Del noventayochismo al desarrollismo. Técnica e ingeniería en España VIII [From 1898 to Franco's developmentalism: Technology and engineering in Spain VIII] ed. by Manuel Silva Suárez (review)

The eighth volume in the collection Técnica e Ingeniería en España [Technology and engineering in Spain] covers the first sixty years of the twentieth century in seven chapters written by thirteen authors. Manuel Silva, editor of this collection that encompasses the key aspects of Spanish engineering, has also written the introduction to the volume. He offers an overview of the country's engineering landscape while questioning whether Spanish science and technology participated in the wider Modernization project—the ensemble of socio-cultural changes that took place in the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, and continued throughout the Enlightenment into the twentieth century. Following this investigation is Fernando Broncano's carefully written chapter on the philosophy of science and technology.

With the exception of Chapter 2, penned by Javier Aracil, broadly addressing technical progress around the world, the rest of the volume examines Spanish technology and engineering. Overall, it makes the case that Spain was not outside the dynamics of other countries consolidating and spearheading what we now know as Modernity. Spain was not an international outlier, as Masson de Morvilliers suggests in Encyclopédie méthodique, a revised version of the well-known Encyclopédie by Diderot and d'Alembert. This is substantiated by Antoni Roca et al.'s international comparison. Manuel Marín-Rodríguez's analysis of twentieth century engineers' economic ideas proves that Spanish engineers were well acquainted with the leading economists. Ana Romero and María Jesús Santesmases's chapter shows that the institutionalization of science and technology was consolidated in Spain, despite serious interruptions. Franco's dictatorship (1939–53) notably brought this project to a halt. However, after the signing of the Pacts of Madrid with America in 1953, massive technological imports and foreign investments helped bridge that gap. Spanish engineering firms also played a key role in this process, as Mar Cebrián's chapter reveals. The volume ends with Gonzalo López de Haro exploring the lives of exiled Spanish engineers after the Civil War (1936–39). He shows how transferring their skills to Latin America—particularly Mexico—greatly helped to advance the modernization process across the Atlantic. Without a doubt, this is the best showcase of Spanish engineering quality and modernity at the time.

If Spain was not exceptional, then Masson de Morvilliers's claim—and others after him—is no more than an exaggeration. Nevertheless, the modernization of Spain was a difficult process, which led to temporal delays, less wealth, and greater social inequality than its European neighbors.

Why did technology not make us richer and more developed? Political elites defending social immobility from the 1874 Bourbon Restoration onwards tried to reduce engineering to "utilitarian science," thinking of it as neutral and, what's more, capable of being neutralized.

The book allows us to understand how engineering and technology were central to the modernization project and attempted to overcome its challenges; however, established powers controlled every social transformation connected with technological change. They did so, as Spanish Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal pointed out in the early 1900s, by having a tight grip on the education system. Until 1957, engineering studies were reserved for the elites and students were not allowed to pursue doctoral degrees in the field. Vocational training was also sidelined. Finally, compulsory and free education from six years of age to fourteen was only legally mandated in 1970. The ratio of skilled workers to engineering professionals was also low until the 1960s, meaning that, since the late 1800s, very few inventions could actually become commercial reality, or enter the realm of technical innovation. Therefore, Masson de Morvilliers's question, "Mais que doit on à l'Espagne" [What do we owe Spain], has...