Rafael Calvo Serer

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Rafael Calvo Serer (born October 6, 1916 in Valencia , Spain , † April 19, 1988 in Pamplona , Navarra , Spain) was a Spanish intellectual and author. He was the first university professor to profess the history of Spanish philosophy and the philosophy of history in Spain. In the last years of the Franco regime he had to go into exile ; During the transition in Spain he was an influential mediator and advisor. He was a member of Opus Dei .

Life

Rafael Calvo Serer comes from a family of small industrialists. He attended the high school Colegio Mayor del Beato Juan de Ribera in Burjassot in Catalonia , today's Colegio Mayor San Juan de Ribera . From this institute he received a scholarship with which he could begin his studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Valencia . In 1935 and 1936 he was active in various Catholic associations. B. know the intellectual Ramiro de Maeztu and also José María Escrivá de Balaguer . In 1936 he became a member of Opus Dei.

After the Spanish Civil War , which he spent in various hospitals due to a serious illness, he returned to the faculty in Valencia and wrote his doctoral thesis on Menéndez Pelayo's image of history . The doctoral thesis with the title Menéndez Pelayo y la decadencia española (German: Menéndez Pelayo and the Spanish decadence) he defended at the University of Madrid on August 14, 1940. In the same year he began to hold lectures on Spanish history at the University of Valencia. In 1942, the chair for modern world history and modern history was established at this university .

In 1943 Calvo Serer went to Switzerland to meet the Spanish pretender Juan de Borbón y Battenberg . He became part of the Consejo Privado , the political advisory group of Juan de Borbón. He returned to Spain towards the end of 1945 and was employed in the Department of Cultural Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. At the University of Madrid he founded the Chair of History, which in 1946 was named Chair of the History of Spanish Philosophy and Philosophy of History .

In 1947 Calvo Serer went to London for a year as deputy director of the Instituto Español , the Spanish cultural institute . In 1948 he founded the Arbor magazine in Madrid , the magazine of the Spanish Science and Research Council, the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas CSIC . In 1949 he wrote his first book España sin problema (Spain without problems) in response to the book by Pedro Laín Entralgo España como problema (Spain as a problem) from the same year. In 1949 he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura .

In 1966 Calvo Serer became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the daily Diario Madrid . This newspaper was shut down by the government in November 1971. In the same month Calvo Serer went into exile after an interview entitled Moi, aussi j'accuse , in which he criticized the Franco government, was published in the French daily Le Monde . The newspaper article resulted in a absentee charge of the offense against state authority and an arrest warrant for him. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in absentia.

During the years of his exile in Paris, Calvo Serer took part in the founding of the Junta Democrática , the democratic association . This union united the Communist Party of Spain with the liberal monarchists who supported Juan the Borbón. He coordinated the talks to form a government of national understanding chaired by Santiago Carrillo , which could be formed after the fall of the Franco regime.

Calvo Serer returned to Spain in 1976, was imprisoned for a short time and pardoned a little later. His personal archive is kept at the University of Navarra and is open to the public.

The Premio des Periodismo Diario Madrid , awarded by the Diario Madrid Foundation , was named after Calvo Serer from 1990 to 2010.

Fonts

  • 1949: España sin Problema , Biblioteca del pensamiento actual No. 4. Ediciones Rialp, Madrid. 2nd edition 1952.
  • 1949: El fin de la época de las revoluciones .
  • 1952: Teoría de la restauración , Biblioteca del pensamiento actual No. 15. Ediciones Rialp, Madrid.
  • 1953: The configuración del futuro . Ediciones Rialp, Madrid.
  • 1955: Política de integración .
  • 1956: La aproximación de los neoliberales à la actitud tradicional .
  • 1958: La fuerza creadora de la libertad .
  • 1960: Nuevas formas democráticas de la libertad .
  • 1962: La literatura universal sobre la guerra de España .
  • 1962: La Política mundial de los Estados Unidos .
  • 1964: Las nuevas democracias .
  • 1978: Mis enfrentamientos con el poder (My clashes with power). Plaza & Janés, Madrid 1978, ISBN 978-84-01-33140-4 .

literature

  • Onésimo Diaz Hernández: Rafael Calvo Serer y el grupo Arbol . Publivacions de la Universitat de Valencia, Valencia 2008, ISBN 978-84-370-7265-4 .
  • Onésimo Diaz Hernández, Fernando Meer Lecha-Marzo: Rafael Calvo Serer: La búsqueda de la libertad (1954–1988) . Rialp, Madrid 2010, ISBN 978-84-321-3833-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ José Luis González Gullón: DYA. La Academia y Residencia en la historia del Opus Dei (1933-1939) . RIALP, Madrid 2016, ISBN 978-84-321-4604-6 .
personal data
SURNAME Calvo Serer, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish author, university professor and editor
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Valencia , Kingdom of Spain
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 1988
Place of death Pamplona , Navarre , Spain