Elena Camacho |
Madrid (EFE).- One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein toured Spain, a three-week visit in which he revolutionized the press, scientists and elites of the country and in which an apparently simple character spread some ideas incomprehensible to most.
When Einstein arrived in Spain on February 22, 1923, he was a celebrity, a mass phenomenon -although few understood his theories-, a scientist who, beyond science, had stood out as a convinced pacifist and defender of culture. Jewish national.
According to the American historian Thomas F. Glick in his book “Einstein and the Spaniards”, it was Esteve Terradas, professor of acoustics and optics at the University of Barcelona -who spoke German well-, who worked the miracle and got Einstein to come to Spain.
In 1920, on behalf of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Terradas invited him to visit Barcelona and, shortly after, the mathematician Julio Rey Pastor joined the invitation on behalf of the Board for the Extension of Studies.
Einstein agreed to go on a lecture tour of Barcelona and Madrid that fall, but just then he was offered an extraordinary professorship in Leiden and had to postpone the trip. It would not come until 1923.
One night on the Rambla
Einstein’s trip to Spain left countless anecdotes, some collected by the press of the time and others retained in the popular imagination.
The first happened on the day of his arrival. According to various sources, the Einstein couple arrived by train from Toulouse to the Estación de Francia in Barcelona, but since they did not notify them in advance, no one came to receive them and instead of sleeping at the Hotel Colón, where they had reserved two rooms, the Einstein spent the night in a pension on the Rambla.
In Barcelona, Einstein gave three conferences at the Diputació headquarters, one on special relativity (that of the famous formula E=mc2 that talks about the distortion of space and time), another on the general theory (the one that replaces Newton’s law of gravity) and a third on recent research.
Admission cost 25 pesetas, but the curious “crowded at the doors, eager to hear the magic word that, when answered, would reform old systems and concepts, opening new horizons to science through the fourth dimension: time,” he says. a chronicle of La Vanguardia of February 28, 1923.
Einstein gave a fourth lecture at the Academy of Sciences on the philosophical consequences of relativity, and as always, the audience was divided between those who wanted to hear his theories and those who did not understand a word but longed to see the most famous scientist of all. the times.
Despite his fame, Einstein’s visit to Catalonia was by no means restricted and the physicist -a true hero of the working class- showed his social sensitivity, met with students, trade unionists, scientists and philosophers, and allowed himself to be photographed with the ordinary people.
There was even time for tourism: Einstein left Barcelona twice, once to the Romanesque monastery of Poblet and another to see the Basilica of Terrasa.
Madrid: the elite and the king
On March 1, Einstein took the train to Madrid. He spent ten days in the capital and, this time, he was conveniently received by the Kocherthalers (Elsa Einstein’s cousins), by Blas Cabrera and by the physicist and mathematician Josep María Plans, among others. And, as planned, he stayed at the Ritz Hotel.
Einstein gave three lectures for which he received 3,500 pesetas (the annual salary of a Spanish university professor) and which, as in Barcelona, were attended by scientists, intellectuals and politicians such as the Prime Minister, Antonio Maura, and many onlookers.
His agenda in Madrid was more formal than in Barcelona, with innumerable receptions with the capital’s intellectual and social elite, characters like Gregorio Marañón, José Ortega y Gasset or Ramón Gómez de la Serna, although according to Glick nothing dazzled Einstein like his sight to Toledo and the painting of “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” by El Greco.
On March 7, Einstein, accompanied by Professor José Rodríguez Carracido, went to the Royal Palace.
In his diary he noted: “Audience with the King and Queen Mother. She reveals to her her knowledge of science. It is seen that no one tells her what he is thinking. The king, simple and dignified, admired me”.
Probably the most famous anecdote of his visit to Madrid is a curious photograph that was left for posterity, taken at the Royal Academy, in which almost everyone around the German physicist -including the monarch- appears with their eyes closed. Einstein, for his part, keeps them wide open.
The end of his stay is vertiginous, he is invested honoris causa by the Central University (now Complutense), the king names him a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and the marine biologist Odón de Buen makes him a surprising proposal: to lead an expedition to study the solar eclipse that will take place in Mexico in September of that year.
“The visit to Madrid was coming to an end. There was a weekend of unscheduled time left that left the Einsteins free for family visits and to return to the Prado”, says Thomas F. Glick
50 hours in Zaragoza
Initially, Einstein’s tour was only supposed to take him to Barcelona and Madrid, but the Spanish picaresque made it extend to Zaragoza.
According to Glick’s account in his book, the train that took Einstein from Barcelona to Madrid passed through Zaragoza. At the station, a group of professors -among them the physicist Jerónimo Vecino and the mathematician José Ríus- boarded the train and sent him a formal invitation to travel to Zaragoza.
Said and done, on Monday March 12, Vecino was back at the station ready to receive Einstein in Zaragoza where the famous physicist spoke about relativity and spent his birthday on March 14.
In barely 50 hours, Einstein toured the city, saw the Biochemical Research laboratory of Professor Antonio de Gregorio Rocasolano, visited El Pilar, La Seo Cathedral, the Aljafería and the Lonja, and had time to play the violin at a party in the German consulate, be moved by the singing of two young joteras, and celebrate their anniversary with cava, according to the University of Zaragoza.
A journey without a trace
But if Einstein’s trip to Spain was socially like the passage of a rock star, from the scientific point of view “he left no trace”, according to Glick’s research.
“Einstein’s tour was quite an event because he was famous and the press devoted a lot to the details of his visit and there were plenty of cartoons by well-known cartoonists” but, for Spanish science, the visit was not a shock and contributed “little or nothing”, concludes José Manuel Sánchez Ron, emeritus professor of History of Science at the Autonomous University of Madrid, in a statement to EFE.