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Santos Juliá and THE COUNTRY, Historian of the complex
Santos Juliá began to read the Manuel Azaña to the mid-sixties, on the recommendation of the historian of the republican Ramón Carande. For those born in the year 1940, as Julia, “Azaña was the epitome of evil”, as he confessed. But those readings have forged a very powerful politician, was born in Alcalá de Henares January 10, 1880 and died in Montauban (France) on November 3, 1940, for the last eight decades. Over the years, the historian, who passed away on October 23 at age 79, would be responsible for editing the complete works of Azaña and wrote Life and time of Manuel Azaña (Taurus, 2008), a biography considered canonical on the outside the first head of republican Government (1931-1933) and the president of the Republic between 1936 and 1939. Coinciding with the anniversary of the birth of Azaña, the city Council of Alcalá de Henares paid yesterday tribute to Julia, in a ceremony attended by the historians José Álvarez Junco, Javier Moreno Luzón and José María Ridao, and was moderated by Javier Rioyo.
Doctor of Political Sciences and Sociology and professor of Social History, Julia, in addition to Azaña, investigated by the schism of the socialist party in 1934, the democratic experiment of the Second Republic, the franco dictatorship, the Transition, or the history of Madrid. The historian Álvarez Junco has been defined on occasion as “the opposite of an intellectual in the media, of tertullian talkative”. His position was always “the defense of the complexity in the explanation of the past”. Yesterday highlighted the consistency of his work, the methodology, the objectivity and the passion (contained by the rationalization). “We have changed our way of seeing the TWENTIETH century Spanish,” he reported.
The historian Santos Juliá. gorka lejarcegi
Alvarez Junco put the focus on the ties that bind Julia with Azaña and what it considered the axis of the coherence of his work: “The two believe in the need of a State to organize and solve the problems of a country. Reforming the State to have credible institutions”. The historian, who spoke of their friendship and their travels together, he described to Julia as “very representative of the new history that emerged from the seventies”. A story “not nationalist or essentialist”. He pointed out that he was the one who robbed the spaniards of the monopoly of the synthesis of Spanish history.
For his part, Moreno Luzon, whose doctoral thesis was directed by Julia, emphasized that the historian “understood Azaña as anyone.” Also he was rated as one of the great historians and the most important is that Spain has had on the TWENTIETH century. He recalled that he helped Julia in the work of collection, arrangement, and interpretation in seven volumes of the complete works of Azaña. How he reviewed his work, from social history to intellectual history and embodied performances original on the history of Spain. It also stressed its commitment to break the “stereotype of the failure” of Spain. “Categorically denied that the Spanish society was paralyzed in the first third of the TWENTIETH century. He refuted the idea that all were failures in the history of Spain”. His office of historian, he argued, was marked by three characteristics: passion, independence, and intellectual honesty. “It was someone that had to listen to. His work is not only good but it makes us better,” he concluded.
For Ridao, it is difficult to distinguish the figure of Saints, that of Azaña. In that sense he welcomed the fact that yesterday they commemorate together. The way that Julia has been mapped onto Azaña, emphasized Ridao, has expanded the visibility of the recent Spanish history, “with deep roots that reach us until today.” His contribution, he stressed, has revealed a Azaña pragmatic: “There was idealism in the republicanism of Azaña but pragmatism. Was a republican because the Monarchy fails in the defence of freedom”. Ridao stressed that historian revealed “the Azaña that shows us that the political is the State.” The Azaña that connects with the liberal tradition and tolerance: “The one who does not think in the nation, but the State”. In that line, attributed to Julia have shown the vision of the story that has Azaña, related to the Flaubert that was surprised that we talked about France before France existed. Ridao invited to not analyze Azaña as an icon but as a career.
The event, held at the hall of the Consistory, began with the reading of a text of Julia on the part of the actor and theater director José Luis Gómez. Among the attendees were family members of Azaña and Julia. The tribute was closed with the intervention of the cellist Marina Barba, who performed the piece Offering (Six pieces to the memory of Manuel Azaña), the composer Luis de Pablo.
