there in the Summer of 1935 to start his teaching in the Fall of 1935. During
the academic year 1935/36 he also was in charge of the so-called Conde de Cartagena
Chair, where he taught an introductory course in soil chemistry in Madrid. This Chair
8
On Moles, see "Enric Moles", in Ciència i tècnica als Països Catalans: una aproximació biogràfica,
J.M. Camarasa, A. Roca, eds. (Barcelona: Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca, 1995) s.v.
9
was the name given to a prestigious yearly series of lectures organized by the Spanish
Academy of Sciences in its premises and addressed to postgraduate students and
researchers.
As far as we know, Albareda had no political affiliation before the Civil War. If
anything, his newspaper articles and 1923 book, Biología política, identified him as an
acute, deeply critical observer of Spain's politically flawed constitution under the
monarchy, but after his early-twenties dalliance with politics Albareda had plunged into
his scientific work—until the Civil War broke.
The Civil War (1936-1939)
Spain's political situation in early July 1936 was on the brink of disaster. The tension
steadily grew after the February 1936 victory at the polls of the Frente Popular, the big
coalition of center-left and left parties. Eventually the political violence went out of
control and on the 18th of July the Head Military Commander (Capitán General) of the
Canary Islands, Francisco Franco, raised in arms against the Republican Government.
In a matter of days Spain was divided in two territories in which social chaos and
bloody terror against political adversaries —or even those merely suspicious of being
so— became the norm. Albareda's father and one of his elder brothers were among the
early victims of the notorious violence that communist and anarchist paramilitary
groups perpetrated against upper social class families in Republican territory,
particularly if they were known for their religious or political conservatism.
During the Republican years, as Spain's social and political conflicts radicalized,
and particularly as the Republican government showed itself unable to stop political
violence and religious persecution, many devout Roman Catholics —regardless of
10
whether or not they had originally sympathized with Republican reforms— felt
personally threatened and came to side with right-wing and conservative parties, and
eventually to support Franco's coup. This was the case for Albareda, who in the year
following the killings of his father and brother underwent a process of political and
religious radicalization. Always a devout Roman Catholic, he had been in touch with
Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975) and some of his early followers since January 1936. A
Catholic priest canonized by Pope Jean Paul II in 2002, Escrivá founded in Madrid in
1928 an spiritual organization usually known by the name of Opus Dei. The Opus Dei
grew enormously after the Civil War, as it found a particularly propitious environment
in the authoritarian context of Francoist Spain and the stifling conformity it imposed in
social and religious matters. In late 1935 and early 1936, however, at the time of
Albareda's first contacts with Escrivá, the Opus Dei was a small group (probably not
more than one score) of people gravitating around Escrivá, whose headquarters and only
facility was a small student residence in Madrid, on Ferraz Street, run by Escrivá's
mother and sister. In 1939 Escrivá published Camino (The way), a collection of 999
aphorisms and principles of conduct that is the main inspiration and guide for Opus Dei
members—and which they consider the Kempis of the 20th century. It has been
translated into 40 languages and sold millions of copies (more about it below).9
9
J. Allen, Opus Dei. The First Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial
Force in the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 2005); A. Moncada, Historia oral del Opus Dei
(Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1987); J. Ynfante La prodigiosa aventura del Opus Dei: génesis y desarrollo
de la Santa Mafia (París: Ruedo Ibérico, 1970); D. Artigues, El Opus Dei en España 1928-1962 : su
evolución ideológica y política de los orígenes al intento de dominio (Paris : Ruedo ibérico, 1971); L.
Carandell, Vida y milagros de Monseñor Escrivá de Balaguer, fundador del Opus Dei ( Barcelona : Laia,
1975); M.C. Tapia, Tras el umbral. Una vida en el Opus Dei (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 1992), translated
into English as Beyond the threshold : a life in Opus Dei (New York : Continuum, 1997); J. Estruch,
11
The Opus Dei's strength came from its novelty in both envisioning a new role for
lay Catholics and emphasizing the religious value, or "sanctity" in Escrivá's words, of
lay endeavors and tasks. As J. Allen has suggested, in a sense the Opus Dei was
introducing one generation in advance what was to be of one of the main innovations of
the Second Vatican Council. On the other hand, the Opus Dei never had at the core of
its spirituality a social conscience, or social agenda—its members were just supposed to
sanctify themselves by hard-work and excellence in their own secular jobs, whichever
they were. That is, the Opus Dei preached that all professions, from the most humble
ones all the way up to scientists, architects, engineers, politicians, or bankers, if
conscientiously, assiduously, and honestly practiced, were a way to sanctify oneself as
well as society. In the Catholic tradition of contemporary Europe this was novel at least
in two counts. First, in that the Opus was encouraging the membership of all sorts of
people and of all the professions of modern society, belying the well-established image
of the Catholic Church as indifferent at best towards many manifestations of modern
life. Second, in that sanctification was here construed as a task belonging essentially to
laypersons rather than to priests—sanctity was not the preserve of priesthood.10 In fact
the Opus Dei did not have its own priests (i.e. priests that are also members of it) until
1943, when Escrivá realized how important it was to have priests identified with his
goals and methods to guide his growing number of followers. But Opus Dei members
Santos y Pillos. El Opus Dei y sus paradojas (Barcelona: Herder, 1993), translated into English as Saints
and Schemers : Opus Dei and its Paradoxes (New York : Oxford University Press, 1995). See also the
informative Carnegie Council interview to John Allen transcribed in
http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/5285.html (consulted on December 18, 2007).
10
Allen, Opus Dei, p. 77-103.
12
were and mostly are laypersons, the priests amounting only to less than 5% of its some
85,000 members worldwide.11
On the other hand, there is unequivocal evidence about highly controversial
facets of the Opus Dei that make it an strongly conservative if not a downright
reactionary force. It puts a strong emphasis on hierarchy, discipline, and blind
obedience, combined with patriarchy and doses of personality cult towards the founder
and its successors at the apex of the organization. Women occupy an explicitly
subordinated role in the organization, with a especial category of them devoted to
service and menial jobs. The book Camino always consistently addresses a male
audience, with injunctions such as (aphorism 22), "Be firm. Be virile. Be a man. And
then... be a saint".12 The "family" is the preferred metaphor for the whole organization,
one of whose hallmarks is the strong ties of dependence and belonging it nurtures in its
members. Escrivá construed for himself the identity of "the Father".13 He was always
called and addressed as "el Padre", shamelessly playing with the ambiguous role the
word "Father" plays in Roman Catholic parlance, where it often refers either to the Pope
(el Santo Padre) or to God himself.
Escrivá consistently promoted unquestioned obedience and blind trust for
himself and for the spiritual directors taking care of his followers. Many are the
11
Allen, Opus Dei, p. 2 (on the total number of members), and p. 26, on the number of priests, roughly
3900 of which 1850 belong to the prelature and some 2000 are Ous Dei full members but whose direct
religious authority is their ordinary bishop.
12
All quotations from Camino come from the English translation in the Opus Dei official website
dedicated to Escrivá's works, http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way.htm (consulted on December
20, 2007).
13
Estruch, Saints and Schemers, p. 38-39.
13
principles in Camino that demand obedience and trust to the Opus Dei authorities, like
number 617, where members are required to obey as tools obey the hand that holds
them: "Obey, as an instrument obeys in the hands of an artist, not stopping to consider
the reasons for what it is doing, being sure that you will never be directed to do anything
that is not good and for the glory of God." Or number 619: " Initiative. You must have
it in your apostolate, within the terms of your instructions. If it exceeds those limits or
if you are in doubt, consult whoever is in charge, without telling anyone else of what
you are thinking. Never forget that you are only an agent." Or number 620: " If
obedience does not give you peace, it is because you are proud".
Consistently with his emphasis on the "family" metaphor, Escrivá also instilled in his
followers the notion that they were spiritual and moral infants—his infants. A whole
chapter of Camino is devoted to "spiritual childhood": "Don't try to be grown-up. A
child, always a child, even when you are dying of old age. (...)" (Camino, num. 870).
As such, they were supposed to be obedient and to hide nothing from their superiors:
"Child, abandonment demands docility" (num. 871); "Silly child, the day you hide
some part of your soul from your Director, you will cease to be a child, for you will
have lost your simplicity" (num. 862). In the Opus Dei docility implies intellectual
submission: "Spiritual childhood demands submission of the mind, more difficult than
submission of the will. In order to subject our mind we need not only God's grace, but
also the continual exercise of our will, which [must say] 'no' again and again, just as it
says 'no' to the flesh. (...)" (num. 856). Members should not read whatever they want or
crosses their minds, but only that which has been recommended by learned religious
persons: "Books: don't buy them without advice from a Christian who is learned and
prudent. It's so easy to buy something useless or harmful. (...)" (num. 339).
14
There are two fundamental categories of Opus Dei lay members, numeraries
(amounting to a 20% of the total approximately) and supernumeraries (c. the 70%).
Supernumeraries are typically married and live with their families in their houses.
