Detailing the process through which Spanish culture forced itself back onto the International platform, this exhibition demonstrates how Spain went about rediscovering its sense of modernity after a lengthy period of self insulation.

For Spanish society, the vital turning point came in 1914 in the form of Francisco de los Ríos and his team at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE). By working in close contact with the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (JAE), it was their template for modernisation that brought about this process of change.

Vital components in the continuation of a liberal Spanish tradition, 1914 was the final year that saw Francisco de los Ríos, Miguel de Unamuno, and José Ortega y Gasset coincide. It was this tradition, so intimately linked to universality, cosmopolitism, and  the  collective  European conscience,  that  offered such  stark  contrast to the violence  being precipitated across  the rest  of the Old Continent. In what would later be seen as the first throws of a period of lasting conflict, this obvious contradiction was felt strongly, and critically, by Spanish intellectuals from the very start.

It was this sentiment that harboured a powerful sense of neutrality throughout Spain and resulted in the offering of refuge to a vast number of intellectuals and artists from across the world. Allowing these great thinkers to continue with their work, this safe haven brought with it the inevitable influx of content and a stream of new works of art, clearly benefiting Spain in the process.

Once the war ended, the vast network of contacts established over previous years continued to flourish, contributing hugely to the cultural splendour of the interwar period.  Spanish society was dramatically transformed, with a wave of new ideas, ways of thinking, and discoveries, both artistic and scientific, very much moving to the forefront. In the same moment, the world is shaken by the economic recession at the end of the second decade of the century, as well as the Fascist, Nazi, and Soviet totalitarianism regimes that darkened the next. The result of this was, of course, the Second World War. And, in the case of Spain, the start of Franco, exile, and a regime that would go on to plague the country for the next four decades.

The exhibition pays homage to a number of those pioneering Spaniards who sought success both domestically, and internationally, whilst also presenting some of those that arrived in Spain from abroad. Also represented are various institutions that played key roles in this process, along with a detailing of the vital collaboration between Spanish education, science, and culture and their European and American counterparts.

Without these channels connecting Spain to the rest of the world, the flourishing Mexican culture, along with various aspects of brilliant investigation in the United States, would not have been possible. Nobel Prize winner Severo Ochoa always stressed that his scientific career would not have been the same without those pivotal formative years spent at the Residencia de Estudiantes, and the important and lasting relationships forged in its laboratories.