Gregorio Marañón

Spain state institutions Liberalism and republicanism Spain Spain 1887–1960 ○ Died

Endocrinologist and liberal intellectual who presided over the Spanish League for Sexual Reform

In 1932 he became president of the Spanish League for Sexual Reform, the WLSR’s Spanish section, the most conservative of them and one of the few that left homosexuality out of its programme.

A physician, scientist and historian born in Madrid. For forty years he held the chair of endocrinology at Madrid’s Central Hospital and founded Spanish endocrinology. In Three Essays on Sexual Life (1926) he denied that Don Juan was an archetype of virility. In 1931 he founded the Group at the Service of the Republic with Ortega y Gasset, and in 1932 he became president of the Spanish League for Sexual Reform, though in line with Catholic ethics he opposed artificial contraception and state sex education. He left Spain at the end of 1936, returned in 1942, was respected under Franco, and died in Madrid in 1960.

Activities and affiliations

Related historical events

Endocrinology and sexual reform

He was born in Madrid, the son of Manuel Marañón from Santander, and as a boy mixed with his father’s friends such as Benito Pérez Galdós. Taught medicine by Ramón y Cajal among others, he graduated with distinction in 1910, studied in Germany and took his doctorate in 1911 with a thesis on the blood in thyroid states. For forty years he held the chair of endocrinology at Madrid’s Central Hospital and founded Spanish endocrinology, entering the Royal Academy of Medicine in 1922. In “Notes for a Biology of Don Juan” (1924) and Three Essays on Sexual Life (1926) he denied that Don Juan was an archetype of virility.

Close to Unamuno, he clashed with the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera from 1923. In 1931 he founded the Group at the Service of the Republic with José Ortega y Gasset and Ramón Pérez de Ayala, though he later criticised the Republic for failing to unite all Spaniards. When the WLSR’s Spanish section, the Spanish League for Sexual Reform on a Scientific Basis, was founded in 1932 he became its president, with Hildegart Rodríguez as secretary; it was the most conservative section and one of the few that left homosexuality out of its programme. True to Catholic values, under the Republic he opposed artificial contraception and state sex education for children, which he held belonged to parents. He echoed the international eugenics movement, taking part in the First Eugenics Conference of 1933, but starting from the high infant mortality of the 1920s he looked to education compatible with Catholic morality.

When the civil war began he left Madrid in December 1936 for Paris, where in December 1937 he made public his change of position towards the Republic. After travels in Latin America he returned in autumn 1942 and resumed his chair in 1946; the Franco regime used his name to improve its image abroad but in general respected him. A member of five royal academies, the Spanish Royal Academy among them, he died in Madrid on 27 March 1960.