‘Telling it like it was’? the ‘Residencia de Estudiantes’ and its image

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Notes

J. B. Trend, A Picture of Modern Spain: Men and Music (London: Constable, 1921), 36, 37 and 1 respectively.

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Oxford: Polity, 1992 [1st ed. 1980]), 61. An extensive comparison which suggests itself here is between the habitus and Unamuno's concept of intrahistoria.

This article is part of a much more extensive project on ‘Centres of Exchange’ which considers the nature of institutions and organs significant in the facilitation of, or resistance to, cultural and intellectual exchange in Spain, 1900–1936.

Some sense of the inaccessibility of the habitus of another can be gained from Bourdieu's elaboration of it: ‘The habitus—embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history—is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product. As such, it is what gives practices their relative autonomy with respect to external determinations of the immediate present. This autonomy is that of the past, enacted and acting, which, functioning as accumulated capital, produces history on the basis of history and so ensures the permanence in change that makes the individual agent a world within the world. The habitus is a spontaneity without consciousness or will, opposed as much to the mechanical necessity of things without history in mechanistic theories as it is to the reflexive freedom of subjects “without inertia” in rationalist theories’ (The Logic of Practice, 56).

I am indebted to Doña Clara Herrera, librarian at the Ateneo (Madrid) for this information.

The other prime sites of intellectual exchange are casinos and cafes, both difficult to document, but both highly significant because of the wide social spectrum that they encompassed, particularly the latter.

A useful summary is that of Margarita Sáenz de la Calzada, La Residencia de Estudiantes 1910–1936 (Madrid: CSIC, 1986), containing lists of residents (for 1910–1915, 1915–1920, 1920–1930, 1930–1936), and of lectures given for the Sociedad de Cursos y Conferencias, but not including the lectures organized by the Comité Hispano-Inglés. See also Alberto Jiménez Fraud, La Residencia de Estudiantes: visita a Maquiavelo (Barcelona: Ariel, 1972); John Crispin, Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid (Santander: Isla de los Ratones, 1981); J. B. Trend, A Picture of Modern Spain: Men and Music (London: Constable, 1921); J. B. Trend, The Origins of Modern Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1934).

See respectively Residencia IV, No. 1, 22–26; Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 89–98; and Luis Buñuel, My Last Breath, trans. from the French by Abigail Israel (London: Vintage, 1994 [1st ed. 1982]), 63–64.

Residencia is widely available thanks to the facsimile reprinting produced in 1987 by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. There is a gap in publication between May 1928 and December 1931. All references to Residencia are to this facsimile reproduction.

Enric Trillas, foreword to facsimile reproduction of Residencia (Madrid: CSIC, 1987), vii.

Paul Julian Smith, Vision Machines: Cinema, Literature and Sexuality in Spain and Cuba, 1983–93 (London/New York: Verso, 1996), 18.

Trend, Origins, 67.

Circular of 1895, reproduced in Francisco Giner, En el cincuentenario de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Madrid: Archivos, 1926), 48.

This emerges with particular clarity from the volumes of Castillejo's correspondence published by his son. See David Castillejo, El epistolario de José Castillejo. I. Un puente hacia Europa 1896–1909 (Madrid: Castalia, 1997); Epistolarios de José Castillejo y de Manuel Gómez Moreno. II. El espíritu de una época 1910–1912 (Madrid: Castalia, 1998); Epistolario de José Castillejo. III. Fatalidad y porvenir 1913–1937 (Madrid: Castalia, 1999).

Carmen de Zulueta and A. Moreno, Ni convento ni College: la Residencia de Señoritas (Madrid: CSIC, 1993), 26–27. See also Irene Claremont de Castillejo, I Married a Stranger: Life with One of Spain's Enigmatic Men (London [?]: mimeographed, 1967), 72–73 for a full account. The pattern of Castillejo's travels (guided by Giner) is less dramatic than the anecdote suggests.

Trend, A Picture of Modern Spain, 35. See also Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí, 87.

Richard Aldington, ‘Literature and the “Honnête homme”’, The Criterion, I, No. 4 (1923), 421–22; F. S. Flint, ‘Spanish Periodicals’, The Criterion, II, No. 5 (1923), 109–10.

