One foot in heaven and the other in science. The productive interactions of Miquel Crusafont (1910-1983)

© 2013, Editorial Universida de Granada. All rights reserved. After the Civil War and World War II (and even during it), and under very unfavourable conditions, some Spanish scientists resumed the dissemination of scientific practice and the Spanish palaeontological heritage. Both were of interest to foreign scientists, some of whom interacted with the Spanish researchers over the following decades. One of the latter group was the Catalan palaeontologist Miquel Crusafont Pairó (1910-1983) who engaged in intense professional activity, obtaining results that established him in the national scientific setting and gained him international recognition among colleagues with diverse scientific ideologies, while achieving a position for Spanish Palaeontology in Europe. This article analyzes some of the strategies adopted by Crusafont to overcome spatial and ideological differences and describes his particular activities around the defence and management of sites and collections. All of this allowed him to construct a research career from a province in a peripheral region under the particular conditions of Spain at that time and to lay the foundations of Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in contemporary Catalonia.