Miguel de Unamuno returns to the University of Salamanca with highest honors

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (Bilbao, 1864-Salamanca, 1936) has achieved, 88 years after his death, the highest recognition from the university where he forged his academic legend.

The writer and philosopher has posthumously received the recognition of an

honorary

doctorate from the University of Salamanca (USAL), a century after the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera ordered his exile due to the criticism leveled against him.

Unamuno joins two emblems of the Salamancan institution, Santa Teresa de Jesús and San Juan de la Cruz, until this Wednesday the only figures recognized with such posthumous recognition.

Several descendants of the thinker and political and cultural authorities have met at USAL to praise his figure and applaud his appointment.

The act comes shortly after the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, criticized the entity as a “censorship machine”, with its “irresponsible ignorance” being reprimanded by the rector, Ricardo Rivero.

The event began with a parade through the halls and spaces of the university by a musical choir.

In addition, a “commemorative cheer” has been discovered, which consists of writing the name of those who obtain a doctorate at the institution in classical calligraphy on the walls of Salamanca or its university.

“Do not proclaim the freedom to fly, but give wings,” reads the motto, coined by the author, which is already at the entrance to the Auditorium.

The ceremony was held there with the presence of three of Unamuno's grandchildren, other relatives and the rector of the university, Ricardo Rivero, accompanied by two charros: the president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, and the mayor, Carlos García Carbayo, both from the PP.

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

Attendees heard the beginning of the anthology

My Salamanca

, where he referred to the exile suffered: “Oh, in these black nights, Salamanca, Salamanca, the life that I gave to my Spain comes to visit me in my dreams.”

Unamuno has been praised for his anti-war, anti-colonialism and opposition to fascism, as well as his commitment to knowledge, the persecution suffered for his criticism of the Bourbons, particularly Alfonso XIII, and his subsequent rejection of censorship and Primo de Rivera. .

Thus, a video has been projected with statements by experts and teachers from USAL and passages from his works and letters have been read, focusing on the 100th anniversary of his exile to Fuerteventura for inconveniencing the regime and evidencing corruption. of the.

The testimony of filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar, director of While the War Dures

, has also been incorporated

, in which he recounts the professor's “bravery” in the face of his persecution.

The commemoration comes four days before the centenary of his forced arrival in Fuerteventura and just a few days after Rivero and the USAL rector responded to the comments of the president of Vox against the educational entity.

Abascal, in a meeting with far-right leaders in the United States, attacked the center for being a “machine of censorship, coercion, indoctrination and anti-Semitism.”

The rector renounced these messages and defended “the first Spanish University, the oldest and most constant in the vindication of academic values: dedication to knowledge, creation and transmission of knowledge and service to society.”

Rivero has claimed the plurality of the institution and has influenced the “values” of the honoree, “perpetual rector with the highest academic distinction.”

The rector has joked about the unanimity of respect for Unamuno, with his reflective walks through Salamanca and the “incontrovertible anti-extremism of Don Miguel against those who deny tolerance or freedom of thought and love for Spain above impostures, which includes Bilbao and Salamanca, Catalonia and Castilla and also America.”

Commemorative cheer in honor of Miguel de Unamuno.

Manuel Laya (Europa Press)

Pablo de Unamuno, grandson of the illustrious man, thanked “the efforts” of academics, family members and scholars regarding the work and merits of his grandfather, whom he remembered along with other grandchildren, Miguel and Salomé.

The

laudatio

to accredit the

honoris causa

has served to evoke his “Spanishness” with quotes from

Niebla

, allusions to his work

San Manuel Bueno, martyr

and his “defense of social and individual freedoms” from his youth in Bilbao to his charro old age, wrapped in the “vital anguish” of some periods of “tireless work.”

Thus he came to confrontations in the cloister of a “asleep, stagnant and lazy” university.

He has also covered the work of his grandfather and his involvement in literature, rural areas or the University, with mentions of how he valued journalism “to stimulate free thought, with articles that are extremely topical;

“He wrote about anything that caught his attention and was never commissioned.”

Salomé de Unamuno has remembered the “photographs” of her sitting on her grandfather's knees, in 1934, kept “like a treasure,” and her brother Miguel has thanked this act of giving his grandfather “what has been his for a long time.” century”, with affection also for Ana Chaguaceda, director of the Unamuno Museum in Salamanca and specialist in his figure.

Enrique Santos de Unamuno, great-grandson of the also honorary mayor of the city who honored him this Wednesday, has not been able to attend for work reasons.

He values ​​the “symbolic recovery” of his ancestor and highlights that “those who deserve the most recognition are also the thousands of people murdered in the gutters in the Civil War.”

The appointment ratifies the “symbol” that Unamuno represents.

For Santos, it is key that political parties respect the independence of the institution.

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