Spain and science: why the backwardness story doesn't add up

Spain and science: the backwardness story that doesn't add up

The School of Salamanca formulated the quantity theory of money twelve years before the Frenchman Jean Bodin. The Gregorian calendar, it is claimed in the discussion, was built using measurements taken in Salamanca. And yet the question that opens this discussion — why Spain seems to contribute less to knowledge than the French, Germans or English — still has plenty of mileage left. The answer defended here: the problem is not ability, it is the 19th century.

The starting point is an intuition many people share: for every Spanish contribution to physics or chemistry, you notice twenty from any European neighbour with a similar population. The easy diagnosis points to national character or, outright, to race. The diagnosis proposed here points to the political economy of research.

The University of Salamanca and the quantity theory of money

Before Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, a handful of Salamanca friars and professors had already explained much of what we today call economics. In 1556, Martín de Azpilcueta argued that money is worth less where it abounds, and that American silver was driving up prices in Seville. That same year, Diego de Covarrubias maintained that the value of things does not depend on their nature. These are foundational contributions that almost nobody in Spain remembers.

The Gregorian calendar, it is noted in the discussion, was drawn up using measurements carried out at the University of Salamanca. The international metric system was developed between France and Spain. The first machine heavier than air capable of flying without gliding was designed and flown in Coruña del Conde. And the tornaviaje, the Manila–Acapulco return route linking two continents across the Pacific without GPS or satellites, demanded top-level mathematics, astronomy and physics.

The problem is not grey matter, it is money, the thread argues. A researcher starving in the Spanish university system discovers nothing. Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals or Turing Awards come when there is sustained funding to spend years researching a single problem. And today that is in the United States, in Zurich, in Oxford or in China.

The 19th century: the Napoleonic invasion and the plundering of the scientific fabric

Here lies the crux, according to several participants. The Spanish 19th century is a disaster that begins earlier: Trafalgar, the French invasion, British "aid" turned plunder, the destruction of a nascent industrial fabric, the American independence movements, the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, three Carlist wars and the loss of the empire's remnants. Into the 20th century, two more regimes and a civil war on top.

The Bourbons had dismantled popular education a century earlier, one participant argues. In South America the Jesuits, who acted as teachers, were expelled. The result: a country entering the 20th century with low literacy rates and a stunted university system. Historical reading rates explain much of the later gap, according to this view.

Some argue that international isolation and the veto on Spanish science did the rest. Documentaries about olive oil that cite dozens of countries and omit the world's largest producer. Homo-genus sites in Europe without mentioning Atapuerca. The complaint has partial grounds, but it does not explain why Newton emerged not in Salamanca but in Cambridge.

Isaac Peral, the submarine and institutional boycott

The case of Isaac Peral is the example cited most often. An environment hostile to ideas does not need explicit censorship: it is enough not to fund, not to recognise and not to protect those who innovate. The first flying machine of Coruña del Conde, had it been the work of an Anglo-Saxon, would have films and series. Here it is a footnote.

The rigidity of the education system is another piece of the puzzle, it is argued. Schooling based on reciting the Visigothic kings rather than analysing texts critically, testing hypotheses and experimenting produces exactly what it produces. Church-run schools are not the only factor, but they weigh.

How many universities were there in 19th-century Spain?

The figure being used: in the 19th century, England had ten universities; Spain, with a smaller population, more than double that. Santiago, Oviedo, Valladolid, Salamanca, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Granada and Seville, among others. The number was not the problem, according to this interpretation. The problem was the money flowing into them and the freedom with which research was conducted.

Moreover, the Industrial Revolution was mostly driven by craftsmen with no formal education. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have no university degree. That dismantles the simple equation between credentials and contributions to knowledge, the thread argues. What it does not dismantle is the link between sustained R&D investment and frontier scientific output.

The present: Cirac, CERN and the brain drain

Spain is starting to turn things around, it is claimed. Ignacio Cirac, a world reference in quantum computing, works in Germany. Several Spanish groups contribute at CERN. The young scientist from León, Marta Shahbazi, who died in the rail accident at Urda, was an example of that generation doing research abroad. The talent exists; the conditions, not always.

The question remains open: how much of the backwardness is a legacy of the 19th century, and how much is an incentive structure that still rewards the permanent post over the discovery? With these ingredients, the answer is comfortable for no one.