Numeraries make a vow of celibacy and live in Opus Dei centers. For numeraries, blind
obedience and intellectual submission is complemented by a private contract under
which all of their income goes to the Opus Dei, while the Opus Dei is obliged to
provide for all of their material necessities. The point is explicit in Camino, where it is
linked to the child-character Opus fellows must have. It is stressed, first, that by
"resting" in the Father, children have no cares (num. 864), and then that fathers know
best how to manage children's affairs: "Children have nothing of their own, everything
belongs to their father..., and your Father always knows best how to manage your
affairs" (num. 867).14
Self-denial and sacrifice is very important for Opus Dei members generally:
"No ideal becomes a reality without sacrifice. Deny yourself. It's so beautiful to be a
victim!" (num. 175). Numerary members are also encouraged to submit to corporal
mortification, or self-inflicted corporal pain, by such medieval contraptions as cilices
and disciplines. According to Camino, "Interior mortification. I don't believe in your
interior self-denial if I see that you despise, that you do not practice, mortification of the
senses" (num. 181); "We must give ourselves in everything, we must deny ourselves in
everything: the sacrifice must be a holocaust" (num. 186).
Given this philosophy of complete submission and self-denial it is
understandable that the Opus Dei has been suspiciously regarded as a sect rather than a
14
Compare with the original: "Los niños no tienen nada suyo, todo es de sus padres..., y tu Padre sabe
siempre muy bien cómo gobierna el patrimonio", in http://www.escrivaobras.org/book/camino.htm
15
godly congregation. It has also been accused of featuring traits befitting power-hungry
secret societies rather than church institutions, particularly given the relevant role Opus
Dei politicians came to play in Franco's regime in the late 1950s and through the 60s.
The fact that the Opus Dei does not make public the identity of its members reinforces
its closed, secretive image.
Starting in January 1936, Albareda frequented Escrivá's residence for students.
They were of the same age, but Albareda fell under the spell of Escrivá's notorious
personal magnetism. Albareda's personal tragedy of losing his father and brother in July
1936 must have also been influential in throwing him into a major spiritual crisis. To
compound it, from July 1936 on religious persecution became a fixture of life in
Republican Madrid. Escrivá, as all Catholic priests did, went into hiding.15 Albareda
kept seeing him when Escrivá secretly celebrated mass in private homes. Eventually he
joined the Opus Dei as a numerary member early in September 1937. In some accounts
he was the 12th individual to join Escrivá's visionary project.16 One month later, eight
of the founding members of the Opus Dei, including Albareda and Escrivá, set out on a
dangerous trip to illegally escape from Republican Spain. By bribing Republican
officials in Madrid they got papers authorizing them to travel to Barcelona, where they
hired guides that took people to Andorra by hiking by night through the Pyrenees highmountain passes. They started from Barcelona on November 19, 1937 and arrived in
(consulted December 20, 2007).
15
R.A. Hutchison, Their kingdom come : inside the secret world of Opus Dei (New York : St. Martin’s
Press, 1999), p. 66-67.
16
Hutchison, Their kingdom come, p. 66.
16
Andorra on December 2. From there they went to Toulouse (France) and then returned
to Spain, to join Franco's forces.17
In December 1937 Albareda and Escrivá settled in Burgos, then the political and
military capital of the territories under Francoist administration. During 1938 Albareda
worked for it attached to the Office of Cultural Policy (Secretaría de Cultura). After
the occupation of Barcelona, in January 1939, he was sent there as "general inspector"
to reorganize the secondary school system. Essentially this meant revising the political
antecedents and social background of teachers, dismissing or "depurating" (depuración
was the Spanish word commonly used) the ones whose allegiance to the new state was
dubious, and then appointing in their positions substitutes of unobjectionable political
pedigree. He spent only a few months there, soon to be back in Madrid as Principal of
one of the most prestigious and emblematic of its high schools, the "Ramiro de
Maeztu". However, the main reason for his quick return to the Spanish capital was the
decisive role he was playing in masterminding the new institution that was to be in
charge of research and technological development in the new fascist estate.
Early in 1938 in Burgos, Albareda hit it off with José Ibáñez Martín, a rightwing politician greatly interested in educational matters. Ibáñez was to play a key role
within the regime in different ways, one of them being his providing staunch support for
Albareda's plans to make science one of the priorities of the regime (more about him
below). In Burgos Albareda conveyed to Ibáñez his worries about the negative,
17
Along with Escrivá and Albareda, there participated in the expedition Miguel Fisac, Pedro Casciaro,
Francisco Botella, Juan Jiménez Vargas, Tomás Alvira, and M. Sainz de los Terreros; a first-hand
account of the expedition is found in P. Casciaro, Soñad y os quedaréis cortos (Madrid: Rialp, 1994), p.
121-2; see also Estruch, Saints and Schemers, p. 50 (based on a different source, F. Gondrand, Au pas de
Dieu. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer (París: France Empire, 1982)).
17
benighted attitude the Spanish political right had traditionally had towards scientific
knowledge and research. Albareda was aware that while the Junta para la Ampliación
de Estudios was mostly manned by people of leftist sympathies and was considered a
leftist stronghold, yet it had played a substantial role in scientifically modernizing
Spain. He knew that when the right was in power before the Civil War, the closing
down of the JAE had been seriously considered. Yet Albareda regarded this as poor
policy, purely negative and revealing ignorance of what the "scientific modernity" was
about. Not only that, he stressed that this policy gave the leftist JAE a privileged
position as a defender of science, and therefore historically legitimated the JAE itself:
When the conservative offensive, with a merely negative perspective,
wanted to annihilate [the JAE], there appeared persons of wide
understanding who were part of the Junta [para Ampliación de Estudios]
—the Duke of Alba, the Viscount of Eza, the Duke of Maura, etc.— who
were able to talk to [the king] Don Alfonso XIII and so to avoid calling
down the Junta, [which was] the simple program of the conservative
forces, which were not familiar with scientific modernity —and this
[modernity], monopolized by the Junta, made up [the Junta's] defense.18
As we shall see now, Albareda convinced Ibáñez not to fall in this mistake.
They designed a grand plan in which scientific and scholarly research not only was to be
supported financially, but was given a new powerful role within the political economy
of the Francoist regime.
18
"Cuando la ofensiva conservadora, con mera visión negativa, quería llegar a aniquilarla [i.e. la JAE],
surgieron personas comprensivas integradas en la Junta [para Ampliación de Estudios] —duque de Alba,
vizconde de Eza, duque de Maura, etc.— capaces de llegar a don Alfonso XIII y de impedir la
destrucción de la Junta, único programa de unas fuerzas conservadoras poco conocedoras de una
18
Two projects for the scientific institutions of Francoist Spain (1938-1939)
Franco's first Minister of Education (including higher education and cultural and
research institutions) was Pedro Sainz Rodríguez (1897 – 1986), right-wing intellectual,
university professor, sympathizer of Italian Fascism, Franco's personal friend, and
author of substantial studies on Spanish culture and literature, such as La evolución de
las ideas sobre la decadencia española (Madrid, [1924]) and Introducción a la historia
de la literatura mística en España (Madrid, [1927]).19 He held his post from January
1938 through August 1939, when political differences with Franco and the most
influential people in Franco's government forced him to step down. Some of the
differences concerned Sainz's plans for the reorganization of Spain's cultural and
scientific institutions. Sainz's main aide was the notorious, chameleonic intellectual
Eugenio d'Ors (1881-1954).20 Sainz's and Ors's pet project was the Instituto de España.
It was meant to be a sort of "Senate" (sic) of the sciences, letters, and arts made up by
those fellows of the six main national academies loyal to the Franco regime— some 60
modernidad científica que, monopolizada por la Junta, constituía su defensa." Unpublished 1956 note,
cited in Gutiérrez Ríos, Albareda, p. 52-53.
19
On Sainz, see J. Escribano, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, de la monarquía a la república (Madrid:
Fundación Universitaria Española, 1998); P. Sainz Rodríguez, Testimonios y recuerdos (Barcelona:
Planeta, 1978); P. Sainz Rodríguez et al., Homenaje a Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez, 4 vol. (Madrid : Fundación
Universitaria Española, 1986).
20
On Orts, see V. Cacho, Revisión de Eugenio d'Ors (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1997); J. Pla,
“Eugeni d’Ors”, in J. Pla, Homenots. Primera sèrie (Obra completa, XI) (Barcelona: Destino, 1980), 273301; E. Jardí, Eugeni d'Ors: obra i vida (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1990).
19
fellows in total.21 The President and officers of the Instituto de España were not elected
democratically but appointed by the government. Its first President was the prestigious
world-class musician, Manuel de Falla, who resigned adducing health problems after a
few months of presidency. Sainz, officially the "First Vice-president", had been acting
as de facto president from the very beginning.22 The Instituto inherited all the
responsibilities, goods, and facilities of the pre-war Junta de Ampliación de Estudios,
i.e. it was to oversee all the institutions of scientific and scholarly research.23 To run the
scientific arm of the Instituto, Sainz appointed a physicist, Julio Palacios, its second
Vice-president, with a full mandate to put the scientific institutes and personnel which
used to pertain to the JAE in line with the new political situation.24 Along with his
21
The six Spanish academies are the Real Academia Española, R. A. de la Historia, R. A. de Bellas Artes,
R. A. de Ciencias, R. A. de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, R. A. de Medicina. Most academicians loyal to
the Republic had already exiled themselves.
