Science in Franco’s Spain

I was pleasantly surprised to see a full two-page article devoted to Spanish physicists (Physics Today, August 2001, page 20 ).

In 1964, I was a research collaborator in the neutron diffraction group at Brookhaven National Laboratory. I came back to Spain in 1975, just after Francisco Franco died, and found a number of colleagues, including Julio Palacios, Luis Bru, Nicolas Cabrera, Fernando Agulló, Basilio Jiménez, and Federico Garcia Moliner, doing significant work in solidstate physics. Of course, in the following years, research activity in both theoretical and experimental physics increased greatly in Spain. But the initial impetus was already quite visible in 1976.

So I think it is a little unfair for Toni Feder to begin her article by suggesting that Franco’s government was doing nothing to promote physics in Spain. Franco’s image in his final years was more one of a benign elder statesman than a fascist dictator. Perhaps Franco’s unforgivable sin was that he won a decisive victory over communism—decisive for his country and for Western Europe. He did this with the help of Texas Oil Co president Torkhild Rieber, ¹ who extended credit to the nationalists during the war and gave them all the oil they needed. ² Among Franco’s good deeds was the establishment of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. A plaque in the CSIC building on Serrano Street in Madrid commemorates this act.