Reform and Repression: Manuel Lora Tamayo and the Spanish University in the 1960s

In 1962, Manuel Lora-Tamayo (1904–2002), a prestigious organic chemist with a notable international reputation was appointed Minister of Education and Science, in the Spanish government, in the heart of General Franco’s military dictatorship (1939–1975). Lora-Tamayo’s responsibilities in the cabinet lasted until his resignation in 1968, after a critical period of student turmoil and social agitation. In that academic system, which had suffered from fierce repression and lack of liberal democratic policies from 1939 onwards, reforms were presented in public addresses as “technocratic”, “apolitical” plans to modernize the Spanish University. In the Sixties, a period of demographic and economic growth, the regime had already achieved full international recognition in the West as a result of the logic of the Cold War. The reform plans triggered strong opposition among students and the intellectual elite, who denounced the authoritarian, non-“liberal” status of the University. Through a preliminary analysis of these controversies during Lora-Tamayo’s ministery, this chapter provides a general picture of the Spanish university system during a time of change in the second half of the twentieth century.