22
Along with Falla and Sainz, the first Council of the Instituto was composed by Pedro Muguruza,
Vicente Castañeda, Miguel Artigas, Agustín G. de Amezúa, and Orts. The Instituto de España was
structured and regulated according to the Decreto of Presidencia del Gobierno of January 1, 1938
(Boletín Oficial del Estado, 2 January 1938); its statutes were granted by Orden of 24 March 1939.
23
The Decretos of 19 May 1938 and 26 April 1939 liquidate the JAE and its technical arm, the Fundación
Nacional de Ensayos y Reformas, and turns all their goods and properties over to the Instituto de España.
For a contemporary record of the Instituto de España's main activities from its creation up to August
1939, see the long newspaper article “Actividades del Instituto de España”, ABC, 22 Agosto 1939, 13-14.
24
Copy of the official appointment, dated 1 May 1939, in Archivo Residencia de Estudiantes (ARdE),
Box 8530/4. It detailed Palacio's responsibilities: he had “la suprema dirección de todos los centros de
Ciencias Físico-matemáticas y naturales dependientes de este Ministerio” and was authorized to take
whatever measures were necessary to reorganize them and put them in working order, including the
appointment of new chairpersons. On Palacios, see “Julio Palacios”, in Diccionario histórico de la
ciencia española, 2 vol., J.M. López Piñero et al eds. (Barcelona, 1983), s.v.; Solemne sesión
necrológica en memoria de ... Julio Palacios (Madrid: RACEFN, 1970); “Homenaje al Profesor Julio
20
adviser Blas Cabrera and with M. Catalán, Julio Palacios (1891 – 1970) was one of the
deepest and best internationally known Spanish physicists. Late in his career, in 1967,
he was appointed the first President of the newly created International Center of Physics
in Trieste-Udine.
There is no doubt about the seriousness and extent of Palacios's commitment to
Franco's regime in 1938 and 1939.25 He did not plan, however, to alter the number and
structure of the JAE's research centers nor the general principles of the JAE's science
policy. The JAE's centers were located in Madrid; were separated and independent
from the universities at all effects; and until a few years before the civil war had not
seriously concerned themselves with applied science or technological development.
Even then, however, the priorities remained focused on pure research in physics
(Cabrera's school), chemistry (Moles, Pascual Vila), and biology (Ramón Cajal's
school), which not only was more prestigious but had already produced internationally
known results in all these fields.26 None of this was meant to change after Palacios
became chief administrator of the JAE's legacy. His project, backed by the Education
Minister Sainz, amounted to "clean" the research centers of "reds" and republicans, to
appoint politically reliable people to run them, and to give them a regulatory framework
Palacios Martínez”, Anales de la Real Academia Nacional de Medicina 108 (2), 1991: 339-53; J.
Palacios, Mecánica cuantista [sic]. ... Contestación de Blas Cabrera (Madrid: RACEFN, 1932); F.
González Redondo, "La reorganización de la matemática en España tras la Guerra Civil", La Gaceta de la
RSME 5 (2002): 463-490. On the JAE's Laboratorio and Palacios's work in it, see J.M. Sánchez Ron,
“International relations in Spanish physics from 1900 to the Cold War”, Hist. Stud. Phy. Sci. 33 (2002):
3-31.
25
I have fully discussed the nature of the Instituto de España and Palacios's role in it in "Las primeras
décadas del CSIC: Investigación y ciencia para el franquismo", in Un siglo de política científica en
España, A. Romero, M. J. Santesmases (eds.) (Madrid, 2008).
21
that ensured their obedience and governance—no more and no less than that.27 We
know this to be the case not only through Palacios's own actions and policies when he
was in power, but also by the evidence of the main attacks leveled against Sainz and
Palacios by the two people that came to replace them in the high political hierarchy of
the regime, the politician José Ibáñez Martín and the applied chemist J. M. Albareda. In
different ways each of them was to leave his mark on Spanish society and institutions.
Sainz and Palacios, both with a reputation of "doves" among the brutal Francoist
politicians of the 1940s and 50s, quickly disappeared from the political scene and
moved into self-imposed exile in Lisbon.28
José Ibáñez Martín (1896-1969) was one of the leaders of Renovación Española,
a right-wing party that supported Franco’s coup. He held doctorates in Law and in
Letters and had in 1930 married the Countess of Marín. He became one of the political
heavyweights of the regime. Franco’s Minister of Education for 12 years, from the end
of the Civil War until 1951, in the early 1940s he set up from scratch the Spanish
educational system —from primary education all the way up through higher
26
On the JAE's centers and science policy, see note 7.
27
He asked for proposals of new by-laws (see ARdE, 8530/5/40); appointed new directors (letters dated
6, 12, 16, 23 May 1939, in ARdE, 8530/8); appointed political in charge of "depurating" the personnel
(see oficio of 25 May 1939 (ARdE, 8530/5/9) and of 5 July 1939 (ARdE, 8530/5/41)); as Director of the
Institute of Physics he signed the "depuration" of five researchers (dated 13 Mayo 1939, ARdE, 8530/5/3
and ARdE, 8530/14/1-4).
28
On Sainz, see Sainz Rodríguez, Testimonios y recuerdos, p. 260-268; for Palacios, see M. VALERA; C.
LÓPEZ, La física en España a través de los Anales de la Sociedad Española de Física y Química, 19031965 (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 2001), p. 194-200.
22
education— that lasted until the radical reforms of the 1970s.29 Franco trusted Ibáñez
Martín fully, to the point that in 1958 he became his mediator in the complex
negotiations and eventual pacts with Don Juan of Borbón, son of the last king and heir
to the Spanish crown, concerning the education and future of Don Juan’s son, today’s
king Juan Carlos.
The attacks of Ibáñez and Albareda on the JAE and its science policies have
been preserved in a series of documents they wrote in 1938 and 1939 when they were
preparing their assault to power.30 Interestingly, their attacks on the JAE are closely
intertwined with their criticism of the post-war policies of Sainz and Palacios, to the
point that the latter appears as "natural" consequences of the former. Ibáñez and
Albareda pointed to four substantial defects in the science policies developed by the
JAE. One was straightforwardly politico-ideological. According to them, the JAE had
an "antinational tendency", in the sense that its officers and most of the scientists it
supported inclined to the left or center-left and were materialist atheists and/or
agnostics. In the hands of the JAE, Ibáñez and Albareda said, science became the
vehicle of "irreligion, foreign fads, and partisan bigotry". With historical hindsight, this
charge has been found largely unfounded and grounded only upon the political and
29
On Ibáñez Martín, see the special issue of Arbor num. 289 (January 1970) , 75: 9-47; and CSIC, José
Ibáñez Martín (Homenaje a su memoria) (Madrid: CSIC, 1970); A. de MIGUEL, Sociología del
franquismo (Barcelona: Euros,1975).
30
The documents are now preserved in the Library of the Residencia de Estudiantes (Madrid), Boxes
8548/2 and 8548/4. The documents have been discussed previously by J.M. Sánchez Ron, although he
gives them a different interpretation; see Sánchez Ron, Cincel, martillo, piedra, 330-340.
23
religious biases of Ibáñez and Albareda.31 The remaining three facets of the JAE's
policy they criticized are indeed matters in which legitimate disagreement is possible.
Ibáñez and Albareda criticized the JAE, first, for failing to promote scholarly and
scientific research within the universities. Secondly, for not prioritizing applied science
and technology. And thirdly, for being too liberal and supporting just whatever problem
or project the researchers were interested in, instead of promoting actively those fields
or disciplines that were recognized to be of strategic importance for the country.32
Ibáñez and Albareda then turned to Sainz and Ors and Palacios, whom they
attacked on several fronts. Some of the attacks were ad hominem, accusing them of
being ineffectual arrivistes.33 Some others were political, criticizing them for being too
lenient or even sympathetic with researchers known to have been openly republicans or
"reds".34 Sainz was also criticized for giving too much political autonomy to the
Instituto de España, which could become, Ibáñez and Albareda said, a dangerous
political counterweight to the Ministry of Education. This was unacceptable within the
new totalitarian state.35 Furthermore, they argued, the integration of the new institution
of scientific research into the Ministry would be beneficial for both the Ministry and the
institution. For the latter, because it would gain political protection and stronger
31
See J.M. Sánchez Ron's introductory chapter to La Junta para ampliación de estudios e investigaciones
científicas 80 años después, 1907-1987, J.M. Sánchez Ron, ed.
32
ARdE, 8548/2/1-2.
33
ARdE, 8548/4/ “La cultura superior...”, p. 1; ARdE, 8548/2/ “Centro o Instituto de Investigaciones
científicas”, p. 1.
34
ARdE, 8548/2/ “Centro o Instituto de Investigaciones científicas”, p. 1.
35
ARdE, 8548/2/ “El proceso de paralización ...”, p. 5, 11; the same idea is articulated on p. 9.
