Rafael Altamira: An Appreciation

Abstract

On June 7, 1951, Rafael Altamira y Crevea, educator, jurist, and historian, died at the age of eighty-five in Mexico City, an exile from his homeland of Spain. In the course of his long and varied life Altamira had written many books; some are in the field of jurisprudence, but most of his work deals with the Spanish people and their history. His four-volume work, Historia de Espana y de la civilization espaiola, published in the first decade of this century, established his eminence as an historian and still stands today as a monumental work in Spanish history. This essay is an attempt to highlight certain views which are reflected in his historical writing. As one of the Generation of '98 Altamira looked upon the wave of pessimism which engulfed his country at the turn of the century as a symptom of Spain's internal decadence and therefore not as something to be treated as a cause of illness but to be watched as an indicator of the internal state of the nation.2 Spain had been on the decline in various ways for almost two centuries but little had been accomplished to counteract this decadence.3 For Altamira the hope for a reversal of this trend lay in the Spaniards themselves ;4 but the desire for improvement must first exist in the minds of citizens before progress could be hoped for.5 To Altamira the importance of mass support for a program of reform was paramount as he shows in his comparison of the Spanish Revolutions of 1820 and 1808.6 The failure of the Revolution of 1820 and the success of that of 1808 are both explained solely in terms of the degree of popular support each was able to secure. His faith in the masses is further indicated by his belief that the only way to explain the great events of history is through the study of the activity and labor, small and insignificant though it may seem at times, of the thousands of people of the nation.7 It follows, therefore, that Spain was not classed as one of the leaders of the modern world by Altamira because the masses of its people were not aware of the progress that they might make or of the latent powers of their nation.8