Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos

"Jovellanos" redirects here. For the place in Cuba, see Jovellanos (Cuba).

Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos
1798 portrait by Goya, on display at the Museo del Prado.
Born	Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos January 5, 1744 Gijón (Spain)
Died	November 27, 1811 (aged 67) Puerto de Vega (Spain)
Cause of death	Pneumonia
Occupations	Writer, jurist and politician
Writing career
Genres	Novel and essay
Movement	Enlightenment

Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (Gijón, January 5, 1744 – Puerto de Vega, November 27, 1811) was a Spanish Enlightenment writer, jurist and politician. Especially committed to the economic and cultural development of his country, his Informe sobre la Ley Agraria and his Memoria sobre la educación pública were significant works.

Biography

Early years

Birthplace of Jovellanos, where the Birthplace Museum is located.

He was born into a noble but impoverished family of Gijón, and received an emergency baptism under the name Baltasar Melchor Gaspar María. He was the elder brother of the poet Josefa de Jovellanos.

After completing his early studies in Gijón, in 1757 he moved to Oviedo to study Philosophy. In 1760, under the protection of the local Bishop, he left for Ávila to pursue ecclesiastical studies. His fellow countryman and relative by marriage, Romualdo Velarde Cienfuegos, recently appointed Bishop of that city, took him from Asturias to join his "familiar", a kind of private seminary of reformist ideology that he had created, where he took in outstanding Asturian students under his protection, who would go on to reach the highest public offices of the nation.

In 1761 he graduated as a bachelor in Canons (Canon law) at the University of Santa Catalina of El Burgo de Osma (Soria), obtaining his licentiate at the University of Santo Tomás of Ávila on November 3, 1763, a university that enjoyed a certain intellectual splendor owing to the daring doctrines debated in its classrooms, and which allowed him to obtain a mark of prestige on his personal record in order to gain admission to the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso of the University of Alcalá.

His academic training in Ávila led him to maintain a close relationship with the Castilian city throughout his life, as a result of his regular contact with friends from this student period, as well as through the circle of the Duchess of Alba in Piedrahíta and the circle of the Countess of Montijo. To the first circle belonged figures and close Enlightenment friends such as the writer Juan Meléndez Valdés, the minister Cabarrús and the painter Goya; while upon his arrival in Madrid in 1790, Jovellanos would stay at the home of the Countess of Montijo, who would also protect him as soon as his situation with the Ministry of Grace and Justice became complicated in 1798.

In 1764 he received a scholarship to the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso of the University of Alcalá to continue his ecclesiastical studies, graduating as a bachelor in Canons. There he met Cadalso and Campomanes.

Great Hall of the University of Ávila in the monastery of Santo Tomás, where Jovellanos obtained his licentiate.

After obtaining his licentiate, in 1767 he took up the post of magistrate of the Real Audiencia of Seville. There he was alcalde del crimen and, in 1774, oidor. In 1775 he was one of the promoters of the Sevillian Patriotic Society, of which he was secretary of arts and trades.

Madrid

In 1778 he obtained a transfer to the Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte in Madrid, partly thanks to the influence of the Duke of Alba, whom he had known in Seville. In Madrid he joined the tertulia of Campomanes, then prosecutor of the Council of Castile, who entrusted him with various tasks with which he was satisfied, recognizing in Jovellanos a man of broad learning and acknowledged competence in the economic field.

In 1780 he joined the Council of Military Orders. In 1782 he was part of the commission that set up the Bank of San Carlos. He was a member of the commerce board of the Sociedad Económica Matritense and, from December 1784, its director. He wrote various studies on the economy of Spain, among which the Informe sobre la Ley Agraria is of singular value; in it he advocated the liberalization of land and an end to privileges such as the mayorazgo and the Mesta, reflecting his liberal thought, a norm on which the Council of Castile had pinned its hopes for reforming and modernizing peninsular agriculture.

Fully integrated into the cultural life of Madrid, he was a member of the Royal Academy of History (1779), the Royal Academy of San Fernando (1780) and the Royal Spanish Academy (1781). He was also a member of the Economic Society of Asturias, the Principality's branch of the Economic Societies of Friends of the Country.

However, the outbreak of the French Revolution brought to a halt, under Charles IV, the Enlightenment ideas and removed most of the advanced thinkers from public life.

