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ABSTRACT
This article expands on existing work done on the Catalan Eugenics Society and its focus on Josep Vandellós, a demographer and organiser of the Society. It places the Catalan Eugenics Society within the growing volume of work on the international, particularly “Latin” eugenics movement. In doing so, it explores discourse on questions of “race,” immigration and “national” identity as refracted through the nascent eugenics movement and the political concerns of the time in Catalonia. In particular, the article assesses the question of “racial mixing” between Catalans and Spaniards from other regions and argues that, rather than rejecting miscegenation outright, Vandellós valued certain mixes as part of a eugenic project to fortify and maintain the Catalan “race” in the face of population loss and the dissolution of Catalan identity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The call for submissions in 1934 offered a 5,000 peseta prize and stated that immigration resulted from increased transport facilities and the search for a better life on the part of those migrating. It was also stated that immigration could cause problems (“congria perill, moral i material”) (Vandellós Citation1935, 11). Further, “Ara la immigració manifesta revolçors que torben la nostra vida nacional” (Vandellós 1935, 11). The first Patxot i Ferrer competition was in 1920.
2. Catalunya, poble decadent was published before La immigració a Catalunya as textual references in the latter indicate (e.g. Vandellós 1935, 38). It would appear that La immigració, in the version submitted for the competition in 1934, however, was penned before Catalunya, poble decadent.
3. Termes (Citation1984, 138) refers to this opposition as “anti-Malthusian” whereby commentators were “preocupats pel problema general de la minva de la població i de la baixa natalitat”. Although “Malthusianism” in the nineteenth century could mean affiliation to Malthus’ ideas tout court or could mean the advocacy of birth control methods in opposition to Malthus’ remedy of “moral restraint,” in Catalonia at least by the early twentieth century the latter went by the name of “neo-Malthusianism”. On the shifting meanings of Malthusianism in the nineteenth century see Dolan (Citation2000).
4. An appreciation shared by the future Marxist leader Joaquim Maurín who attempted to affirm in L’Opinió in 1928 that “El proletariat català no és anarquista” but socialist (Termes Citation1984, 142). On the relations between anarchism and Catalan nationalism, see Gabriel (Citation1986).
5. The Revista de Catalunya, as one of the principal intellectual forums of the period, is rich in discussions of the political dimensions of science with the occasional reference to eugenics. See, for example, J[oan] C[Rexells] (Citation1925) for an analysis of the import of eugenics via the thought of J.B.S. Haldane and Chesterton. I am grateful to Sílvia Coll-Vinent for this reference.
6. Even within this right-wing nationalist camp there were differences. As Goode (Citation2009, 97–117) has shown, there were those who believed that Spain’s greatness in part stemmed from the mixture of races, but that it was the Castilian elements, the best among the amalgam, which had risen to the top through the galvanising process heralded by the unification of the nation under Fernando and Isabel and through the purifying work of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the work of Misael Bañuelos (Citation1936) lamented the mixtures that had displaced the best Castilian types, argued for military vigour as a means of saving the “race,” viewed liberal democracy as “unsuitable” for racial excellence but opposed National Socialism as an enemy of Christian civilisation.
7. The variety and extent of articles written by Vandellós in this and other important periodicals can be seen in Pascual (Citation1991).
8. A similar measure was in fact considered in many countries in the 1920s and 1930s. For the Portuguese case, see Cleminson (Citation2014, 107, n. 177). General Miguel Primo de Rivera also proposed a tax on single people, perhaps following the Italian fascist regime.
9. The ideological dimensions of this struggle as pointed out by Tusquets and others, discussed above, were reinforced by Vandellós (Vandellós i Solà Citation1935, 173–176; 179). It is on these pages that Vandellós refers to the anarcho-syndicalist CNT.
10. Cited from Nascita, evoluzione e morte delle nazioni (Vandellós Citation1985, 100).
11. That there are differences on this question between the two books may also be due to the fact that Vandellós in his La immigració tempered his account in response to the remit of the Patxot competition, which acknowledged that immigration had some positive benefits.
12. The apparently less hierarchical and racially inflected term ethnicity became the consensus description of a population in the non-racist anthropology of the 1930s and subsequent years, as exemplified by Huxley and Haddon’s We Europeans (1935). Kohn (1995, 24) describes this book as “a transitional work: in relegating race to history, it showed that it was still rooted in the race concept”.
13. In this way, without naming the work, Vandellós coincided with René Martial’s understanding of “la greffe raciale,” the mechanism behind the “grafting” of races together. Martial’s argument on this question is contained in his Traits de l’immigration et de la greffe inter-raciale (Citation1931).
14. Conversi also suggests that Vandellós, “influenced by Italian Fascism and German pessimism” (Conversi Citation1997, 194), was opposed to immigration and miscegenation as resulting in the decadence of Catalonia.
15. Carol notes that immigration was always a minority issue for French eugenicists as was the question of racial mixing. Martial’s views grew more racist into the 1930s. Although he believed that certain racial mixes were acceptable, by the time of his address to the Latin Federation in 1937, his “considérations douteuses sur l’indice bio-chimique, les races pures, et quelques relents anti-sémites” were seriously contested by the congress attendees (Carol Citation1995, 186; Martial Citation1937).
16. Vandellós reflected on the difficulties when he wrote that Catalonia’s hands were effectively tied by the central government in respect of immigration policy, a situation seized upon by the national powers precisely in order to quell any greater autonomy with the area: “Es difícil a Catalunya efectuar una acció de gran envergadura en allò que es refereix a l’aspecte material, perquè, tal com estan les coses, hauria d’ésser duta a terme pel Govern central, que només es troba amb aquest problema de la natalitat a Catalunya i pot creure que la immigració en grans masses és la millor manera d’acabar amb el catalanisme i, per tant, no sentir el més petit interès a favor del possible augment de la natalitat catalana” (Vandellós i Solà Citation1935, 43).
17. The example of Almerindo Lessa, the haematologist, who attended the Latin Federation’s Paris conference, is a case in point (Cleminson Citation2017).