Albert Einstein: a scientific influence in 1920s Spain

Calle Albert Einstein is, unsurprisingly, near the University of Malaga's faculty of science. The scientist spent two weeks in Spain in February and March 1923, giving lectures in Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid, where he was given an honorary doctorate. He turned down invitations from Bilbao and Valencia due to a lack of time.

According to the Biblioteca Nacional de España, which marked the centenary of his visit in 2023, "His visit served to make [the theory of] relativity fashionable despite the fact that few people understood what it was all about."

Reporting on the visit at the time, journalist Julio Camba described a lecture he attended in Madrid for El Sol newspaper, "Undoubtedly we all admired him very much, but if anyone asks us why we admired him, it will put us in rather serious trouble." There was a general lack of understanding although people were fascinated by his personality and El Sol illustrator Luis Bagaría came up with a series of cartoons. One of the most famous is a boy asking his father:

-Tell me Dad, is there anyone wiser than Einstein?

- Yes, son.

-Who?

-He who understands him.

There is a connection with Andalucía and indeed Malaga as Einstein met Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) who grew up in Jaén and was educated at the Gaona school and later at the Colegio San Estanislao de Kostka in Malaga.

Ortega y Gasset spoke German and accompanied the scientist and his wife on a trip to Toledo. In his diary Einstein wrote that the city was like a fairy tale and that he had spent one of the most beautiful days of his life there.

Professor Thomas F. Glick's book Einstein in Spain: Relativity and the Recovery of Science (1988) focuses on the national discussion provoked by Einstein's trip to Spain.

Glick argues that Einstein's visit stimulated a debate on the nature and social value of science in a country that was waking up to the role of science in the process of modernisation.