Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz
(Madrid, 1893 - Ávila, 1984)

He studied Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid and held the chairs of History of Spain in the universities of Barcelona, Valencia, Valladolid, and Madrid. He succeeded Hinojosa in the chair of Spanish Medieval History at the Universidad Central, and 1926 he was inducted into the Real Academia de la Historia. In politics, he was a member of Manuel Azaña’s  Acción Republicana party, was elected congressman to the Cortes in 1931, appointed Minister of State in 1933, and ambassador to Portugal in 1936. After the Civil War, he went into exile in Argentina, where he continued his work as a historian, created the Instituto de Historia de España, and served as president of the council of the Spanish Republican Government in Exile between 1962 and 1970. He returned to Spain in 1976.

As a medievalist, his major research focused on Asturian, Leonese, and Castilian institutions from the eight to the thirteenth centuries.
His notable feud with Américo Castro had great public impact. The controversy was about “el ser de España,” the conviction of a unique Spanish identity, created in part by the debates that followed the "disaster" of 98, but revived after the Civil War of 1936-1939, and maintained until the late fifties. While some writers traced back the "decadence" of modern Spain to Quintus Sertorius’ Iberian Peninsula wars in 83BC, the Visigoth era, or the Inquisition, Sánchez-Albornoz defended (against Ortega y Gasset) the Visigoth cultural heritage, but without questioning the existence of a 'homo hispanus "since the dawn of time. The Spanish “temperament” evolved even before the Roman invasion (which softened Spanish passion and strengthened reason over instinct). After the Muslim invasion, the Spanish way of life remained intact in the northern half of the Peninsula, where there was little cultural exchange between Muslims and Christians or Jewish influence. His interpretation of the “essence of Spain" (which, despite its fratricidal traits, he valued in positive terms) was identified with Castile, and later with the empire.