Ignacio Bolívar
(Madrid, 1850 - México D. F., 1944)

Ignacio Bolivar Urrutia’s life covered practically a century. His prime coincided with the period known as the Silver Age of Spanish culture, in which extraordinary writers, artists, thinkers and scientists shone.
He was a distinguished scientist who, together with Cajal and Torres Quevedo, is considered as one of the fin de siècle scholars whose reputation was the basis for the establishment of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE). Cajal was its president until 1934.

After the death of Cajal, Bolívar held the interim presidency of the JAE and was confirmed in the position on 22 June 1935. He remained as its president until the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Bolivar was a naturalist by vocation and was attracted to the study of insects from early age. He overcame his family’s opposition to such an unpromising career, and studied natural sciences and law in Madrid, where he met other young naturalists who later became quite famous, such as geologists Francisco Quiroga, and Salvador Calderon.  They were all involved with the Sociedad Española de Historia from its founding in 1872.  Bolivar’s early research work on orthoptera, a group of insects including grasshoppers, locusts, crickets and the like, was outstanding. In 1876, he published Sinopsis de los ortópteros de España y Portugal, the first reliable catalog of these insects in the peninsula. By then, he had become an assistant at the Museum of Natural Sciences, an institution with which he remained involved for the rest of his life. Together with his friends, Quiroga and Calderón, he was an early supporter of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, founded by Francisco Giner and his partners to enhance education and research in Spain in 1876.

He was still very young when he became professor of Entomology at the Universidad Central and director of the department of Entomology at the Museum of Natural Sciences. At that time, the museum was in a state of neglect and decay, but Bolivar and his colleagues managed to reactivate the research work. He was appointed director of the museum in 1901. The Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) was established in 1907. Bolívar was a member, vice president and president. With support from the JAE, the museum continued to improve and moved to its permanent site on Paseo de la Castellana in 1910.

The museum was revamped as a research center and as a site for public exhibitions. Bolívar had a personal interest in the display of beautiful dioramas of Iberian animals, made by the brothers Benedito, taxidermists, for the enjoyment of the public at large.

Meanwhile, Bolívar had continued with his own research. He became a world- renowned expert on orthoptera. His publications included work on exotic insects from remote corners of the globe, sent to him by explorers and foreign museums for identification. Bolívar described hundreds of species that are part of a large catalog of global biodiversity today. Bolivar's leadership made entomology a booming field of the natural sciences of Spain at the time. His son, Cándido Bolívar y Pieltain, helped him with the organization and management of institutions and scientific projects.

Like other Spanish intellectuals and scientists, Cándido Bolívar was politically active during the Second Republic, proclaimed in 1931. He was a close associate of Manuel Azaña and a loyal supporter of his presidentship during the difficult years of the Civil War (1936 -1939). After the war, Cándido and his old father went into exile to Mexico.
The periodical Ciencia, founded by them and their colleagues, wasthe flagship of scientific publications in exile. Franco’s régime silenced the work and memory of the exiles, even deleting some of their publications in scientific periodicals and depraving them of their well-deserved recognition.