During the 19th century, Spain suffered from of inequality, instability and conflict in the social, political, economic and educational spheres. However Spanish intellectuals promoted ambitious projects for cultural, scientific and educational renovation in the country. By the first decades of the 20^th century we can find clear evidence of the consolidation of some of these projects (Otero Carvajal, 2017). One of those evidence was the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas or JAE.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the scientific transfers between Spain and Europe through the specific strategy of JAE: the presence of Spanish scientists and intellectualist in European congresses.  

JAE was an institution dependent on the government, but it was created in 1907 by the influence of a group of bourgeois intellectuals. Most of those intellectuals studied and matured intellectually in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. The Institución Libre de Enseñanza was an educational institution outside of the official education system. It was the greatest example of pedagogical renewal in Spain for decades. Francisco Giner de los Ríos was the leader of this institution and he developed an educational thinking based on some pedagogical principles such as integral education, coeducation, neutral education or the unified school. In addition, he defended the improvement of the country through educational empowerment and the opening to foreign influences (Colmenar Orzares et al., 2015). This phenomenon was the inspiration of the beginning and development of JAE.

At basis of this project we can find the belief that for the renovation of Spanish science and culture it was necessary to know the advances and innovations that were emerging at the main centers for knowledge in Europe.  JAE built a support system for travels, scholarships and exchange projects abroad. Every year JAEtried to finance the travel expenses of reputable university professors, researchers and teachers to congresses which took place in important European cities. As a result of this strategy, the advances and innovations in the main scientific European forums reached Spain and collaborations between research groups were established. This allowed to revalue Spanish scientific and intellectual efforts (López-Ocón, 2010).

This study analyzes an example of transfer process in the context of a line of educational research (Beech, 2006; Cowen, 2009; Perry & Tor, 2008). Thus we allows us to know the causes of the evolution of education systems and the scientific, cultural and social progress of countries. In this case, we analyze a process of lifelong learning of Spanish scientists, teachers and intellectuals which allowed the many educational reforms and scientific improvements in Spain in the first decades of the 20th century (Fernández Terán & González Redondo, 2007). As result of this it was created initiatives such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the Residencia de señoritas, the Instituto-Escuela, the Centro de Estudios Históricos, or the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias (Barona, 2007; Vázquez-Ramil, 2015).

The historical-pedagogical method has been used in this research (Ruiz-Berrio, 1997); (Romero Delgado, 2002). For applying this method we followed these steps: to prove the importance of the topic, access the sources and their criticism, hermeneutical analysis and explanatory synthesis. The importance of the topic comes from the need that Spain had to modernize its scientific and educational structures. For this reason, Spain used foreign knowledge, which it was recognized as advanced. Spanish educational renovation promoted the European image as a source of innovation in certain subjects. It was an important moment in the educational history and in the scientist and cultural history of Spain. The study of primary sources revealed significant data. Each financial support to attend European congresses by JAE was published in an official document from the Ministry of Public Instruction. All these documents are filed in the Archive of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, in Madrid (Spain). Moreover, every year or each two years, The JAE published a Report with the summary of the scientific activities of that year. In this case, we have been able to access the reports and to analyze the participation of Spanish scientists in European congresses between 1907 and 1934. Therefore, in some cases we traced the works that Spanish scientists presented in the congresses, as well as the average amount of expenses per congressman. To data analysis, we have established different categories: the number of congresses per year, the subject, the location, the number of congressmen who attended and the assigned scholarship. This process has allowed to obtain clear results. Furthermore, we have used specialized bibliography. This has improved the data analysis, contextualization of the educational historical phenomenon and explanatory synthesis.

This study contributes several insights to contemporary debates. Spain experienced a scientific and cultural evolution in the first decades of the 20th century. An important cause of this phenomenon was the work of institutions such as Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Velasco Morgado, 2010). The JAE supported attendance to 130 congresses from the following European countries: France, Germany, England, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Russia, Czech Republic, Norway, Belgium, Monaco, Poland and Portugal. In addition, 175 professors and researchers attended to European congress between the years in which this initiative was actived, 1907 and 1934. The topics were highly diverse, although we can focus on general disciplines such as Medicine, Education, Technology, Sociology, History, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, Mathematics, Art, Botany, Linguistics, Librarianship, Philosophy, Law, Psychology, Geography, Architecture, Archeology, Economics, Geology and Musicology. Nevertheless, the First World War and the Spanish Civil War had a negative influence on this project. On account of the First World War the number of congresses and the numbers of Spanish scientists who travelled decreased significantly. Spanish scientists participated in 105 European congresses between 1907 and 1914, while they only participated in 25 from the beginning of the First World War until the last year in which JAE was active (1934). It is an evidence of the consequences that the war had for the transfer of knowledge on the continent and in Spain. Finally, the war in Spain and victory of General Francisco Franco stopped the progress of JAE. Thus it started a process of purging of its members that produced to the expulsion of more than 40% of Spanish scientists (Canales Serrano & Gómez-Rodríguez, 2017). The dreams of many intellectuals in Spain came to an end and, in many cases, they had to go into exile (Fernández-Soria, 2019).

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