24
backing. For the Ministry, because uniting intellectuals and scientist around the
Minister would yield image and political benefits for the regime and the Caudillo
(Franco was "the Caudillo", literally "chief", as Hitler was the Führer or Mussolini the
Duce):
Gathering Roman Catholic and nationalistic intellectual personalities
around the Minister, representing the Caudillo, would have a great
academic effectiveness and would be a decisive political success.36
Finally, Ibáñez and Albareda criticized Sainz and the Instituto de España for
essentially preserving the liberal approach of the JAE; for its neglect of university-based
research; for its centralizing approach that concentrated means and institutions in
Madrid; and for its neglect of applied research and the material needs of the country.
They envisaged a new, specific, big institution subordinated to the Ministry, with the
wherewithal to support and promote research on a broader, more ambitious scale.
Furthermore, Albareda and Ibáñez accorded scientific research high political
priority within the new, fledgling regime. They argued that this was necessary given
science's economic and productive relevance; its potential to accrue international
prestige; its usefulness for the education of the intellectual elites of the country; and,
finally, high culture's role in restoring Spain's spiritual leadership in the world.37 One of
Ibáñez's notes identifies "the lack of original thought" with Spanish decadence, which
came when she "did stop thinking ... and creating". According to him, promoting
36
" Reunir los valores intelectuales católicos y nacionales en torno al Ministro, representante del
Caudillo, tendría una eficacia académica considerable y constituiría un éxito político decisivo." In ARdE,
8548/4/ “La cultura superior...”, p. 4; see also ARdE, 8548/2/ “Centro o Instituto de Investigaciones
científicas”, p. 2.
25
science and high culture was the key to rebuild the Spanish Empire: “España volverá a
imperar tan sólo cuando tenga algo que decir al mundo”.38 Notice that Ibáñez and
Albareda fused scientific research with the reconstruction of Spanish thought, which
they wanted accomplished in a highly partisan, nationalistic, conservative, totalitarian
key. This option, which certainly contributed to ensure the political success of their
project, was inspired by the need to deactivate science as a weapon for democratic,
liberal, and philosophically materialist discourses: "scientific research [cannot be] a
slow but far-reaching, well-placed weapon to slyly attack the basic ideals of Great, Free,
Unified Spain." 39
Eventually Sainz Rodríguez was dismissed from the government to be replaced
by Ibáñez Martin as Minister of Education on August 9, 1939. He moved quickly to
pass in November of the same year a law that turned the Instituto de España into a
hollow shell void of any power and substituted it by a new organism, the Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. As mentioned above, it inherited all the
facilities and properties that used to belong first to the JAE and then to the Instituto de
España. Ibáñez was its President and Albareda its General Secretary. They were to last
in office for 28 and 27 years respectively—Albareda until he died of heart attack in
1966, which prompted Ibáñez's resignation in 1967. They probably were the highranking officers with the longest tenure of the Franco regime. As its General Secretary,
37
ARdE, 8548/2/2.
38
“Necesidad urgente de preparar los medios conducentes a una renovación del pensamiento español”,
ARdE 8548/2.
26
Albareda was the main force breathing life into the new institution, and possibly its
most important single influence in his lifetime.
Albareda insisted that the universities from all over Spain were not to be
neglected, as they had been by the JAE. Nor was it a good solution the one suggested
by the Instituto de España (which was not implemented), i.e., to have research founds
equally divided among the universities, and then subdivide what each university got
equally between its chairs. On the contrary, Albareda's CSIC was to provide research
money to chosen university chairs. If they had the right credentials (more about this
below), the CSIC would support university-based research groups with fellowships,
research positions, technical staff, and so on. This was one of the most innovative and
characteristic features of the CSIC from its inception through the 1960s. Therefore, the
Francoist CSIC run two markedly different kinds of research departments, centers or
teams. On the one hand, there were the big institutes inherited from the JAE, which had
their own buildings and full-time personnel. New big institutes of the same nature but
of a more technical and applied character were created in the 1940s and 50s in Madrid
and elsewhere. On the other hand, there were university-based research groups, usually
identified as "sections" (secciones) of some bigger national institute. Such sections
were created when one university chair (or a few of them from one university)
successfully applied to the CSIC. For instance, some of the mathematical chairs of the
University of Barcelona were created a section (called the Seminario Matemático of
39
“Hay que desterrar profundamente todo intento de utilizar la labor científica como arma lenta pero de
largo alcance y de privilegiada posición, para atacar encubiertamente los ideales básicos de la España
Una, Grande y Libre”; see ARdE, 8548/2/2.
27
Barcelona) of the National Institute of Mathematics, which had also sections in the
Universities of Madrid (Complutense), Santiago, and Saragossa.40
The university-based sections were not only smaller than the big non-university
institutes, but operated with a peculiar mixture of university and CSIC resources. They
occupied university premises and their research personnel were university professors
and lecturers. But since universities had no funds for research (historically they never
had them), the CSIC funded the acquisition of laboratory stuff, books, journals, and also
provided salary complements for the personnel—whose main salary came from the
university. The CSIC also supported visits from foreign professors to the university
sections as well as trips abroad for their researchers. Some sections also got their share
of technical personnel and full-time research positions fully funded by the CSIC.41
According to Albareda's and Ibáñez, the CSIC could not be an organism
politically impartial or ideologically unbiased. On the contrary, it was meant to be the
"military staff (Estado Mayor) of the Ministry [of Education] in the conquest needed for
Spain's spiritual Empire".42 The CSIC was to put science and high culture at the service
of the Movimiento Nacional (National Movement, the political coalition of Fascist and
totalitarian parties backing Franco). 43 The CSIC was meant "to insert the sciences in
40
A. Malet, Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer (1912-1967) (Barcelona: IEC, 1995), chapters 3, 4, and 9; S.
Garma; J.M. Sánchez Ron, "La Universidad de Madrid y el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas", Alfoz, num. 66-67 (1989): 59-77.
41
See A. Malet, “A Case Study on the Scientific Institutions of Francoist Spain (1939 – 1967)”,
forthcoming.
42
ARdE, 8548/2/ “Notas para la posible articulación precedente”, p. 9.
43
ARdE, 8548/4/ “La cultura superior...”, p. 5.
28
our history and [our] technology and connect scientific production with the service of
the spiritual and material interests of the Homeland." 44
In this context Albareda made an intriguing reference to Nazi arguments against
"liberal" science and in favor of a "national-socialist science".45 With a highly
confusing language, Albareda dismisses it as "absurd" (desatinada) the notion that
science can only be "national-socialist". Yet he also think it "absurd" that it could be
only "liberal". It is not clear whether he is dismissing such notions on epistemological
or in practical grounds, since he seems to oppose "national-socialist" science to "liberal"
science essentially by the fact that the former pays heed to the satisfaction of popular
and national needs while the latter does not. Albareda's claim seems to be the
uncompromising platitude that to do research with practical goals in mind only is as
foolish as to do it for the mere pleasure of intellectual play. Be that as it may, the CSIC
joined as closely as possible the Francoist, totalitarian discourse of the "regeneration" of
Spain to the promotion of scholarship, science and technology.
It is now time to consider Albareda's discourse about the role of science in the
modern world in general and in contemporary Spain in particular. In 1951 he published
his thoughts on the subject in a long book, Consideraciones sobre la investigación
científica, to which we now turn. Among Francoist intellectuals and scientists it
became a common-place to regard Albareda's Consideraciones as being as deep and
44
ARdE, 8548/4/ “El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas”, p. 1v-1r.
45
"Es desatinada la idea del Prof. Gieseke, de Berlín, según la cual, la Ciencia puede ser nacional-
socialista, y entonces tiene que dedicarse a satisfacer las necesidades populares de todo orden,
oponiéndose así a la Ciencia liberal, entretenida en disquisiciones improductivas. Pero la visión opuesta,
de una ciencia reñida con la Técnica y con la Economía Nacional, es también absurda." See, ARdE,
8548/4/ “La cultura superior...”, p. 5.
