El pensamiento eugénico de Marañón

Abstract

Athough eugenic ideas were by no means alien to Spanish thought before the 20th century, it is only by the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s that the first steps towards an institutionalization of Eugenics in Spain were actually taken. In this period, Dr. Marañón produced a number of interesting writings, mostly of a minor or occasional nature, on Eugenic subjects. Marañón was by then one of the leading intellectuals of his generation. His great reputation as a physician and as a man of science was only equal to his wide acknowledgement as a writer on general social issues, which makes his contribution to Eugenics particularly significant. In spite of the attention always paid by Marañón to Eugenic issues, he never published a proper treatise on the subject. His views must therefore be gathered from very scattered sources. The aim of this paper is to accomplish such a task, and thus draw an outline of Marañón's eugenic program by emphasizing those aspects (biological, economic, political, educational and moral) he mainly dealt with. It is there thereby sought to unearth a key contribution to the development of eugenic ideas in early 20th century.