Liberalism Revisited: The Autobiographical Writings of Alberto Jiménez Fraud (1883–1964)

Abstract

The Residencia de Estudiantes (literally, the “Student Residence”) (1910−1936) was one of the InstituciónLibre de Enseñanza (the Free Institute for Education) initiatives. Alberto Jiménez Fraud (1883-1964) was director of the Residence. The Civil War brought the Institute of Free Education and its initiatives to an end. Jiménez Fraud went into exile in September 1936 and spent the rest of his life in the universities at Oxford and Cambridge. The reasons for failure are the defining concern of his writings: why the liberal education project espoused at the Institute was rejected by the masses it was intended to reform, and eventually destroyed in the fury and bloodshed of the Civil War. In this regard, therefore, Jiménez Fraud’s writings comprise an eternal return to liberalism.