100% Residencia (1910-2010). La Residencia.  A legacy recovered
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ALBERTO JIMÉNEZ FRAUD

Alberto Jiménez Fraud, 1930.Alberto Jiménez Fraud was the director of the Residencia de Estudiantes between 1910 and 1936. He was born in Malaga in 1883 and actively participated in the cultural life of his hometown from an early age. He graduated in Law at the University of Granada and moved to Madrid in May 1905 to study for his Ph.D. He came into contact with Francisco Giner de los Ríos and became one of his students.

Jiménez Fraud also studied in England. With the support of José Castillejo, secretary of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), he became responsible for the project to found the Residencia. From then on, he devoted his life to making the institution a place of culture, dialogue and research. The project attracted the support of prominent intellectuals such as Ortega y Gasset, Juan Ramón Jiménez, María de Maeztu, Federico de Onís, and Miguel de Unamuno, as well as some of his old friends from Málaga like Moreno Villa, García Morente, and the Orueta brothers.

A group of aristocrats, led by the duke of Alba, helped consolidate the project. In 1917 he married Natalia Cossío, who played a decisive role in the life of the Residencia. They had a daughter, Natalia, and a son, Manuel. After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, Alberto Jiménez Fraud went to the Colegio de España, in Paris and later moved to England in exile. With the support of J. M. Keynes and J. B. Trend, he obtained the MacColl chair at Cambridge University and worked as lector at New College, Oxford from 1938 to 1953.

During his exile Jiménez Fraud tried to keep the spirit of the Residencia alive and kept in touch with the former residents spread around the world and with those who had remained in Spain. He returned to Madrid in 1963 after his retirement. He died suddenly during a trip to Geneva in April 1964, where he had worked as a translator for the United Nations.

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