Deaf History and Culture in Spain: A Reader of Primary Documents

SELECTED TIME LINE OF DEAF HISTORY IN SPAIN

xi SELECTED TIME LINE OF DEAF HISTORY IN SPAIN ! Early 1400s Pedro de Luna (Benedict XIII) maintains that deafness brings one closer to God in his Book of Consolations of Human Life. 1455–60 Teresa de Cartagena, a postlingually deaf nun and author of Grove of the Infirm, uses the metaphor of an isolated island in framing deafness as an illness. 1526 Pedro Ponce de León becomes a Benedictine monk. Later he will arrive at the Monastery of San Salvador at Oña and begin private lessons with Francisco and Pedro Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, the deaf sons of the constable of Castile, Juan de Velasco. 1550 Jurist Licenciado Lasso, having left Madrid to witness Ponce de León’s work at the monastery at Oña, argues that those deaf persons who learn to speak are eligible to inherit entailed estates in his Legal Treatise on Deaf-mutes. 1579 Deaf educator Manuel Ramírez de Carrión is born. 1620 Juan Pablo Bonet publishes the first book detailing a method of teaching deaf-mutes to speak. 1730 Faced with the spread of ideas concerning deaf education to England (John Wallis), Holland (Anthony Deusing), and Switzerland (Johann Conrad Amman) on the heels of Bonet’s work, as well as a declining interest in the topic in Spain, Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro calls for recognizing the Spanish origin of deaf education. xii DEAF HISTORY AND CULTURE IN SPAIN 1753 With the support of the French king, Jacobo Rodríguez Pereira, a Portuguese Jewish man, opens a school for deaf people in Paris that uses the oralist method. 1776 The Abbé l’Epée publishes a work detailing his use of methodical (manual) signs in educating deaf students. 1795 Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro and José Miguel Alea call for public schools for deaf students in Spain. 1802 Schools for deaf students in Madrid and Barcelona are shut down due to the scarcity of trained instructors and a general lack of funding. 1805 The Royal School for Deaf-mutes opens in Madrid. 1817 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc, a student of l’Epée, found the first American school for deaf students in Hartford, Connecticut. 1835 Ramón de la Sagra, a Spaniard living in Cuba, visits schools for deaf students in America. Later he meets with Laurent Clerc in Paris. 1836 Roberto Prádez, a deaf art teacher at the Royal School in Madrid, dies. 1842 Blind students are admitted to the Royal School in Madrid, and its name is subsequently changed to the National School for Deaf-mutes and the Blind. 1880 Educators of deaf people from a number of countries famously gather at a conference in Milán, Italy, to decide the future of deaf education . These educators, the vast majority of whom are hearing people, decide to replace manualist methods with the oralist method, which they consider to be superior. Repercussions of this decision have continued to affect the lives of deaf people in the United States and Europe throughout the twentieth century and beyond. 1906 Madrid’s Association of Deaf-mutes is founded. 1939 Following the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), deaf education is all but abandoned until July 17, 1945, when a law is passed that once again recognizes the need for it. 1984 Signed television programming begins in Madrid. A demonstration in Madrid on September 29 protests against integración [mainstreaming] and the closing of schools for deaf students. SELECTED TIME LINE OF DEAF HISTORY IN SPAIN xiii 1986 Madrid’s El País and the Faro del Silencio report that interpreters for deaf individuals are now available. 1988 The Deaf President Now! movement at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., installs I. King Jordan as the university’s first deaf president. 1992 María Ángeles Rodríguez González writes the first doctoral dissertation in Spain on the topic of sign language. 2005 Spanish legislation is drawn up to officially recognize sign languages. 2007 A law recognizing sign languages is passed by the Spanish Senate. ...