Education

The golden age of the coexistence of cultures took place during the Middle Ages, when Muslims, Christians and Jews established strong interfaith centers of higher education in Cordoba, Granada and Toledo. From the sixteenth century on the University of Salamanca (1218) served as a model for universities in Latin America and thus the international influence of the Spanish education spread. During the sixteenth century the Complutense University (founded in Alcala de Henares in 1498 and moved to Madrid in 1836 retaining the name) was famous for its multilingual parallel translations of the Bible as the famous Complutense Polyglot Bible printed in this university in 1517. There was Spanish educators in this important period as Juan Huarte of San Juan, a pioneer in the application of psychology to education; humanist and philosopher Juan Luis Vives, who brought new ideas about education and in particular advocated the education of women; and St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. Other characters who made great contributions to education during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are Francisco Giner, who was pursuing reforms in higher education and the education of women; Francisco Ferrer Guardia, defender of a democratizing education reform; and the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, whose writings on the mission of the university have been translated into different languages. The Spanish Royal Academy (founded in 1713) and the Real Academia de la Historia (1738) are well known for their scholarly publications.