The nature and role of the Comité Hispano-Inglés will be the subject of a further study. That its role in the running of the Residencia and in the contents of Residencia was significant is evident from the notes of a meeting of the Comité in June 1925, where it is noted that writers to be invited are those ‘más conocidos en España y que más despertarían la atención del público, son los de Wells, Kipling y Bernard Shaw; pero en la imposibilidad de traer a estos literatos, podría quizás invitarse a John Galsworthy, Lytton Strachey, etc.’ and that for the first number of Residencia there will be the lectures of Carter and Starkie. In addition, Trend will provide ‘artículos de crítica literaria sobre libros españoles y libros sobre España, recientemente publicados, para el primer número de la revista’. The papers of the Comité demonstrate the degree to which those running it, clearly fired by excellent intentions, occasionally lost sight of the Spanish side of the committee: thus a note of lectures for 1929 is headed ‘Comité Inglés’, as is a programme for 1934 (all documents for the Comité Hispano-Inglés in the archive of the Duques de Alba, Palacio de la Liria).

Carmen de Zulueta, Cien años de educación de la mujer española: historia del Instituto Internacional (Madrid: Castalia, 1992), 190.

Eugenio d'Ors, Grandeza y servidumbre de la inteligencia (Madrid: Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 1919), 74.

José Castillejo, La educación en Inglaterra (Madrid: La Lectura, 1919), esp. Chapter 1.

Extract from the progammes published by the Residencia in 1914 and 1920, quoted in ‘Residencia’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 86. Although both Giner and Castillejo were concerned with the education of women as well as men, the former being the greater challenge, and although the ILE itself was co-educational, the Residencia was masculine in both membership and culture.

Residencia, I, No. 1, 1 (my emphasis).

Universidad de Madrid: Anuario 1932–33 (Madrid: Gráfica Universal, 1933), 79 (my emphasis).

Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. and with intro. by John B. Thompson, trans. by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Oxford: Polity, 1991), 130.

Junta para Ampliación de Estudios, Memoria correspondiente a los años 1914 y 1915 (Madrid: Imp de Fortanet, 1916), 294.

Ortega y Gasset, La rebelión de las masas, Obras completas, 9 vols (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1957–69) IV, 113–310.

Junta para Amplicación de Estudios, Memoria correspondiente a los años 1914 y 1915, 294.

Crispin, Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid, 24–25. It should be borne in mind that the Residencia (according to its yearly ‘programa’) took boys from the age of fifteen, which explains in part this level of moral education. The Residencia was thus conceived of as a place of education not only good but safe.

V. S. Pritchett, Midnight Oil (London: Chatto and Windus, 1971), 147; the second comment is by Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí, 88.

A summary of the first number is given in ‘Residencia’, an article in Residencia, I, No. 3 (Sept–Dec 1926), 260–61, by the Editor of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, University, Liverpool. The history of how Residencia changed with the coming of the Republic is covered in part by J. Bécarud, and Evelyne López Campillo, Los intelectuales españoles durante la II República (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España, 1978), 7–13. They note also (p. 94) that publication of Residencia ended in 1934, and attribute this to the continuing difficulties of intellectuals, not now under the Dictatorship, but during the Republic. By 1934, we are told, there were only three numbers a year of Residencia, and that these were ‘raquíticos, habiendo eliminado las habituales secciones sobre mundo universitario, historia política, grandes acontecimientos, incluso literatura y ciencias, y quedándose sólo con las secciones de arte, fotos de España y actividades de la Residencia de Estudiantes’. The relationship between culture and politics in these years is even more dramatic than they imply. Numbers of Residencia published before the Republic have a varied selection of articles, although the contributions associated with the Comité Hispano-Inglés are more substantial than those purely associated with the Residencia. Several of the lectures reported on during the Republic were given under the Dictatorship, ‘Actualidades y recuerdos’ of life in the Residencia are reduced to one or two pages from 1932, dealing mainly with sport, and after the report of the Misiones Pedagógicas in Residencia, IV, No. 1 (1933), of which the larger part is photographs, there is a section on ‘Por tierras de España’, provided, it is said, in response to requests from subscribers, for ‘vistas de paisajes, tipos y costumbres españolas, que por su carácter documental establecen contacto casi directo con lo más recóndito, y diríamos entrañable de nuestro país’ (151). By this stage the publication has become a coffee-table book of easily accessible culture.

Bécarud and López Campillo, Los intelectuales españoles, 7–8.

See Buñuel, My Last Breath, 55–77, for a variety of adventures of the time, Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí, 104–05, for anecdotes concerning Dalí and Alfonso XIII, and 136, for an account of the ‘transvestites in reverse’ episode at Santo Domingo de Silos (involving Dalí, Lorca, Maruja Mallo and Margarita Manso).

See Crispin on how relations between the Residencia and the Dictatorship were managed (Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid, 49, 73–74).

