Las cátedras de la «institución cultural española» de buenos aires. Ciencia y educación entre España y Argentina, 1910-1940

Abstract

During the first decades of the twentieth century Spain experienced its most significant period of educational, cultural and scientific encounter with Europe in all its history. The new approaches and reforms, initially advanced by García Alix in 1900 and accomplished by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios from 1907, became the model for many Latin-American countries. In particular, the celebration in 1910 of the centenary of the declaration of independence in Argentina became the origin for a very special initiative that rejoined Spanish immigrants and their descendants with the country of their ancestors, which by that time had learned how to overcome several decades of decline looking for Europe: the Institución Cultural Española at Buenos Aires. The ICE, through the JAE, established and supported two successive university chairs. In Buenos Aires, since 1914, the most important Spanish University Professors sat at the «Cátedra de Cultura Española» alternating Humanities and the Sciences. In Madrid, from 1928, some European authorities joined Spanish scientists at the «Cátedra Cajal de Investigaciones Científicas». These initiatives, which showed the splendour of what is being known as Spanish Silver Age, suffered a dramatic rupture with the outbreak of the Civil War. After 1939, a new Institución Cultural Española had to adapt itself to the new Spain, a very different country from the one they had met during the fist third of the twentieth century, while the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios was reincarnated as Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.