Octavio Ruiz-Manjón, Full Professor of Contemporary History at the Complutense University of Madrid, gave on February 11 the lecture "Políticos e intelectuales en la España de hace un siglo" (Politicians and intellectuals in the Spain of a century ago), organized by the group of research in Recent History (GIHRE) of the University of Navarra.

The professor reflected on his book El Partido Republicano Radical. 1908-1936, published in 1976. On the occasion of that work he was made aware of "the difficulty of writing a political history that was too formalistic, since we were writing a history of parties, believing the roles that the parties themselves had". The interest in these institutions "had to do with our concerns at the time. Doing political history in the 1970s was not the specialization program of greater public and academic recognition," he said. 

"The Radical Republican Party was less than a party and much more than a party," Ruiz-Manjón continued. "Being a Republican was a way of being alternative rather than a form of participation in political power." And he gave the example of Gumersindo de Azcárate, who in the general elections was elected for decades deputy for León for the Republican Party and never touched the levers of power. Ruiz-Manjón evoked his presence in Parliament as "a vase that adorned and represented an element of credibility of the system".

The study of republicanism put Octavio Ruiz-Manjón on contact with Professor Vicente Cacho Viu, who was a professor at the then called School of Information Sciences at the University of Navarra and author of the book La Institución Libre de teaching. After evoking his historiographical concerns and warning of some errors and falsehoods in the interpretation of his work, Ruiz-Manjón described another characteristic of his later work : "around 1986 Cacho "converted" to computers and with an Apple I elaborated a database, which was his platform for work and the foundation for precision and erudition, and the search for unthinkable relationships. Thus was born and grew a database that today has more than 15,000 records.

Cacho donated at his death his file staff to the Albéniz FoundationFoundation, of which he was vice-president of board of trustees. Now the Foundation has made submission of that documentation, including the database, to the file General of the University of Navarra (AGUN) for wider dissemination.

The seminar was attended by students from doctorate and professors from the Schools of Philosophy and Letters, Communication, y Education and Psychology. Also present were Juan María Sánchez Prieto, professor of History of Thought and Social and Political Movements at the UPNA, and Yolanda Cagigas, director of file General of the University of Navarra.