29
insightful as Ramón y Cajal's Reglas y consejos sobre la investigación científica—a farfetched comparison to say the least.46
Albareda on science and science policy
Albareda's views on scientific research and its role in modern societies were shaped by
his social background, by his commitment to the Roman Catholic church and to the
Opus Dei, and by his allegiance to the Franco regime, whose authoritarian political
nature found its way into Albareda's science policy. As pointed out above, Albareda's
promotion of scholarly and scientific research within the universities was innovative in
relation to the JAE's policy prior to the Civil War. How innovative it was can be judged
by the role and nature Spanish public universities (there were no private ones) had at the
time. Following the French or "Napoleonic" model in the mid 19th century they had
been reorganized in five specialized "faculties" or colleges (facultades) —law,
medicine, pharmacy, sciences, and letters. The former two, the most prestigious ones,
and pharmacy provided essentially professional training. Most of the people graduating
from the latter two, poorly endowed if at all with laboratories and libraries, found
occupation as secondary education teachers. The universities, therefore, were not
primarily research institutions, and it was debatable whether research should be one of
their major endeavors. Albareda addressed this issue by, first, pointing to the
educational value of scientific research generally, even for those who will not be
46
J.M. Albareda, Consideraciones sobre la investigación científica (Madrid: CSIC, 1951). For texts he
published after this date, along with fragments from the Consideraciones, see the anthology, J.-Mª
Albareda, Vida de la inteligencia, E. Gutiérrez, ed. (Madrid: EMESA, 1971). For the comparison with
Cajal's Reglas y Consejos, see J.M. Pemán's review of Albareda's Consideraciones, in ABC, 24 May
30
professional researchers.47 Next, he stressed the benefits that higher education gains
from having good researchers among its faculty, thus deactivating the criticism that
research oriented lecturers and professors do not take proper care of his teaching
duties.48 Finally he acknowledged the primacy of the university's educational role.49
Research was a voluntary option for those professors who felt the calling, it was not a
precondition for getting a professorship. University positions and prestige came either
from professional status or from the encyclopedic knowledge and rhetorical skills that
ensure success as a gifted lecturer. Universities, Albareda said, could not "weaken"
(sic) their educational mission to exalt research tasks. This would put the "rearguard in
disarray" and would make "the front line collapse." Encyclopedic knowledge (solidez
doctrinal) is prior to research. Research must be like an overflow of energy and
dedication, not a misuse of them in tasks that hurt the quality of teaching.50
Albareda's discourse about scientific research was many-sided. He pointed to
the social usefulness of science, its role in fostering industrialization and economic
1951; M. Lora's public eulogy at the Universidad de Navarre, June 1966 (quoted in Castillo, Tomeo,
Albareda fue así, p. 277); L. Vilas, "In memorian", in Solemne sesión necrológica, p. 37-38.
47
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 98-100.
48
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 81-2.
49
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 93-95, 101-105.
50
"La Universidad no puede debilitar su misión docente para exaltar su labor investigadora. Sería
desorganizar la retaguardia para polarizarse en frentes que se derrumbarían. Porque la solidez doctrinal
es condición previa de la investigación misma. Hay que enseñar para formar profesionales excelentes, ...
hombres que sepan cumplir su tarea respectiva, que, en la mayor parte de los casos, no es investigadora.
Pero aun cuando lo sea, la investigación no es manto con que cubrir la falta de solidez cimentadora. La
investigación universitaria ha de ser un rebasamiento, nunca una desviación." See Albareda,
Consideraciones, p. 97.
31
development, its military applications. Yet he also stressed the individual dimension of
scientific research, praising it as a morally uplifting endeavor. We will not say much
about the former other than he was true to his words as far as the budgets of the CSIC
were concerned. As we have shown elsewhere, they were strongly biased towards
applied science and technology. Very particularly, Albareda supported disciplines and
specialties related to fishing and agriculture.51 Needles to say, Albareda's own scientific
discipline, pedology or soil science (in Spanish edafología), was particularly well
supported. Let us just add that, according to Albareda, soil science had to be prioritized
not only on account of its economic and social usefulness, but also for its scientific
relevance. In his view, pedology was a sort of new frontier between biology and
geology, a "biogeology", some sort of a new and promising bridge between the mineral,
the vegetal, and the animal kingdoms, and their specialties. Furthering pedology was
tantamount to incentivising interdisciplinarity in the natural and experimental
sciences.52
If we turn now to the psychological and individual facet of scientific research,
we shall find, not surprisingly, that Albareda construed it in religious terms. He saw the
will of discovering the truth behind nature's workings as a "creative impulse" that comes
51
See Malet, “A Case Study on the Scientific Institutions of Francoist Spain"; see also J.M. SÁNCHEZ
RON, “Investigación científica y desarrollo tecnológico y educación en España (1900-1950)”, Arbor, 135
(num. 529) (1990): 33-74; M.J. SANTESMASES; E. MUÑOZ, “Las primeras décadas del Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas: Una introducción a la política científica del régimen franquista”.
Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 16 (1993): 73-94.
52
J.M. Albareda, La edafología, integración de ciencias naturales (Madrid: RACEFN, 1956), passim,
but particularly p. 5-9; reference to edafología as "biogegología" on p. 9. This was Albareda's lecture in
the Spanish Academy of Sciences on the solemn inauguration of the 1956/57 academic year.
32
from the divine nature of the human soul.53 He took over the old metaphor of nature as a
second book of revelation whose reading leads humankind to God: "He is not a good
friend who does not read a friend's letter because the handwriting is too complicated.
Creation is a divine thought. Science is but one attempt to spell out this thought. It is
like a natural revelation. Study leads to God."54 According to Albareda, the study of
nature leads to God, first, because as nature's wonders mirror God's omnipotence and
goodness, so their contemplation educates the mind.55 Secondly, because the study of
nature reveals its essentially "mysterious" (sic), forever transient and changeable,
unfathomable character, and so it strongly suggests that behind the workings of nature
something necessarily exists that is unmovable, unchangeable, forever fixed: "There
will be absolutely a final causality, truly independent [of everything else]."56
According to Albareda, religious inspiration is crucial to ensure experimental
objectivity and observational accuracy, which are just forms of respect to what is really
"out there". Scientists, he says, must have a "passion for truth" that will allow them to
recognize without error God's genuine handiwork:
But, when it comes to monitoring the experimental work, [the work in]
the laboratory, [the scientist] must “see” what is there, not what he would
like to find there. He needs possess such a clarity of judgment, such an
objectivity, that amounts to a “passion for truth”.
And this passion for
53
J.M. Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 45.
54
"Poca amistad muestra quien deja la carta del amigo porque la letra es complicada. La Creación es un
pensamiento divino. La Ciencia no es sino un intento de deletrear ese pensamiento. Es como una
revelación natural. El estudio lleva a Dios.", Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 32.
55
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 132, 140-149.
33
truth is an acknowledgment made to the Lord, because [it expresses] the
certainty that that which is most beautiful, most profound and sublime,
which most attracts our thoughts and pleases our understanding, is in the
end not what one would like to find, but what is really there, the truth—
because this is the divine work.57
The most salient feature of Albareda's "philosophy" of science and science
policy, and probably the one that has eventually had a more lasting influence in Spain's
science, is his distrust of the autonomy of scientific communities. His convoluted
argument takes into account many things, from outmoded criticism of positivism and
scientism, to the substantial consequences that post-WWII Big Science had for science
policy in Western societies generally, to elaborate distinctions between scientific and
material progress and moral progress, to platitudes about the moral failings and human
weaknesses of scientists. As we shall see presently, Albareda's arguments allowed him
to make a case for an authoritarian organization of Spanish scientific institutions fully
devoid of peer review mechanisms. On the contrary, in Albareda's CSIC research
evaluation became a matter of pure politics.
Albareda contrasted the all-embracing hopes deposited in scientific progress by
thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries with the sense of moral crises gripping Western
societies in the aftermath of WWII and the devastation brought about by nuclear
56
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 32-33
57
"Pero cuando llega el 'control' de la experimentación, del laboratorio, [el investigador] ha de 'ver' lo que
hay, no lo que quiere que haya; ha de poseer una diafanidad de juicio, una objetividad, que llegue a ser
'pasión de la verdad'. Y esta pasión de la verdad es un reconocimiento al Creador, porque es la certeza
de que lo más béllo, lo más hondo y excelso, lo que más puede atraer la mente y deleitar el entendimiento,
no es, en definitiva, lo que cada uno quiere encontrar, sinó lo que realmente hay, la verdad, porque esa es
la obra divina." Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 183-184.
34
weapons. Not surprisingly, he failed to mention the Holocaust and the totalitarian
experiments of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, although he did point to the totalitarian
Soviet regime. He stressed that while scientific progress used to be assumed a
consequence of moral and social progress, history shows this not to be the case—on the
contrary, the quantity of human pain and suffering has not decreased with the history of
civilization. In contrast to the permanent, harmonious order of nature, he adds, society
is not only more often than not in chaos, but in recent times science itself has
contributed to bring chaos and unheard-of destruction.58 During a certain period, says
Albareda, science was mythicized, but now to the eyes of many science is a cause of
disappointment.59 Since we live in a "hyper-rationalistic civilization" (una civilización
superracionalizada), it is not the case that the actual chaos is the consequence of "an
inhibition of the intellect". The problem, according to him, is that intelligence serves
demagoguery.60 Reason and science (Albareda conflates them when necessary for his
argument) are morally blind, which is why an extraordinary scientific progress coexists
nowadays with the stagnation of the moral sense. This is why, he says, one conference
discusses how to alleviate famine in wide areas of the world while simultaneously
another conference discusses how to harness nuclear power so that it does not put an
end to civilization.61 Nowadays society knows how to educate its youth to make good
scientists out of them, but, Albareda asks rhetorically, where is the social organization
58
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 405, 410, 412
59
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 419-420, 427.
60
61
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 429.
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 399-400.
