Economists and the Enlightenment in Spain, 1750-1800

Abstract

IN THE Historia de los heterodoxos espaftoles, Marcelino Menendez Pelayo invoked vast erudition to show how unorthodox philosophers, statesmen, and economists had tended to corrupt the traditional virtues of Spanish nationalism. The lasting fame of the work, often reprinted since its publication in 1880-81, bears witness to the wide acceptance among Spaniards of the goals of moral, religious, aesthetic, and social conformity. In honor of the nineteenth-century polemist the Franco government created the Patronato Menendez Pelayo, a publicly supported research council sponsoring publications in history, philosophy, and art. The arguments of Menendez Pelayo have not gone unchallenged, but the defense of heterodoxy has never been accomplished as thoroughly as in Jean Sarrailh's L'Espagne kclairee. Three decades of research, interrupted by the Spanish civil war and the occupation of France, went into the work; but the author, the distinguished rector of the University of Paris, disclaims having written a definitive account of the Spanish Enlightenment. Many aspects of the subject invite further research, and Sarrailh has marked the paths for other scholars to follow.2 Fortunately, Spain in the twentieth century raises no barriers to the use of its