A photograph of the head is reproduced in Residencia, II, No. 3 (December 1931), 167, with a note on its associations. These include the assessment that many find it to be ‘entre lo más bello y más importante que nos ha legado el arte griego’ and that it is known as ‘Efebo o atleta rubio’, a title that says much about the institution's concept of beauty and masculinity, and its model of cultural supremacy. Its photograph appears again in Residencia, IV, No. 2 (April 1933), 55, with the same explanatory note.

Residencia, I, No. 1, 85. Although this official, final section is subtitled: ‘laboratorios, deportes, Sociedad de becas’, there is more to it than mere reportage. This is not a total account of all the contents, but represents the major strands. There are no book reviews, beyond notices of three works published by residentes. Of these, one is Ortega's Meditaciones del ‘Quijote’ (1914), and another is Antonio G. Solalinde's edition of El sacrificio de la misa by Berceo (1913). The third is Eduardo Torner's Cuarenta canciones españolas, a work advertised with some regularity in this journal.

Azorín, ‘Los monumentos, después’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 23.

Cossío, ‘Plaza de las comendadoras’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 29.

Gómez de la Serna, ‘Travesía del Conde’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 28.

Ramón María Tenreiro, ‘Celajes de Madrid’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 24.

There are in fact two pieces by Jiménez on the ‘chopos’, one with the simple title ‘Chopos’, noting the arrival of 3,000 of the trees to be planted, and gushing in its enthusiasm (p. 26), and the second piece, (p. 76), ‘Visita nocturna a “La colina”’, even more self-indulgent. Jiménez was resident in one of the pavilions from 1913 to his marriage in 1919 (Crispin, Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid, 27).

Residencia, I, No. 1, 68.

Buñuel, My Last Breath, 62.

[Bruce], ‘Los asaltos al Everest’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 58–62; and J. B. Trend, ‘Bruce y el asalto al Everest’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 55–56.

The main account is by Sánchez Rivero, Residencia, I, No. 1, 3–15.

Lectures could be attended by residents, by residents from the Residencia de Señoritas, and by members of the Sociedad. For a history of the Residencia de Señoritas, see the study by Zulueta and Moreno already referred to. Clearly this institution offered significant educational possibilities to young women. But the tradition by which its director, María de Maeztu, invited the female residents to ‘five o’clock tea’ and gave out advice on suitable dress, behaviour, etc., shows the degree to which this institution had elements of the convent and the finishing school (p. 115).

Residencia, I, No. 1, 76.

Residencia, I, No. 1, 62.

Residencia, I, No. 1, 5.

Residencia, I, No. 1, 45.

The statutes of the Comité Hispano-Inglés, approved 6 May 1926, fixed the subscription for ‘meros suscriptores’ between 50 pesetas and the minimum of 250 pesetas given by the ‘protectores’ (who also had to have made a donation of 1000 pesetas). The statutes of the Sociedad de Cursos y Conferencias, as they stood at 31 December 1931, had the slightly lower rate of 40 pesetas for ordinary members, and 200 for the ‘protectores’ (with a similar requirement of a donation of 1000 pesetas).

This proportion differs by only about 10% from the percentage of women undergraduates in Oxbridge colleges over the last ten years.

For the figures on which these comments are based see Margarita Sáenz de la Calzada, La Residencia de Estudiantes 1910–1936, 179–90.

‘Visitas regias’, Residencia, I, No. 1, 77.

This assumption of the king's interest overstates what elsewhere was the sign of royal patronage. For the reaction to the handing over by Alfonso XIII and his queen Victoria of their summer residence for the use of the Universidad Internacional de Verano de Santander, see Benito Madariaga de la Campa and Celia Valbuena Morán, La universidad internacional de verano de Santander (1932–1936) (Santander: Univ. Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, 1999), 45–58. In this case, however, the handover of the palace in 1931 can be seen as a piece of astute social politics on the part of the king, or at least some social face-saving.

Crispin, Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid, 36. He contrasts the diplomatic attitude of Jiménez (referred to as ‘ecuanimidad senequista’) with an anecdote told of Giner who refused to receive Alfonso XIII at the ILE, indicating that the building had two doors, and that if the king called at one, he, Giner, would leave by the other.

Bécarud and López Campillo, Los intelectuales españoles, 12, referring to José Pla, Madrid (Barcelona: BCAI, 1932), 61–62.

Crispin, Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid, 48.

Luis Martín-Santos, Tiempo de silencio (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1989 [1st ed. 1961]), 165–73.

Residencia, I, No. 3 (1926), xix, xxiii.

Residencia, I, No. 3 (1926), xxv.

Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 130–31.

I would like to thank the British Academy for their funding which made the research for this article possible, and for the comments of my fellow contributors, especially Richard Cleminson.