Asturias

After the fall of his friend Francisco de Cabarrús, Jovellanos was forced to leave the Court, banished, settling in his native city in 1790, where he wrote an Informe sobre espectáculos commissioned by the Royal Academy of History, and traveled through Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country to learn about the situation of the coal mines and the prospects for their consumption, producing his first reports on the councils of Siero and Langreo, future major exporters of hard coal, especially the latter. Jovellanos had already shown himself in favor of increasing production, for which it was necessary to liberalize the exploitation of the mineral. After his mining journeys he submitted nine reports with the results of his commission and succeeded in having coal mining partially liberalized in 1793. He conceived the idea of the so-called coal road between Langreo and Gijón, which was built years later, without Jovellanos being able to see it. In Asturias he not only documented the economic possibilities, but also produced reports on traditions and festivities.

Between 1790 and 1791 he traveled several times to Salamanca to take charge of the reform of the Colleges of the Military Orders. As sub-delegate of roads in Asturias (1792) he tried to speed up the completion of the works on the road to Castile (which had begun in 1771), in order to end the isolation of Gijón, but the lack of funds would make its completion impossible.

On the initiative of Jovellanos, the Royal Asturian Institute of Nautical Science and Mineralogy was created in Gijón in 1794, in which he tried to apply the ideas of the Enlightenment to teaching.

Final years

Portrait of Jovellanos in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, attributed to Antonio Carnicero, c. 1797.

After the alliance with revolutionary France, Manuel Godoy sought to carry out certain reforms and to count on the most important Enlightenment figures, so he offered Jovellanos the post of ambassador to Russia, which he declined. However, on November 10, 1797 he accepted the post of Minister of Grace and Justice, from which he tried to reform the justice system and reduce the influence of the Inquisition, but after nine months in the government he was dismissed on August 16, 1798 and returned to Gijón. There he planned the creation of an Asturian academy, whose function would be the study of the history and of the Asturian language, and he compiled 200 lexical index cards of Asturian.

In December 1800, after the dismissal of Mariano Luis de Urquijo as minister of state, Godoy returned to power and ordered the arrest of Jovellanos on March 13, 1801 and his banishment to Majorca, first to the monastery of the Royal Charterhouse of Jesus of Nazareth, where he was well treated by the monks—in the present-day municipality of Valldemossa—and then to the prison of Bellver Castle. During his years of imprisonment his physical ailments worsened and his religiosity increased. Little by little, and thanks to the fact that he kept his minister's salary, he bought luxurious furniture and many books, despite suffering from cataracts. Released on April 6, 1808, after the Mutiny of Aranjuez, he refused to be part of the government of Joseph Bonaparte and represented Asturias on the Junta Central, a government whose regulations he drew up together with Martín de Garay. From it he promoted the convening of the Assembly, heading the commission on the Cortes, but the entry of the French into Andalusia forced the government to leave Seville and take refuge in Cádiz. The propaganda of the aristocrats who opposed the convening of the Cortes brought about the fall of the Junta Central and the establishment of a regency, whose regulations were again drafted by Jovellanos and Martín de Garay. The slanders spread against the members of the Junta Central led several of them to leave Cádiz, as was the case with Jovellanos, who set sail for Asturias, but a storm took him to Muros on March 6, 1810.

He remained in Galicia for several months and wrote the political justification of his conduct on the Junta Central, Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central, which was printed in La Coruña. After the departure of the French from Gijón, on July 27, 1811 he left Galicia and returned to the Asturian town, although a French counterattack forced him to leave once more. Ill with pneumonia, he died in the fishing village of Puerto de Vega, in the council of Navia, on November 27, 1811.

Tomb of Jovellanos in the Chapel of Los Remedios at his birthplace.

His remains were initially taken to the cemetery of Gijón, and were moved again in 1842 to a mausoleum in the church of San Pedro, built to house the native of Gijón. In 1936, in the face of the imminent blowing up of the church, they were relocated by the writer Pachín de Melás to the Higher School of Commerce with the permission of the Mayor Avelino González Mallada. Later, in 1940, they were taken to the chapel of Los Remedios, next to his birthplace.

Work

Jovellanos cultivated several literary genres (such as poetry and theatre), but his principal writings were essays on economics, politics, agriculture, philosophy and customs, written in the reforming spirit of enlightened despotism.

