Los historiadores españoles y la reflexión historiográfica, 1880-1980

Abstract

In this article we examine the vicissitudes of reflection on the discipline of history carried out by Spanish historians in the last hundred years. In order to do this, we distinguish various stages that are a reflection of the basic factors of the professionalization of Spanish historiography. The first stage, at the end of the nineteenth century, is related to the birth of the job historian, and the reception of European debates about "History as a science". The second, which lasts from the twenties to the sixties, is characterized by a prolonged "antipositivist reaction" under the influence of epistemology and intellectual history of German origin. And a third, parallel to the process of historiographical renewal dating from the mid-sixties, which is the one to have brought an encounter with basic questions of social history and modern epistemology, laying the ground for the present reflections.