35
that turns everybody into a good person? Science, according to Albareda, is powerless
before the crucial questions of morals and human goals.62
Science, therefore, needs guidance. This is true, says Albareda, both for nations
to profit of scientific research and for every individual researcher to make good use of
his or her abilities. Actually, science did "get lost" in the recent past, as its true,
essential goals seemed forgotten. Scientists came to disregard their duties towards God
and mankind to set up, says Albareda without elaborating the notion, an "atheistic
pseudo-science" (sic). They neglected the welfare of society and did often enshrine
themselves in ivory towers, says Albareda, while turning their researches into mere
ways to feed their arrogance and selfishness. Scientists were no longer interested in
alleviating the needs and sufferings of their countries.63
Science needs guidance because it is no longer independent or autonomous
anyway. The "new" (sic) research, says Albareda, is a development of the old one; it is
done with the same requirements and has the same fundamental traits. However, the
growing of new ideas is nowadays shaped by new forces of economic and political
nature that come from private firms and from national security departments.64 Since
science is an astonishingly powerful tool —for the industry, the health system, the
62
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 406, 410.
63
"La Ciencia se ha desconectado de la finalidad esencial. ... Los científicos se han desentendido de sus
deberes para con Dios y para con los hombres; han llegado a constituir la pseudo-ciencia atea y,
despreocupados del bienestar colectivo, aislados en torres de marfil, han hecho no pocas veces del trabajo
investigador un medio de cultivo de la soberbia y del egoísmo. Han querido desconectar la Ciencia,
dejarla al margen de las necesidades y de los dolores de los pueblos." See Albareda, Consideraciones, p.
434.
64
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 400-401.
36
agriculture, and the military— it is obvious, says Albareda, that it cannot "orbit freely"
(sic). The estates patronized science and left it alone while it was poor and weak, but
nowadays that science is everywhere, the estates as well as the big corporations have
"tied" it short and made it part and parcel of their initiatives and strategies.65 In fact,
Albareda points out, the political power of the estates and the corporate money is
turning science into a caricature of what it was, i.e. "free, open, attracted by all horizons,
full of curiosity, vibrating with all problems."66
Science needs guidance for moral reasons too. When the human mind wanders
freely, i.e. without moral and spiritual guidance, ends up in bloody catastrophe.67 After
he makes his case that science is no longer independent and free, and moreover that it is
not convenient that it be so, Albareda argues that it must be subordinated to "divine
knowledge"—in which connection he mentions the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and
Augustine of Hippo. Only with "religious substance" (sic), says Albareda, reason will
recognize the true goal of knowledge and will make science a way leading to God
instead of leading to self-glorification. Only religious substance, says Albareda, will
ensure that the applications of science are truly useful to mankind rather than tools of
destruction.68
65
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 436-438.
66
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 437.
67
"La historia ... con ríos de sangre y de odio, con ingentes ruinas de ciudades y de almas, está dando un
doloroso testimonio del fin a que conduce un espíritu que alardea de independencia absoluta." See
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 436.
68
"[E]ste especialismo [científico] disperso necesitaba convergencias, objetivos trascendentales, móviles
altos. Necesitaba substancia religiosa. Si no, la inteligencia, perdido el norte de su finalidad más alta,
cambia el estudio que lleva Dios por el que lleva a endiosarse, cambia la técnica que puede derramarse en
37
While there can be no doubt about Albareda's interest in putting science under
the guidance of the Franco regime, it is also clear that his appeal to "religious
substance" to ensure the goodness and peacefulness of scientific and technological
research must be taken with a grain of salt if not considered sheer humbug. In fact, we
know that the CSIC housed important military research from the early 1940s on.69
Albareda's discourse about the necessary subordination of science to the needs of the
country was the rationale for a science policy that did not contemplate any role to
independent peer review mechanisms.
Key features of Albareda’s policies were his distrust of freedom and what must
be called his authoritarian philosophy of research evaluation. He was obsessed by the
need to discriminate “bad, wasteful” research from “good, interesting” research: “the
danger is there that freedom and [the spirit of] initiative, if left alone, would bring us
plenty of unconnected whimsies, insubstantial topics, and the inconstant arbitrary
rehearsal of trifling questions.”70 He compared scientific research to a tree and to a
house. They can be "magnificent" or "tasteful" but can also be "vulgar". Both the
magnificent tree (or house) and the vulgar one have been raised with the same means,
and yet one is precious and the other worthless.71 There is also worthless research done
vías de caridad entre los hombres, por la que hace de los hombres máquinas que un día chocan y se
aniquilan." See Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 432.
69
A. Presas i Puig, ****************.
70
"con sólo iniciativas y libertad hay el peligro de que abunden los caprichos dispersos, los temas
inconsistentes, el mariposeo arbitrario de cuestiones leves." Albareda, Vida de la inteligencia, p. 103.
71
"Porque del mismo modo que igual se cría el árbol selecto que el vulgar, y cuesta tanto un edificio con
gusto como sin él; también con los mismos medios puede forjarse una investigación valiosa o
inconsistente." Albareda, Vida de la inteligencia, p. 103.
38
with the same means as research that is highly valuable. He did not characterize which
research was “important” or “valuable” and which was not, but he did point out that
productivity and the endorsement of international scientific circles were not sufficient
conditions to make a topic worth pursuing. It was not necessarily the case that bad
science had methodological flaws, or dealt with ill-defined problems, or attacked toonarrow and insubstantial problems. Some internationally recognized research could be a
simple consequence of fads and whims, and it was crucial to distinguish between
“bagatelles”, irrelevant playful things, and really transcendent investigations:
There may be research projects that are up to date in bibliography,
produce articles, allow international contacts, and can be presented to
scientific meetings—but are otherwise useless. There are banalities that
mobilize research resources as well ... A mind that thinks freely does
not necessarily think deeply, or tackles problems that are scientifically
the most interesting, … On the one hand, research can be timid and
slaved to some vested interest, but on the other there is research that is
inconsequential, very free but very hollow.
There is no doubt that freedom of research must be preserved, but
as in other facets of life, freedom cannot be tantamount to easygoing
anarchy, to isolating divagation, to the achievement of unconnected
trifles, to whimsical as opposed to systematic pursuits, to individuals
unfitted for group collaboration, to rhumbless changes of direction,
senseless dancing around.72
72
"Puede montarse una investigación que sirva para estar, en bibliografía, al día, para publicar artículos,
para mantener el diálogo internacional, para asistir a congresos y para poco o nada más. También el
tema baladí moviliza los factores de la investigación. .... [N]o basta que la mente discurra libremente para
asegurar que actúa con hondura, que aborda los problemas más (sic!) científicos, que prefiere la
penetración a la bagatela. A un lado está la investigación cohibida y sierva de un interés, pero en el otro
extremo está la investigación intrascendente, muy libre y muy superficial. Sin duda, hay que salvar la
libertad de investigación, mas sin que, como en tantos aspectos, la libertad sea la comoda anarquía, la
39
Albareda's construal of "bad science" is interestingly mixed up with his
characterization of both the moral virtues that make up good researchers and the moral
failings of flashy, independent, individualistic, encyclopedically learned personalities.
Albareda's good researcher is the unassuming man, careful, punctilious, watchful of
details and small things ("research is the victory of the small things" was one of his
catch sentences),73 strong-willed, dependable, willing to cooperate, not craving for
notoriety.74 His metaphor for him or her is the thread. The good researcher journeys
along a very narrow road and therefore feels the need to collaborate and become part of
a sheaf or bundle. "His image —says Albareda— is a thread, which alone has no
substance; but it is capable to make up a cloth."75 This combination of qualities is
contrasted with those individuals who "feel attracted by all problems ... and advance in
every direction, and since they do so equally in all of them, they result in something like
spherical surfaces. The sphere is the image of the encyclopedic man." Such
personalities are individualistic, as they want to build their own intellectual world all by
themselves and do not like to rely on others.76 Spheres only have "tangential points of
contact", are not good for stonework, they slip and roll against each other, they do not
divagación aisladora, el logro de nimiedades dispersas, lo caprichoso frente a lo sistemático, los
individuos inasociables en grupos colaboradores, los saltos sin ruta, las cabriolas." Albareda, Vida de la
inteligencia, p. 103-104.
73
"La investigación es el triunfo de las cosas pequeñas", Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 27.
74
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 22-23.
75
"[C]uando se toma una ruta se estrecha el frente de avance, ... se recorre sólo una línea y en su
estrechez se ve la necesidad de ligarse a otras líneas de formar haz, de buscar la amplitud mediante la
colaboración. ... Su imagen [del investigador] es un hilo que suelto que, suelto, no tiene sentido; pero es
apto para formar tejido." Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 35.
40
hold together. Likewise spheres, encyclopedic individualistic men live in "egotistical
concentration", holding "minimal external communication" (as the sphere has "minimal
surface") and are rebellious to association: "Isolated and autonomous men,
concentrical, perhaps of great personal worth, are absolutely inappropriate for
research."77 Research requires "discipline and order" and is incompatible with
"anarchic individualism". Research thrives in and produces "cohesion", "solidarity",
"warm friendliness", "spiritual connection".78 On the contrary, "unsociable arrogant"
people, even if scientifically worthy, must be sidelined. Because they have a corrosive
effect, even if they be scientifically productive in the short run, they would eventually
hurt research growth.79
In Albareda’s mind, therefore, science policy included iron handedly monitoring
researchers to avoid shallow divagations and whimsical pursuits. Bad science is here
presented as the consequence of anarchic individuals, that is to say, of researchers
whose work and personality do not fit into what Albareda would consider an
appropriated pattern. It is highly significant that his opposition of good science to
anarchy, and in the last resort to intellectual freedom, is predicated on the same
opposition that ruled out political freedom from Francoist Spain. The official political
76
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 23-25, 33-34.
