Claudio Sánchez Albornoz
(Madrid, 1893-Ávila, 1984) Spanish historian.He obtained a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Madrid and won competitive examinations for the Faculty of Archives, Libraries and Museums.At the age of twenty-eight, he won the chair of History of Spain at the University of Barcelona, from where he was soon transferred to Valladolid and, later, to Madrid.On January 11, 1932 he was appointed rector of the Central University of Madrid.His first historical works were carried out between 1911 and 1919, within the study of medieval institutions.
Claudio Sánchez Albornoz
Liberal and anti-communist democrat, Sánchez Albornoz gave himself to the cause of the Second Spanish Republic.Member of the Republican Action party, he was elected deputy in the first Parliament of the Second Republic, developing a great political activity during this stage.He held, among others, the positions of counselor of Public Instruction, vice president of the Cortes and, in 1933, Minister of Foreign Relations.On May 15, 1936, he was appointed ambassador to Lisbon, where he remained until the autumn of the same year, when the Portuguese government broke relations with that of Madrid.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, he was exiled to France.He resided in Bordeaux, where he obtained a chair at the university of this city.However, faced with the German occupation, he decided to move to Argentina in 1940.Two years later he took over the direction of the newly created Institute of History of Spain of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires.There he dedicated himself to research and founded the Notebooks of the History of Spain , at the same time that he formed a brilliant school of Hispanists and medievalists.From 1962 to 1970 he held the presidency of the Government of the Spanish Republic in Exile.
On April 23, 1976, after almost forty years of exile in American lands, he made a trip to Spain, where he stayed for two months.He received the title of honorary member of the Institute of Asturian Studies for his work as the first historian of the ancient Kingdom of Asturias and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oviedo.
In 1983 he returned to Spain and settled in Ávila.On January 3 of the following year he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.Throughout his life he was named doctor honoris causa by the universities of Bordeaux, Ghent, Tübingen, Lima, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Oviedo and Valladolid.Among his decorations are the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise and the Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos III.
Among the gigantic work that he carried out around the Spanish Middle Ages, the following works can be highlighted : Political and social institutions of the lordship of Asturias (1912), León and Castilla during the 8th to 13th centuries (1917), Spain and France in the Middle Ages (1926), A Castilian fiefdom in the 13th century (1929), Around the origins of feudalism (1943), From Charlemagne to Roosevelt (1943), Spain and Islam (1943), Again Guadalete and Covadonga (1944), Origins of Castile: how a Pueblo (1944), Notes on the books read in the kingdom of León a thousand years ago (1944), Muslim Spain (1949-50), Spaniards before history (1970), The Spanish Christian kingdoms until the discovery of America (1979), Christian Spain from the 8th to 11th centuries , Las Postrimerías, from the past to the future (1981) and Origins of the kingdom of Pamplona (1981).
He is also the author of the study Spain, a historical enigma (1957), written as a result of the book by Américo Castro Spain in its history , and that it constitutes one of the most serious and documented contributions that have been made to the study of the Spanish Middle Ages.
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