Argentine universities, antifascism and the spanish republican scientific and intellectual exile. The role of the Spanish Cultural Institution of Buenos Aires (1936-1945)

Abstract

In the 1930s, the repression installed by the fascist regimes extended to intellectual activity, resulting in purges of academics and scientists, who in many cases sought exile in the Americas. This article focuses on the Argentine response to the Spanish Republican scientific exile. We focus on the Institución Cultural Española de Buenos Aires (ICEBA), in charge of cultural diplomacy between the two countries. ICEBA had contacts with anti-fascist associations that took root in the Argentine intellectual field. Thus, we will see that many of those who collaborated with ICEBA's initiatives participated also in turn in Acción Argentina, the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores and other associations that combined anti-fascist activism with politics. It is in this context that should be placed ICEBA's work at the universitary realm, where anti-fascism was very vigorous (until the military coup of June 1943).