77
Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 34.
78
"La investigación es fértil en cohesión, solidaridad, compañerismo afectuoso y enlace espiritual, en
cristalización de núcleos de trabajo; exige disciplina, orden. Que no aviente nuestra labor el anárquico
individualismo." Albareda, Consideraciones, p. 181.
79
"La insociabilidad engreída puede tener un valor científico elevado, pero es un corrosivo que, aunque
produzca científicamente, a la larga dañará el desarrollo de la investigación misma." Albareda,
Consideraciones, p. 182.
41
discourses of the regime opposed “real freedom” (the one Spanish people enjoyed under
Franco, according to the regime) to anarchy, or to put it in the language of the time, “no
hay que confundir la libertad con el libertinaje” (“do not call liberty that which is in
fact libertinage”). Albareda applied the same principle to science policy. The dangers
lurking behind the combination of Albareda’s conservative Catholic ideology, his views
on research, and the authoritarian political context are too obvious. If for whatever
reasons Albareda concluded that someone's research did not meet his conditions—if he
deemed it ”whimsical” or “anarchic”—then he felt legitimated to veto it regardless of its
sound methodology and international status.
After the Civil War (1939-1966)
In 1940 Albareda won a professorship in Mineralogy and Zoology (quickly transformed
into Applied Geology after he took tenure) at the School of Pharmacy in the University
of Madrid. From then on, he combined his work as science administrator— arguably he
was the most powerful science-policy maker in Spain between the end of the Civil War
and his death— and his scientific vocation. He promoted his own discipline by setting
up the Instituto Español de Edafología (1942), which he directed and where he advised
many doctoral dissertations. It had its own journal, the Anales de Edafología (published
with different names between 1942 and 1989), where he published a substantial part of
his research after the war. He published three scientific monographs, El suelo (1940, a
revised version of his Conde de Cartagena lectures of 1936), Origen y formación del
humus (1948), and Edafología (1948, a textbook written in collaboration with his
student A. Hoyos). He kept publishing scientific papers through the end of his
hyperactive life, although from 1945 on his research articles are always signed in
collaboration with one or two of his students. It is difficult to evaluate the international
42
impact of his research. His work (before and after the war) was overwhelmingly
published in Spanish and in Spanish journals (CSIC journals after 1939) — the only
exceptions being a few contributions to international conferences published in volumes
of proceedings.80 He got tokens of international recognition, as was his appointment to
the Pontificial Academy of Sciences in 1948 and his honorary degrees from the Catholic
University of Louvain (1953) and the University of Toulouse (1955). He was elected to
three Spanish national academies, the Academy of Sciences (1942), the Academy of
Pharmacy (1943), and the Academy of Medicine (1952).
If anything, Albareda's religiosity and commitment to religiously inspired
scientific institutions grew with the years. He took holy orders in 1959, when he was 57.
By then he was playing a major, probably a crucial role in the convoluted negotiations
that brought about the legal recognition of the Opus Dei-run Universidad de Navarre,
the only private university ever fully-recognized by the Franco regime. This was no
minor feat, as the regime (and its academic establishment very particularly) was hostile
to the very notion of a higher education institution outside direct state control. Albareda
was instrumental in exerting as much political pressure as he could muster in order to
get full official status for the Opus Dei’s institution, which was operating —without
granting official degrees— since 1952. Official recognition eventually came in 1962
through a legal loophole.81 In 1960, Escrivá, as Chancellor (Gran Canciller) of the
Universidad de Navarre, appointed Albareda its President (Rector) in a strategic and
successful move intended to deactivate opposition to the new university. Albareda
80
For Albareda's full bibliography, see Castillo, Tomeo, Albareda fue así, p. 327-339.
43
assumed the charge without quitting his post of CSIC's Secretary General. He
combined the two positions until his untimely death of heart attack in March 1966.
Highly significant to understand Albareda's intellectual and moral framework
during the crucial years in which he was giving shape to the new national institutional
for scientific research, is his taking residence in 1939 with Escrivá, Escrivá's family, and
Escrivá's hard-core followers. In the Summer of 1939 Escrivá set up his and the Opus
Dei headquarters in 3 large appartments centrally located in downtown Madrid, number
6 in Jenner Street. In following years, between 30 and 40 people lived there, including
Escrivá's mother, sister, and one brother, and almost all of the early, founding members
of the Opus Dei. Called "the seniors" ("los mayores") in the Opus Dei lingo, they
include many worthies, along with Albareda—Alvaro del Portillo (who in 1975
succeeds Escrivá as head of the Opus Dei); Isidoro Zorzano, Escrivá's first recruit and
the one who "works" Albareda and convinces him to join in; Pedro Casciaro, Francisco
Botella, and Juan Jiménez Vargas, all companions of Escrivà and Albareda in the
Pyrenees crossing. Botella and Jiménez Vargas would soon become university
professors and influential members of the Francoist academic establishment. There was
also F. Ponz, who calls Albareda his "maestro", becomes physiology professor, and
succeeds Albareda as President of the University of Navarre from 1966 to 1979.
Witness accounts of the religious and moral atmosphere reigning in the Jenner residence
convey a vivid impression of a close-knit circle of enthusiastic believers that shared not
81
M. Lora-Tamayo, Lo que yo he conocido. Recuerdos de un viejo catedrático que fue ministro (Puerto
Real: Federico Joly y Cia-INGRASA, [1993]), p. 191-194; for the political tensions the Universidad de
Navarra affair provoked within the regime, see Artigues, El Opus Dei en España, p. 173-174, 198-200.
44
only faith and hope in salvation but also in the earthly success of their fledgling
congregation.82
82
J. Orlandis, Años de juventud en el Opus Dei (Madrid: Rialp, 1993), p. 63-67; F.M. Requena, J. Sesé,
Fuentes para la historia del Opus Dei (Barcelona: Ariel, 2002), p. 40-42 (quoting F. Ponz, Mi encuentro
con El Fundador del Opus Dei. Madrid, 1939-1944 (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2000), p. 51-53).
45
According to some historians, Albareda’s partisan use of his tenure as CSIC’s
General Secretary, a position in which he made and broke many an academic career, is a
major explanatory factor for the spectacular growth and flourishing fortunes of the Opus
Dei in Spain under the Franco regime. The accusation is consistent with a great deal of
indirect evidence, yet it is difficult to support with hard quantitative evidence, given the
deep secrecy involving Opus Dei’s affiliations.83 On the other hand, there is evidence
that portrays him as an open-minded science administrator within Francoist and Opus
Dei parameters.84
The success of Albareda's CSIC
In political and institutional terms the CSIC of Albareda and Ibáñez Martín was a
categorical success. In 1940 its budget was 3 million Pesetas, which grew into 1050
million by 1968, although the nominal increase must of course be deflated by taking
83
Estruch, Saints and Schemers, p. 92-94; Artigues, El Opus Dei en España, p. 47-51; N. Cooper, "La
Iglesia: De la «Cruzada» al cristianismo", in P. Preston (ed.), España en crisis (Madrid: FCE, 1977), 93146, p. 108; P. Laín Entralgo, Descargo de conciencia 1930-1960 (Barcelona: Barral, 1976), p. 281; G.
Pasamar, "Oligarquías y clientelas en el mundo de la investigación científica: el Consejo Superior en la
universidad de posguerra", in J.-J. Carreras Ares, M.-A. Ruíz Carnicer (eds.), La universidad española
bajo el régimen de Franco (1939-1975) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1991), 305-339,
passim. A highly adversarial view of the Opus Dei’s early history and aims is found in J. Ynfante, La
prodigiosa aventura del Opus Dei.
84
G. Marañón, “El profesor Albareda ... ingresa en la Real Academia de Medicina”, Arbor (June 1952),
246-250; L. Solé Sabarís, "J.M. Albareda, 1902-1966", Anuario de la real Academia de Ciencias y Artes
de Barcelona, 1966-67, p. 60-72; L. Pericot, "Mis recuerdos de Don José Ibáñez Martín", Arbor, 75,
1970, p. 31-36; A. Moncada, Historia oral del Opus Dei (Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1987), p. 30, 40. By
the late 1950s, some Roman Catholic personalities were complaining that the academic authorities had
neglected the regime's goal of turning the Spanish universities into bastions of the Catholic faith; see A.
Fontán, Los católicos en la universidad española actual (Madrid: Rialp, 1961), p. 92-95.
