1922
1934
On May 1, 1922, Cajal retired upon turning seventy. On August 23, 1930, his wife Silveria passed away. Cajal still lived with his daughter Fe, who was a widow. Since then, he spent his autumns in Zaragoza, at his brother Pedro’s house on Costa Street, where his sisters looked after him.
TOWARDS
THE END
Starting in 1894, Santiago Ramón y Cajal became an increasingly popular figure in Spain. The Moscow Prize and, subsequently, the Nobel Prize amplified and broadened that recognition, which until then had been limited to academic spheres, the press and official circles. But it was upon his retirement in 1922 that, in his own words, “a deluge of honours and tributes” came his way. In his last years, he remained active, although his pace gradually declined.
In 1933, he published his work ¿Neuronismo o reticularismo? Las pruebas objetivas de la unidad anatómica de las células nerviosas (Neuron theory or reticular theory? Objective evidence of the anatomical unity of nerve cells), which is considered his scientific legacy. He died the following year, on October 17, 1934, at the age of eighty-two, at a tragic moment in Spanish history, and his funeral was perhaps the last time that people who would later clash dramatically in the Civil War gathered together around a shared symbol.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal in Mariano Benlliure’s studio, posing for the model of the statue that will stand at the top of the staircase in the University of Zaragoza’s Paraninfo, 1922
On October 1, at the start of the academic year, a plaster model was installed at its current location, which was later removed to make way for the final marble sculpture. Cajal was unable to attend the launch event, but he sent two texts to be read aloud. In February 1925, the final statue was unveiled at a ceremony presided over by King Alfonso XIII. The University Archives hold a large collection of documents and correspondence related to this tribute.
To honour him on the occasion of his retirement, the University of Zaragoza commissioned Mariano Benlliure in early 1922 to create a statue of Ramón y Cajal to be placed at the top of the main staircase of the Paraninfo. It was agreed that the cost would be covered by public subscription. When he had already made progress on his work, Benlliure told Rector Royo Villanova: “In the statue of the great Cajal, I have put my whole artistic soul into creating a work worthy of the great figure it represents,” and he described Cajal as both collaborative and enthusiastic.