Among them the Informe sobre la ley agraria stands out, which he wrote in a first version in 1784, but did not send until 1787 to the Sociedad Económica Matritense, which forwarded it to the Council of Castile, and which was published in 1795. In it Jovellanos showed himself in favor of eliminating the obstacles to free enterprise, which he grouped into three classes: political, moral and physical. Among them were the uncultivated common lands, the Mesta, taxation, the lack of useful knowledge among landowners and farmers, poor communications and the lack of irrigation, canals and ports. To correct this situation Jovellanos proposed that the uncultivated lands and communal woodlands pass into private ownership, that the Mesta be dissolved, that estates be enclosed, and that leases be based on a free agreement between tenants and landowners. In turn, he also defended the limitation of mayorazgos, the reform of taxes, and the abolition of ecclesiastical mortmain and of the restrictions on farmers.

To this should be added the reform of education, to make it more practical, giving more importance to scientific subjects, and State investment in public works. These measures would create the conditions for the formation of a land market, an increase in production and the creation of a unified national market, which would make possible an increase in the population and its standard of living, which would serve as the basis for the beginning of industrialization.

During his stay in Seville he was one of the participants in the tertulia of Pablo de Olavide, which influenced him to begin writing love poetry, and he wrote the first version of the tragedy El Pelayo (1769) and the comedy El delincuente honrado (1773). Pelayo or La muerte de Munuza is the only tragedy written by Jovellanos. It is a work of his youth, composed in Seville in 1769, when its author was twenty-five years old, although it was revised between 1771 and 1772. The work underwent a reworking that gave rise to a new version, made between 1782 and 1790. It must have circulated in manuscript. Only in 1792 did a printing appear, and a pirated one at that. It was not performed until 1782, thirteen years after it was written; in that year it premiered in Gijón. In early October 1792 it premiered in Madrid. Jovellanos's contribution to comedy is reduced to a single work, and one at the limits of the genre: El delincuente honrado, written in Seville for Olavide's tertulia, and premiered in Madrid twenty years later, in 1767. It is a sentimental comedy, a Spanish derivation of the «comédie larmoyante», created in France by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée.

He also translated the first book of Paradise Lost by Milton. He promoted a series of improvements in his native city, such as the Gijón–León road, which, although he did not see it completed, meant the shift of Asturian maritime trade from the port of Avilés to that of Gijón. In addition, he promoted all kinds of reforms at the national level, being a key Enlightenment figure of the period.

Works

Street sign of Calle de Jovellanos in Madrid

Literary works

• Theatrical works: Pelayo / Munuza, tragedy. Seville, 1769, and El delincuente honrado, Seville, 1774.
• Poetic compositions and ballads.
• Elogio fúnebre del marqués de los Llanos de Alguazas. Read at the Sociedad Económica Matritense on August 5, 1780.
• Elogio de Ventura Rodríguez. Madrid, January 19, 1788, Sociedad Económica Matritense.
• Elogio de Carlos III. Read at the Royal Economic Society of Madrid on November 8, 1788.

Correspondence

• See Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos. Obras Completas, vols. II to V. Critical edition, introduction and notes by José Miguel Caso González. Oviedo, IFES. XVIII / Ilustre Ayuntamiento de Gijón, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990.

Diary and memoirs

• Diario (1790–1808). Facsimile of the autograph manuscript in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (Diario de Nicolás y Leandro Moratín [Manuscript]) and transcription in the Obras Completas of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (II, 1857, 4th ed., fol. 85r) by the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library.
• Memorias familiares (1790–1810).
• Diario de viaje desde Bellver (Mallorca) a Jadraque (Guadalajara). Return from banishment. Majorca, April 5, June 23, 1808.

Pedagogical works

• Informe al Protomedicato sobre el estado de la Sociedad Médica de Sevilla y del estudio de la Medicina en su Universidad, Seville, September 3, 1777.
• Discurso sobre el lenguaje y estilo propio de un Diccionario geográfico. Madrid, June 23, 1788. Read by the author at the Royal Academy of History.
• Reglamento para el gobierno económico, institucional y literario del colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción de Salamanca, según el nuevo plan aprobado por S. M. a consulta del Real Consejo de las Órdenes. Salamanca, August 16, 1790.
• Memorias Pedagógicas (1790–1809).
• Ordenanza para el Real Instituto Asturiano. Gijón, December 1, 1793.
• Oración inaugural a la apertura del Real Instituto Asturiano. Gijón, January 7, 1794.
• Noticia del Real Instituto Asturiano. Gijón, June 21, 1794.
• Curso de Humanidades Castellanas. Royal Asturian Institute. Gijón, 1794.
• Carta al Doctor Prado sobre el método de estudiar el Derecho. Gijón, December 17, 1795.
• Oración sobre la necesidad de unir el estudio de la literatura al de las ciencias. Royal Asturian Institute. Gijón, 1797.
• Exposición al Príncipe de la Paz como respuesta a once puntos sobre instrucción pública en España. Gijón, 1797.
• Plan para arreglar los estudios de la Universidad. Madrid, 1798.
• Plan de educación de la nobleza y de las clases pudientes. Aranjuez, 1798.
• Discurso sobre el estudio de la Geografía histórica. Delivered at the Asturian Institute of Gijón. February 16, 1800.
• Memoria sobre la educación pública o sea tratado teórico-práctico de enseñanza con aplicación a las escuelas y colegios de niños. Charterhouse of Valldemossa. Majorca, 1802.
• Instrucción dada a un joven teólogo al salir de la Universidad, sobre el método que debía observar para perfeccionarse en el estudio de esta ciencia. Bellver Castle, 1805.
• Bases para la formación de un plan general de Instrucción Pública. Seville, November 16, 1809.

