TORTELLA CASARES, Gabriel 1936-

PERSONAL:

Born November 24, 1936, in Barcelona, Spain; son of Gabriel Tortella Oteo (a publisher; in business) and Maria Teresa Casares Sanchez (an archivist); married Clara Eugenia Núñez, December 21, 1985. Education: University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1972; Universidad de Madrid, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Conde de Cartagena 5, No. 6C, 28007 Madrid, Spain. Office—Facultad de ciencias economicas, Universidad de Alcala, 28802 Alcala de Henares, Madrid, Spain; fax: 3491-885-4206. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, associate professor, 1967-80; Universidad de Alcala, Alcala de Henares, Madrid, Spain, catedrático, 1981—.

MEMBER:

European Association for Banking History (chair of academic advisory council), Academia Europaea, Asociacion de Historia Economica (president), Economic History Society, Economic History Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Premio Rey Juan Carlos, Bank of Spain, 1994.

WRITINGS:

Los orígenes del capitalismo en España, Tecnos (Madrid, Spain), 1973.

(With others) La banca española en la restauración, Volume 1: Política y finanzas, Volume 2: Datos para una historia económica, Banco de España (Madrid, Spain), 1974.

(With Jordi Nadal) Agricultura, comercio colonial y crecimiento económico en la españa contemporánea, Ariel (Barcelona, Spain), 1975.

Banking, Railroads, and Industry in Spain, 1829-1874, Arno Press (New York, NY), 1977.

(With Juan Carlos Jiménez) Historia del banco de crédito industrial, Alianza (Madrid, Spain), 1986.

Introducción a la economía para historiadores, Tecnos (Madrid, Spain), 1986.

(With others) Education and Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution: A Study in Comparative History, Generalitat Valenciana (Valencia, Spain), 1990.

(With Clara Eugenia Núñez) La maldición divina: ignorancia y atraso económico en perspectiva histórica, Alianza (Madrid, Spain), 1993.

(With José Luis García Ruiz) Una historia de los bancos central e hispano americano, 1901-1991: Noventa años de gran banca en España, privately printed (Madrid, Spain), 1994.

El desarrollo de la españa contemporánea: historia económica de los siglos XIX y XX, Alianza (Madrid, Spain), 1994, translation by Valerie Herr published as The Development of Modern Spain: An Economic History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

(Editor with Richard Sylla and Richard Tilly, and contributor) The State, the Financial System, and Economic Modernization, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

La revolución del siglo XX: capitalismo, comunismo y democracia (essay; title means "The Twentieth-Century Revolution: Capitalism, Communism, and Democracy"), Editorial Taurus (Madrid, Spain), 2000.

(With Alfonso Ballestero and José Luis Díaz Fernández) Del monopolio al libre mercado: la historia de la industria petrolera españa, Lid (Madrid, Spain), 2003.

Contributor to books, including How to Write the History of a Bank, edited by Martin M. G. Fase, Gerald Feldman, and Manfred Pohl, Scholar Press (Aldershot, England), 1995; The Industrial Revolution in National Context: Europe and the USA, edited by Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996; Challenges of Economic History: A Volume in Honour of Ivan T. Berend, edited by Buza János, Csató Tamás, and Gyimesi Sándor, [Budapest, Hungary], 1996; Banking, Trade, and Industry: Europe, America, and Asia, from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by Alice Teichova, Ginette Kurgan-Van Hentenryk, and Dieter Ziegler, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997; and Economic Change and the National Question in Twentieth-Century Europe, edited by Alice Teichova, Herbert Matis, and Jaroslav Pátek, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000. Contributor to academic journals, including Economic History Review, Economistas, Revista de Occidente, Información Comercial Española, España Económica, Expansión, and Revista de Historia Económica.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Una historia de los bancos central e hispano americano (1900-2000): Un siglo degran banca en España, with José Luis García Ruiz; Historia de campsa: los primeros veinte años, 1927-1947, with Mercedes Cabrera and Sebastián Coll; research on banking and monetary history, education, and economic growth.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gabriel Tortella Casares told CA: "One writes because one wants his work to be known by others. Since I was a child I wanted to write because I liked to read, I admired workers, and I thought intellectual life was the highest activity possible for a human being. I write history because I am interested in explaining modern society, and I think it cannot be understood without turning to the past. When we go to the doctor we are asked about our medical history and even that of our parents. The social scientist does the same thing to his patient, society.

"I grew up in Spain, then a backward country ruled by a dictator who seemed destined to live forever. My main questions were: why is Spain backward? And, is backwardness related to dictatorship? I thought the answers were in the past and in the great synthesizers of history: Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Smith. I also read John Maynard Keynes and many other economists whose writings had a bearing on history and the general understanding of modern society. For Spanish history the writings of Jaime Vicens Vives, Antonio Ramos Oliveira, and Raymond Carr were most illuminating. These are probably the greatest influences on my work.

"Most of my writings are the product of research. This implies setting a problem and reading about it in books and archives until a satisfactory answer seems to be formed: writing then is just putting all this in a certain order. Sometimes my research involves quantitative analysis. Usually I start writing a preliminary essay about what the problem is and outlining the main hypotheses. This helps me to organize the research work, and then the end product develops and modifies the blueprint.

"I find myself writing more and more essays, which are the product of reflection from my own work and from discussions and readings. These essays sometimes take years to develop in my head. Sometimes I have produced short articles about ideas which, in the end, became a longer essay. This is the case with my recent La revolución del siglo XX: capitalismo, comunismo, y democracia, which is an essay on the history of the twentieth century and is the product of many years of developing some ideas and trying to give answers to some problems."