Unamuno Returns To The University Of Salamanca A Century After His Banishment By Primo De Rivera

Miguel de Unamuno in his office, in an undated picture.

Saint Teresa of Jesus, Saint John of the Cross and next year Miguel de Unamuno (Bilbao, 1864 – Salamanca, 1936). The writer of the 1998 generation will join these two saintly figures among the Honoris Causa Doctors, awarded posthumously by the University of Salamanca (USAL) in 2024, a century after his banishment by Primo de Rivera. The descendants of Unamuno proposed this decoration to the management of the institution to pay tribute to the figure of their ancestor, the cultural and historical symbol of the city. The philosopher also regained the prestige of this university at a time of decline of the institution, of which he was later rector. The USAL government team has initiated the procedures to grant him this status, while his relatives deplore the “political utility” of his deliberations.

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The initiative, emphasizes Pablo de Unamuno, grandson of the author, was based on the fact that the famous grandfather was never a doctor in Salamanca, although he was in Madrid, and it was considered to give him the award posthumously. “We submitted an application to the rectorate and the government commission accepted it, now it’s up to the faculty, it seems that it will be so,” says this retired professor of dermatology at USAL, who jokes that the philosopher “not like a saint” like Teresa of Jesús or Juan de la Cruz, but she left an intellectual and literary mark on the city. He describes that the procedures must be accelerated in order to adapt them in February 2024 to the then completed century of exile ordered by Miguel Primo de Rivera for his critical views against the dictator. “We said it would be a good time to name it as a cure,” adds De Unamuno.

Letter from Miguel de Unamuno, in an image provided by the writer’s house museum.

This number is “absolutely current, maybe because of the films or the documentary,” says the grandson. “All politicians in the election campaign mention him from time to time and want to include him in their ranks,” he explains, citing “attempts at manipulation.” The Bilbao-born writer joined the PSOE in his youth, but during his literary and personal maturity he reflected on each era without leaning towards any ideology. “Everyone takes a sentence that suits them and says: ‘As Unamuno said…’,” laments the descendant. The mantra “You will win, but you will not convince” has won in public opinion and in cinema, although it does not convince its descendants. According to his grandson, he originally wrote “Winning does not mean convincing”, a “slightly gentler” motto that has led to this message being repeated so many times in the context of his dialectical confrontation with the military Millán Astray in October 1936, in the first months of the Spanish Civil War.

Enrique Santos de Unamuno, great-grandson of the mayor of Salamanca, also for life, deplores the efforts of the dictator Francisco Franco to “capitalize on him and try to clear his face,” although it was the reactionary sectors that attacked the writer the most. “People are moved by emotions, there are dubious phrases such as that he supported the Franco regime, that’s a trap,” criticizes the descendant, because Miguel de Unamuno was caught at the age of 72 at the time “and he doesn’t have the times well interpreted.” : He thought it would be a “pro-republican military action similar to those of the 19th century and not a fascist coup with greater force.” “Franco was very skilled at deceiving people. In his last letters, Unamuno admitted that Franco was perhaps more duplicitous than he seemed,” his descendant says.

Santos suspects that his great-grandfather’s death, which was never fully explained and was suspected of poisoning, was due to the struggle between Unamuno’s reformist ideas and such a conservative city with Catholic tradition and reactionary de facto powers like Salamanca. “In the Unamuno Museum there are letters in which he wrote: ‘Because they said that winning was not convincing, they fired me,’ says the also professor at the University of Extremadura. Thanks to him, he affirms, Salamanca has regained its lost position by employing an intellectual with an international background who has also been heavily involved in the development of the institution between its classrooms and offices.

The Unamuno House Museum in Puerto del Rosario on the island of Fuerteventura.Getty

The director of the Unamuno Museum in Salamanca, Ana Chaguaceda, welcomes the upcoming appointment of the new doctor Honoris Causa. “We are about to enter the year 2024 and commemorate the banishment and exile that took place as punishment for his ideas,” he indicates before the 100th anniversary of his forced departure, which took him to Paris, Hendaye or Fuerteventura. This “special award for its strong institutional and academic accent” goes to the former rector, vice-rector, professor and dean in Salamanca, where he worked as a “dedicated professor and university manager”. Next year, a century after he was treated as a pariah, he will become eternal at the university where he forged his legend.

Unamuno returns to the University of Salamanca a century after his banishment by Primo de Rivera

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