Javier Tusell; Historian of Spain
Hyfler/Rosner
31 March 2005
Javier Tusell, historian: born Barcelona 26 August 1945;
married Genoveva Garcia Queipo de Llano (one son, one
daughter); died Barcelona 8 February 2005.
Best known as a historian of contemporary Spain, about which
he published more than 50 books, Javier Tusell was during an
early sortie into politics responsible for negotiating the
return to Spain of Picasso's anti-war masterpiece, Guernica.
Latterly he became well known as an astute and ironical
radio and newspaper commentator - respected as a rare public
figure who declined to line up with any political party.
The prosperous Catalan Tusell family moved to Madrid soon
after Javier was born. As a young man he became interested
in politics and joined a succession of Christian Democrat
organisations that led him to the Centre Democratic Union
(UCD), the centrist party led by Adolfo Suarez whose
government spanned Franco's dictatorship and Spain's
emerging democracy.
A brilliant history student, he became a lecturer at
Madrid's Complutense University in 1968, aged 23. He was
elected UCD councillor for Madrid in 1979 and until 1982
headed the department for Artistic Heritage, Archives and
Museums, which later became the Fine Arts Department of the
Culture Ministry.
He negotiated the return of Picasso's 1937 painting Guernica
from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it had hung
from 1939, thus fulfilling the artist's wish that his visual
cry against dictatorship and war be displayed in Spain only
after democracy returned. Picasso wanted Guernica in the
Prado, and Tusell arranged for it to be housed in the
museum's annexe for modern - that is, 19th-century - art,
the Casón del Buen Retiro. The canvas returned amid much
controversy in 1981: the work had to be protected from
possible attacks by the paramilitary Civil Guard, itself
tainted by Francoism. Others objected that the Casón del
Buen Retiro was no substitute for the Prado proper. But, 25
years on, it is reckoned that without Tusell's determination
during three years of haggling, and his historian's talent
for producing the definitive catalogue to mark the event,
Guernica's homecoming would never have been the political
and artistic triumph it was.
Tusell abandoned politics in 1981 when the UCD fell apart,
to become Professor of Contemporary History at the National
University of Distance Learning (Uned), a post he held until
his death. In numerous books and articles, debates and
conferences, he addressed - often with fierce polemic - the
topic that obsessed his generation of Spaniards: why did
Spain's democracy fail between 1936 and 1939, and how did
the consequence of that failure - Franco's dictatorship -
affect Spanish life and the re-establishment of democracy?
He became increasingly radical, writing a searing critique
of José María Aznar's eight-year conservative government, El
Aznarato (2004). But he stayed in the democratic centre - a
lonely position in Spanish politics - favouring Albert
Camus' ideal of joining a party "of those who weren't sure
they were right".
Tusell died while proof-reading his latest book, Dictadura
franquista y democracia, 1939-2004 ("Francoist Dictatorship
and Democracy, 1939-2004"), published this month.
Elizabeth Nash