Santiago Ramón y Cajal finally finds his place in Zaragoza

The University Auditorium inaugurates a room permanently dedicated to the memory of the Nobel Prize winner with books, documents, photos, drawings and personal objects. Alberto Jiménez Schuhmacher, head of the Molecular Oncology group at IIS Aragón, is the curator of Espacio Cajal

Finally, the memory of Santiago Ramón y Cajal has found a home in Aragón with a permanent exhibition at the University of Zaragoza that was so important in his biography, where he studied and where he taught, or where he directed his anatomical museums, and which already remembered him for a century with the great statue of Mariano Benlliure that presides over the steps of his Auditorium. 

Since this morning, on the day that marks 117 years since he was awarded the Nobel Prize, in this same building a room is dedicated to showing aspects of the person and professional figure of the neuroscientist (Petilla de Aragón, 1852-Madrid, 1934).

In the so-called Cajal Space, objects for scientific use such as microscopes or models have been gathered, others such as his Medicine border - never previously exhibited - or his academic record, a careful selection of his books - also those on fiction or one that he dedicated to photography-, drawings… And exceptionally, occupying the central space, the large anatomical atlas preserved by the University Library, to which he contributed 12 sheets and which, due to its fragility, will only remain on public view for the next four weeks.

A lot of compressed information about his family origins, his years in Zaragoza, his first research, discoveries related to the nervous system, international recognition, obtaining the Nobel Prize or the school of disciples he left behind. The pieces come from both the Cajal Institute, a neuroscience research center dependent on the CSIC that guards its legacy, and from the collections of the University itself and other private individuals.

Alberto Jiménez Schuhmacher is the curator of Espacio Cajal, which is permanent but intended to be “alive”, where some of the documents and works on display rotate. “We want to reflect the person, his origins, the transcendental years at the University of Zaragoza, his contributions to science, how he tried to promote knowledge and transform the country by providing it with science infrastructures,” he said in the presentation given before the opening. “It is a tribute to the man, the scientist and the intellectual in what was his 'alma mater',” he added.

The rector, José Antonio Mayoral, has also had an impact on his relationship with the University. “It is a very important day for all of Aragon and especially for this house. Finally there is a worthy space to vindicate his figure and the importance of the solid training he received here. The University of Zaragoza was its ecosystem.”

The vice-rector for Culture and Social Projection, Yolanda Polo, has referred to Espacio Cajal, which can be visited from Monday to Saturday from 11.00:14.00 a.m. to 17.00:21.00 p.m. and from 2018:XNUMX p.m. to XNUMX:XNUMX p.m., as the culmination of several university initiatives underway since XNUMX. El Paraninfo already dedicated one ambitious temporary exhibition to the scientist in the fall of 2019, occupying all its exhibition rooms. Last June, the Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza publishing house published the illustrated monograph 'Santiago Ramón y Cajal. The man, the scientist, the intellectual', a choral volume coordinated by Alberto Schuhmacher and José María Serrano.

The museum of unfulfilled promises is still pending

The room inaugurated this morning in the Auditorium of the University of Zaragoza manages to fix the memory of Santiago Ramón y Cajal here. But The aspiration to dedicate an entire museum to the most important man of science in the history of Spain remains unrealized; neither in Aragón, where the city of Huesca tried it a few years ago, nor in Madrid, where his legacy is preserved, with almost 30.000 pieces including photographs, notebooks, drawings, manuscripts, medals and other decorations, paintings, histological preparations, magazines, books…

Yes there are in the capital, with a small selection of all these objects, another room dedicated to him since last August, in the National Museum of Natural Sciences, where his laboratory and office are recreated and in which the possibility of living an immersive experience with virtual reality glasses about the life and work of the neuroscientist is also offered on weekends. The contents will be renewed several times a year.

Y In Ayerbe, an interpretation center was inaugurated in 1999 in the same house where the wise man spent part of his childhood and youth with his family.. It was equipped with both original pieces and reproductions, as well as audiovisuals and interactive material.

The opening of a museum dedicated entirely to Ramón y Cajal has been a promise made and unfulfilled by several political leaders. In 2020, Pedro Duque, Minister of Science at the time, set an opening date: before the end of the last legislature.

There was already one in Madrid: inaugurated in 1945 at the Cajal Institute, and which accompanied this research center in several changes of headquarters until the last one, to Doctor Arce Avenue in 1989, when the museum was no longer reopened due to lack of space.

From 2022 until May 31, 2024, the so-called Cajal Year is celebrated, promoted by the central Government to commemorate the 170th anniversary of its birth and which will almost overlap with that of 175. The DGA and the Huesca City Council presented a little over a year ago a program of exhibitions and publications for this reason, without specifying much either dates or settings, of which most of their activities are still pending.

Image: Francisco Jimenez

Source: Herald of Aragon.