46
into account inflation. In 1960 Pesetas, the CSIC budgets grew from 14.77 million
Pesetas-1960 in 1940 to 625.26 million in 1968.85 To have some point of comparison,
the budgets of the French equivalent to the CSIC, the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique grew from 162 million Francs-1982 in 1940 into 2833 million by 1968, that
is to say by a factor of 17.5.86 The increase for the CSIC budgets corresponds to a
factor of 42.3. Of course France had research institutions other than the CNRS; and if
we translate Francs into Pesetas for the years concerned, the French system was getting
more money; and doubtless it was more efficiently managed in France than in Spain.
However, if we take into account the disparities between France and Spain in social
development, economic structure, GDP, educational standards, and cultural and
scientific traditions, the CSIC figures are impressive enough. What is to be retained
from the foregoing figures is that a sizable and steadily increasing budget supported
Spanish scientific research from the very beginning of the Franco regime.
The number of people whose research the CSIC supported grew from less than a
hundred people in 1940 (including scientists, scholars, and social scientists) to some
2500 researchers by the mid 1960s. Moreover, starting in 1945 and 1947 a small
number of tenured full-time positions of Colaborador científico (Associate Researcher)
85
The sources for the figures are the annual CSIC Memorias. For a fuller analysis of the CSIC budgets
and their equivalents in 1960 currency, see Malet, “A Case Study on the Scientific Institutions of
Francoist Spain".
86
The CNRS budgets in 1982 French Francs are given in : J.F. Picard, La république des savants. La
recherche française et le CNRS (Paris: Flammarion, 1990), p. 214.
47
and Investigador científico (Full Researcher) of the CSIC were created every year.87
People in such positions were estate employees, like university professors, but were not
part of the university system formally. By the mid 1960s the CSIC employed 500 full
time researchers— the rest up to 2500 were university professors or lecturers getting
salary complements from the CSIC. It also employed some 1000 technicians,
librarians, and support personnel.88
As for fellowships, in the darkest years of the regime, between 1940 and 1953,
the CSIC granted 1.169 scholarships to study abroad (almost 100 per year), which
compare favorably with the some 50 scholarships per year the JAE awarded before the
Civil War.89 Between 1944 and 1953 almost 700 foreign researchers visited Spain,
most of them scientists.90 Between 1948 and 1953, the CSIC sent delegations to 315
international academic meetings.91 We do not have precise data for the years after
1953, but if anything the number of foreign exchanges increased in the late 50s and
through the 60s, when Spain's economic integration in the European markets
accelerated.
87
In 1955, the total number of tenured Full and Associate Researchers in all the institutes and
departments of the CSIC amounted to 155; figure elaborated from C.S.I.C., Colaboradores e
investigadores del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: [C.S.I.C.], 1956).
88
O. Díaz Pinés, “XXV Aniversario de la Fundación del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas”, Arbor 59 (num. 227, 1964), 247-66; J.R. Pérez Álvarez-Ossorio, "Estructura de la política
científica en España", Arbor, 68 (num. 264) (1967): 325-36.
89
CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: [CSIC], 1964), p. 35. For data on the
JAE fellowships, see Sánchez Ron, ed. La Junta para ampliación de estudios e investigaciones científicas
80 años después, 1907-1987, I, p. 75-80.
90
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: [CSIC], 1964), p. 56-57.
48
Finally, the CSIC budget for publications (books and journals), dramatically
increased between 1940 and 1962 as a percentage of the total. As shown elsewhere, in
1943 the CSIC spent in publications the 3.5% of the total budget. By 1960 publications
were gobbling up the 11.2% of the total. In absolute terms, the budget for publications
had multiplied by 45, while the total budget did so by 14.92 Up to 1964, the CSIC
published some 3,500 scholarly and scientific books, averaging 140 per year. In 1940,
the CSIC published 22 journals, only 8 of which already existed before the Civil War.93
After 1960 its number stabilizes around 160 journals. In 1972, the last year on which we
have data, the CSIC was publishing 163 journals.94
Notice that for almost 30 years the CSIC had absolute control about who in
Spain was doing research, where, how, and on what subject (with the important
exception of nuclear and theoretical physics, which fell under the purview of the Junta
de Energía Nuclear, set up in 1951). It is of course important that it did so without
never relying on peer review mechanisms to make decisions about whether or not to
fund new sections, whether or not some sections deserved extra support, and so on.
Albareda implemented his policies through the hypercentralized, authoritarian structure
91
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: [CSIC], 1964), p. 20.
92
The sources are the CSIC budgets as published in the yearly Memorias. The numbers have been
elaborated in Malet, “A Case Study on the Scientific Institutions of Francoist Spain".
93
Unsigned oficio from CSIC to Jefe de Prensa y Propaganda, Ministry of Gobernación, 28 June 1940,
rnum. 526 (ARdE 8533/4/54).
94
O. Díaz Pinés, “XXV Aniversario de la Fundación del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas”, Arbor 59 (num. 227), 1964, 247-66, p. 256-7; CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas ([Madrid]: CSIC, 1954), p. 27; CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
([Madrid]: CSIC, 1961), p. 68; CSIC, Memoria 1971 (Madrid: CSIC, 1973), p. 60.
49
of the CSIC. All decisions were taken by the Consejo Permanente, staffed by the
President, the General Secretary and 4 more people, all of them appointed by the
President.95 In Madrid, where the CSIC authorities knew all professors holding
university chairs personally, decisions regarding financial support of their research
activities were taken based on such knowledge. As shown in detail elsewhere, from
1942 the CSIC set up a system of peripheral Delegaciones (Branches) in Barcelona,
Saragossa, Valencia, Seville, and the Canary Islands to locally administrate the sections
and institutes in the provinces. These branches filtered the applications of university
chairs that applied to become research sections. In essence what the branches did was
to certify the candidate's good social and political standing. No university professor
could apply for CSIC support without a favorable report on his or her behalf from the
local Delegación. 96
95
The Consejo Permanente, which met weekly, nominally reported to the Consejo Ejecutivo, which met
monthly and had a larger composition. The President and the Secretary General were there joined by
some other 14 fellows (vice-presidents, undersecretary, treasurer, and “representatives” from the
institutes). Originally, the President of the CSIC designated all members of the Executive Board. The
composition of the first Consejo Permanente and the first Consejo Ejecutivo is found in CSIC, Memoria
… 1940-41, p. 352-3. The composition of both Councils knew small changes in 1947, 1951 and 1956,
always in the direction of increasing the number of people seating in them. In 1956 the Consejo Ejecutivo
had 22 members and the Permanente had 10 (see Estructura y normas del Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: [C.S.I.C.], 1947), p. 54-55; Estructura del Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid: [C.S.I.C.], 1951), p. 26-7, 183-5; and the 1956 edition of the later
pamphlet, p. 99-101). In the late 1960s a token measure of democracy was introduced and the heads of
the institutes and other personalities (appointed by the President) elected some of the members of the
Consejo Ejecutivo. Nonetheless, the Consejo Permanente kept always the last say in all matters
important. See Lora Tamayo, “Recuerdos del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas en su 50º
Aniversario”, in Muñoz, et al., El CSIC: una visión retrospectiva, 99-115, p. 109-110.
96
A. Malet, “El papel político de la Delegación del CSIC en Barcelona (1941-1956)”, Arbor, 160 (num.
631-632) (1998): 413-439; Malet, “A Case Study on the Scientific Institutions of Francoist Spain".
50
The CSIC's practical monopoly on Spanish intellectual life came to an end by
the late 1960s, when several factors came to modify the status quo. Doubling its GDP
from 1960 to 1970, Spain was in this decade the world’s second fastest growing
economy, just behind Japan. Accordingly, significant segments of the social elites of
the country embraced new technocratic, laicized, liberal, and materialistic attitudes and
values. This found expression in a new generation of politicians who implemented
policies technocratic and “desarrollistas”, focused on economic development
(desarrollo) at all costs.97 A major consequence of them was the explosive growth of
Spanish universities. Their student population had increased by 20% during the 50s but
increased by 130% during the 60s. The concomitant increments in the number of
lecturers and professors, and the creation of new colleges and universities across the
country disrupted the social fabric of the old academic elites grown under Albareda's
vigilant eye.98 Even more significantly, starting in 1964 (with the first four-year
Development Plan) the universities were granted more research autonomy, as they could
obtain research funds from the Fondo Nacional para la Investigación Científica,
administered by a new high-ranking political organism called the Comisión Delegada
del Gobierno de Política Científica, which was advised by an academic committee, the
Comisión Asesora para la Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, CAICYT. From then
on, strategic decisions on matters of science policy were no longer the exclusive
97
J. Esteban, "La política económica del franquismo: una interpretación", in Preston (ed.), España en
crisis, 147-180; J. García Delgado, “La industrialización y el desarrollo económico de España durante el
franquismo”, in J. Nadal, A. Carreras, C. Sudrià (eds.), La economía española en el siglo XX (Barcelona:
Ariel, 1987), 164-89.
51
competence of the CSIC.99 Finally, it was of course also relevant the personal factor
that Albareda died in 1966 and then Ibáñez Martín resigned from the Presidency of the
CSIC. By the late 1960s, however, the CSIC of Albareda and Ibáñez Martín had left its
mark upon a whole generation of professors and researchers. It had already shaped
beyond recognition Spanish intellectual life.
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