Salvador de Madariaga

Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo (23 July 1886 – 14 December 1978) was a Spanish diplomat, writer, historian, and pacifist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the Charlemagne Prize in 1973.

Life

De Madariaga graduated with a degree in engineering in Paris, France. He then went to work as an engineer for the Northern Spanish Railway Company but abandoned that work to return to London and become a journalist by writing in English for ''The Times''. Meanwhile, he began publishing his first essays. He became a press member of the Secretariat of the League of Nations in 1921 and chief of the Disarmament Section in 1922. In 1928, he was appointed Professor of Spanish at Oxford University for three years during which he wrote a book on nation psychology, ''Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards''.

In 1931, he was appointed Spanish ambassador to the United States and a permanent delegate to the League of Nations; he kept the latter post for five years. Chairing the Council of the League of Nations in January 1932, he condemned Japanese aggression in Manchuria in such vehement terms that he was nicknamed " Don Quijote de la Manchuria".

Between 1932 and 1934, he was ambassador to France. In 1933, he was elected to the National Congress and served as both Minister for Education and Minister for Justice. In July 1936, as a classical liberal he went into exile in England to escape the Spanish Civil War. There, he became a vocal opponent of and organised resistance to the Nationalists and the Spanish State of Francisco Franco.

In 1947, he was one of the principal authors of the Oxford Manifesto on liberalism. He participated in the Hague Congress in 1948 as president of the Cultural Commission and he was one of the co-founders in 1949 of the College of Europe.

In his writing career he wrote books and essays about ''Don Quixote'', Christopher Columbus, Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', and the history of Latin America. He militated in favour of a united and integrated Europe. He wrote in French and German, Spanish, Galician (his mother tongue) and English.

In 1973, he won the Karlspreis for his contributions to the European idea and European peace. In 1976, he returned to Spain after Franco's death.

The Madariaga European Foundation has been named after him and promotes his vision of a united Europe making for a more peaceful world. The 1979–1980 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.

Private life

In 1912 he married Constance Archibald, a Scottish economic historian. The couple had two daughters, Nieves Mathews (1917–2003) and professor and historian Isabel de Madariaga (1919–2014). Constance died in May 1970, and in November de Madariaga married Emilia Székely de Rauman who had been his secretary since 1938. She died in 1991, aged 83.

An Oxfordshire blue plaque in honour of Salvador de Madariaga was unveiled at 3 St Andrew's Road, Headington, Oxford by his daughter Isabel on 15 October 2011.Plaque
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Selected published works in English

* ''Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards: An Essay in Comparative Psychology'', Oxford University Press, 1929
* ''Disarmament'', Coward-McCann, 1929
* ''Anarchy or Hierarchy'', Macmillan, 1937
* ''Christopher Columbus'', Macmillan, 1940
* ''The Rise of the Spanish-American Empire'', Hollis & Carter; Macmillan, 1947
* ''The Fall of the Spanish-American Empire'', Hollis & Carter, 1947; Macmillan, 1948
* ''Bolivar'', Hollis & Carter, 1952
* ''Morning without Noon'', 1973
* '' El Corazón de Piedra Verde'', 1942 ('Heart of Jade', the most widely admired of his twelve novels)

* ''War in the Blood'' (sequel to 'The Heart of Jade')
* ''Spain: a Modern History''
* ''Hernán Cortés – Conqueror of Mexico'', Macmillan, 1941
* ''The Blowing up of the Parthenon'', 1960
* ''On Hamlet'', Hollis & Carter, 1948
* ''Latin America, Between the Eagle and the Bear'', Praeger, 1962

See also

*Contributions to liberal theory
* List of peace activists

References

External links

Madariaga – College of Europe Foundation


Madariaga tennis Club in A Coruña


Madariaga European College


Archival sources
by and on Salvador de Madariaga can be consulted at th
Historical Archives of the European Union
in Florence
*

Washington Post obituary

{{DEFAULTSORT:Madariaga, Salvador de
1886 births
1978 deaths
People from A Coruña
Autonomous Galician Republican Organization politicians
Justice ministers of Spain
Members of the Congress of Deputies of the Second Spanish Republic
20th-century Spanish historians
Spanish pacifists
Spanish writers in French
Spanish writers in German
English-language writers
Members of the Royal Spanish Academy
Presidents of the Liberal International
Permanent Representatives of Spain to the League of Nations
Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in the United Kingdom
Ambassadors of Spain to France
Ambassadors of Spain to the United States
Spanish expatriates in Switzerland
Spanish expatriates in England
Alumni of the University of Oxford
Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in Switzerland
Spanish political writers
20th-century Spanish male writers
Spanish expatriates in the United Kingdom
Grand Crosses of the Order of the White Lion
Member of the Mont Pelerin Society