Manuel Bartolomé Cossío
(Haro, La Rioja, 1857 - Collado Mediano, Madrid, 1935)

Manuel Bartolomé Cossío was a key figure to understand the environment that led to the establishment of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE). In 1874, he began studying philosophy at the University of Madrid, with Clarín, Menéndez Pelayo, and Joaquín Costa as classmates. On one occasion, Costa invited him to attend a lecture by Francisco Giner de los Ríos. "Here is a force that should be exploited," Costa said to Giner when he introduced them. It was the beginning of an affinity and harmony between the two men that will lead to the creation of a vast educational project aiming to modernize Spanish society, the key to Spanish contemporary culture.

Cossio was a tireless traveler since the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE) in 1876. Between November 1879 and July 1880, he was a fellow at the Colegio de San Clemente de los Españoles in Bologna, Italy. He became acquainted with Siciliani’s educational theories, which did not convince him, and had his first contacts with Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel’s movement, especially on a trip to Naples where he met Julia Salis Schwabe. In July 1880, he traveled to Brussels to participate in the International Education Congress, organized by the Belgian Ligue de l'Enseignement, where he delivered a speech in which he presented the ILE for the first time to an international audience and explained his system of field trips.

In 1882, he won the chair of History of Art at the Fine Arts School in Barcelona, but soon afterwards, he competed for the directorship of the Pedagogical Museum, a position he won in December of the following year. The institution soon became the main center of pedagogy in Spain. To prepare himself for the competitive examination, Cossío began a journey of 40 days in August and September 1882 throughout several European countries, where he could compare the value of the educational system practiced by the Institución Libre de Enseñanza:
 "I can assure you that no one interprets today in Europe Froebel's thought as your institution. Germany has much to learn from it. His ideas are not even dreamt of here yet, they will be known some day, but Spain is way ahead of us, " Henriette Breymann, the top leader of the Froebel’s movement, told him in Berlin.

In 1883, he and Giner visited Portugal and established contacts with members of the “Geração of 1870.” He visited London for the first time in 1884. In all his travels, he established a solid network of contacts that he developed during 1886, 1888, and 1889, when he attended conferences that brought together the great liberal thinkers in education of Europe and America.

In 1885, he submitted his dissertation on Plato's Timaeus, and from then until 1892, when the Congress of Spanish, Portuguese, and American Pedagogues was held, he was totally involved in the activities of the Museum of Pedagogy, never neglecting the day-to-day demands of educational issues. In 1887, he organized the first summer school (colonias escolares), which set an example for the ones to follow all over Spain. In recognition of his knowledge about education and his two teachings positions, he was appointed professor of Higher Education for the Doctorate in Philosophy, at the University of Madrid in 1904. He traveled to the United States the same year.

By a Royal Decree of 1 December 1908, the JAE gave him a grant to study the organization of educational seminars in Germany, England and France. He left, accompanied by his family, on December 25 and stayed abroad for a year and five months. He spent most of the time in Berlin, where Julius Meier-Graefe and Leo von König introduced him to the cultural environment. The book he had published about El Greco opened all doors: Cassirer had read it, and when he visited Valerian von Loga, director of the Berlin Museum, saw the book on his desk.
He returned to Madrid to take over the Museum of Pedagogy due to a sudden illness of his deputy, Ricardo Rubio. He spent the last months of his grant in Brussels and London. In the Belgian capital, he attended the Third Congress of People's Education, organized the Ligue de l'Enseignement, where he was received as an authority. In October,
he traveled to England, where he visited schools and institutions for the training of teachers, and met with experts of the Board of Education, and the London County Council.

In the following years, he frequented the Residencia de Estudiantes, (established in 1910), to chat with friends and disciples, such as Juan Ramón Jiménez, Castillejo, and Santullano, and supervised the teachers’ traveling campaigns, established by the JAE in 1911. He also accompanied illustrious guests, such as Albert Einstein and Howard Carter, to visit Toledo. After Giner’s death in 1915, he continued the work of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. In 1921, he was appointed advisor of Public Education, but he could do little, being in the minority, and had to endure some verbal confrontations with Jesuit Ramón Ruiz Amado, who as soon as he joined in as advisor, requested the dissolution of the JAE.

He retired from public service in1929. Nevertheless, he accepted the appoitment as president of the Patronato de Misiones Pedagógicas in 1931. In the last years of his life, he dedicated all his efforts to supervise the Misiones’ activities and to talk to young people who went to towns and villages in the educational campaign. He had placed high hopes on the success of the Misiones for the future of the Republic. He died at dawn on 1 September 1935.