The government took action on the issue of the church, which is publicly owned but whose use has been ceded to the Archbishopric of Madrid until 2069. The Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), under the Ministry of Science and to which the survey belongs, began talks with the ecclesiastical authorities to “modernize the occupation regime” of the temple, which had been created in the Republic as an auditorium, but later converted by Franco into a church. Among the ideas the organization is studying is entrusting the archbishopric in exchange for the use of the space, as elDiario.es learned and sources from the Ministry of Science confirmed.
This is the Church of the Holy Spirit, located at No. 125 Serrano Street, where CSIC is located. However, the place was not always for religious use: it was built in 1933 as a student residence hall, becoming a center for the scientific and cultural prosperity that those years brought with them. However, after the uprising of 1936 and the end of the civil war, the Francoists transformed it into a church, exposing the National Socialist concept of science that destroyed republican modernization.
The point is that Franco’s death half a century ago brought about no major changes and its use for worship continues despite it being a public space belonging to the country’s main investigative body. So much so that in February 2000, the then president of the CISC, César Nombilla, signed with the Archbishop of Madrid, in the hands of Antonio María Roco Varela, an agreement in which the CSIC granted him space “for religious use” for a period of 69 years “extendable up to a maximum of 99”. Nombilla, who died in 2022, was a scholarly disciple of Severo Ochoa who identified himself as a Christian and chaired the Ethics Advisory Commission during the last government of José María Aznar, where he opposed abortion.
The pastoral care of the temple happens to be in the hands of two Opus Dei priests. A statue of the work’s founder, José María Escrivá de Balaguer, oversees one side of the access to the church. A quarter of a century after the signing of the agreement, and under the presidency of Eloasa del Pino, the CSIC now seeks to mitigate the anachronism of transferring public space to the church. Realizing the difficulty of finalizing the agreement, it is considering a “counter-situation” for its use, according to sources from the Ministry of Science, who confirm that the first meeting with representatives of the archbishopric was the end of last week.
The talks began at the request of the CSIC “within the framework of the Democratic Memory Law,” and the same sources indicate that, 25 years after the signing of the agreement, “it requires updating the occupation regulations for the various spaces transferred to different institutions in some buildings” of the research organization, among them the Church of the Holy Spirit. In addition to the location, the transfer agreement also includes assets owned by CSIC that have been located in the temple since the beginning. In all, there are 138 objects detailed in the convention appendix, ranging from candelabra to stained glass windows, chairs or “holy water” lines.
End of progress
CSIC is the owner of this space because the Republican Hall was created by the Council for the Expansion of Scientific Studies and Research (JAE), the institution created in 1907 to promote scientific research and education in Spain. From the beginning of the century, the JAE played a major role in ending Spanish isolation and promoting the Silver Age of culture and science from a modernization perspective. Within it, centers and laboratories were established, headed by the most important scientists of the time. Among them was the student residence, which in 1930 decided on the design of the hall.
However, a coup of 1936 halted progress and Franco established the National Security Council in 1939 with the aim of “imposing the ideas” that had inspired his “glorious national movement”. The CSIC imposed a scientific concept closely linked to religion and dismantled the JAE, but used its structures and centres, including the hall. For this reason, the transformation of the place into a church, which began in 1942, was one of the most symbolic changes brought about by the dictatorship, which from the beginning strongly suppressed JAE scholars loyal to the Republic.
The Ministry of Science is working on this topic by producing the documentary Seeds in exile: science that once again flourished in Spainwhich will be presented on Tuesday in the CSIC Conference Hall within the framework of the government’s “50 Years of Freedom”. The documentary features the analyzes of experts in the history of science and the testimonies of Clementina del Buena, granddaughter of the oceanographer exiled in Mexico, Odon de Buena, and Celina Herrera, granddaughter of aeronautical engineer Emilio Herrera, who became president of the Spanish Republic in exile from his exile.
Among other things, the documentary reflects the symbolic nature of the conversion of JAE Hall into a church. The project was undertaken by the architect who was then a member of Opus Dei, Miguel Visac, who wrote in his memoirs in 1942: “If primitive Christian churches arose from the Roman basilica, why not a chapel arise from a theater or a cinema, where it was believed that Spanish youth would become filthy and poisoned, by the diseases of culture and art, a chapel, a chapel, so that the Holy Spirit might be the Holy Spirit.” “The real guide to this new youth in Spain.”
In recent years, the Center for Social Research has been in the process of adapting to the new law through measures such as removing images of leaders who purged scholars or installing explanatory panels. One of them, in honor of those who were avenged, is located in the old cloister of the hall, the only space Vesac has kept as it was.
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