“Tools and letters”: Carmen Aldecoa and her political, pedagogical and intellectual contribution inside and outside Spain

Abstract

This research focuses on the career and political, pedagogical and intellectual contribution of Carmen Aldecoa (Turón de Mieres, 1897- Madrid, 1988), recognized for her scientific role, as she was one of the first researchers trained by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography during the first foundational stage. However, after a long academic career she declined as secondary school teacher. After the civil war and positioned on the side of the Republican cause, she left in 1939 with the transatlantic exile to settle in New York, after a first stop in Havana. Once settled in the United States, she worked, throughout her life, in favour of grassroots organizations helping Spanish refugees and collaborated in the dissemination of the newspaper Free Spain where she outlined part of her political thought. Carmen Aldecoa was a Spanish professor at New York University. She traveled to Europe and returned to Spain at the end of the sixties, but her contribution and her work have not been the subject of study.