Salvador de Madariaga, the bow that “splits the waters of the future”

“I am a liberal because I believe that the first thing is freedom. I am a socialist because I believe that we must always ensure that individual freedoms do not float against the common good. I am conservative because I believe that without a minimum of order there is neither freedom nor justice […] Neither left nor right. […] So my ship is not drifting to one side or the other. Follow the arc. And the bow is in the middle, and that is why it is the first thing that separates the waters of the future”. In 1971, the Galician diplomat, humanist and writer was described with that breadth Salvador de Madariaga (A Coruña, 1886-Muralto, Switzerland, 1978), to which the professor and historian Santiago de Navascués (Pamplona, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​1993) dedicates an essay The man who came in through the window (Editorial Marcial Pons), which is based on a doctoral thesis and in which he recalls the importance that the moral foundation and trust in the agreement had in his conception of politics.

It was not for nothing that he belonged to the generation that suffered through the First World War and actively participated in the restoration of the world order, especially through the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN. Although it is true that the subsequent rise of fascism and totalitarianism were a heavy blow to his spirit.

The book delves into many aspects of the intellectual and highlights — in the complexity of his evolution — his Europeanness, which the researcher considers part of his most valuable legacy, along with his defense of the Hispanic project in America and his ideas about liberalism. Despite his initial sympathy for Russia and respect for the nobility of Marxist intentions, he eventually became an active enemy of communism. In his contradictions, and more toward the final stage, he believed that the cultural and spiritual roots of the Old Continent were based on the duo of Socrates and Jesus Christ as “the strongest pillars for the restoration of a system with moral authority”, notes Navascués, who remembers that Madariaga , however, practiced religiosity of a theistic nature.

Time has unfairly destroyed Madariaga, which burden his elitism, but also the ambiguities in which he moved around the Franco regime, and the book of the historian from Navarre contributes to the hardening of positions, analysis and assessment of his figure without avoiding the edges. As a man who in the Civil War collected the merits of being shot by both sides, he placed himself in that so-called Third Spain, although such a designation does not definitively resolve the confusion. What he should at least do is save a brilliant intellectual with a rich and varied career.

The great conquest that Navascués if with The man who came in through the window the debate is rehabilitated and a new, calmer view of Madariaga is achieved, a person who in his exile, during and after the Spanish Civil War, gained a great international reputation, which seems to have been spared in the Pyrenees.