Economic works

• Causas de la decadencia de las Sociedades Económicas. Madrid, January 19, 1786.
• Informe en el Expediente de la Ley Agraria. Gijón, April 26, 1794.
• Informe sobre la extracción de aceites a reinos extranjeros. Seville, May 14, 1774.
• Introducción a un discurso sobre el estudio de la Economía civil. 1776.
• Informe sobre el fomento de la marina mercante. Madrid, 1784.
• Informe sobre sustituir un nuevo método para la hilanza de la seda. Madrid, Board of Commerce and Currency, 1789.
• Dictamen sobre embarque de paños extranjeros para nuestras colonias. Madrid, 1789.

Works on Asturian subjects

• Discurso a la Real Sociedad de Amigos del País de Asturias, sobre los medios de promover la felicidad de aquel Principado. Madrid, April 22, 1781.
• Cartas del viaje de Asturias or Cartas a Ponz (1782–1792).
• Juicio crítico de la historia antigua de Guiggia. Gijón, August 9, 1782.
• Representaciones acerca de la carretera de Pajares (1783–1799).
• Informes mineros (1789–1797).
• Plan para la formación de un Diccionario del dialecto de Asturias. Gijón, 1790.
• Instrucción para la formación de un Diccionario bable. 1801.
• Apuntamiento sobre el dialecto de Asturias (Instrucción para la formación de un Diccionario geográfico de Asturias). 1804.
• Origen e introducción de la agricultura en Asturias. Bellver Castle, 1804.

Writings on art

• Discurso pronunciado la Sociedad de Amigos del País de Asturias, sobre la necesidad de cultivar en el Principado el estudio de las ciencias naturales. Oviedo, May 6, 1782.
• Plan general de mejoras propuesto al Ayuntamiento de Gijón. 1782.
• Informe a la Junta General de Comercio y Moneda sobre el libre ejercicio de las artes. (According to Ceán, it is dated Madrid, November 29, 1785).
• Memoria del castillo de Bellver, descripción histórico-artística. Bellver Castle, 1805.
• Descripción de La Rioja. Gijón, April 16, 1795.

Writings commissioned by the various academies

• Discurso pronunciado a la Sociedad de Amigos del País de Asturias.
• Informes sobre obras de arte (Granada, Córdoba, Bellver, Asturias).
• Sobre la necesidad de unir al estudio de la legislación el de nuestra historia y antigüedades.
• Madrid, Academy of History, admission speech. Madrid, February 14, 1780.
• Elogio de las Bellas Artes. Delivered at the Academy of San Fernando. Madrid, July 14, 1781.

Legal writings

• Informe sobre la reforma de cárceles. Seville, 1768–1778.
• Apuntamientos y deducciones relativos al Derecho Público de España. Seville, July 1, 1774.
• Organización interior de los hospicios, respecto a su salubridad. Economic Society of Seville, 1778.
• Informe sobre indultos generales. Madrid, July 1, 1779.
• Reflexiones sobre legislación de España en cuanto al uso de las sepulturas. Presented at the Academy of History in 1781.
• Discurso sobre la necesidad del estudio de la lengua para comprender el espíritu de la legislación. Madrid, September 25, 1781.
• Informe sobre la disciplina eclesiástica antigua y moderna relativa al lugar de las sepulturas. Madrid, May 9, 1783.
• Discurso para ilustrar la materia de un informe pedido por el Real y Supremo Consejo de Castilla a la Sociedad Económica de Madrid, sobre el establecimiento de un Montepío para los nobles de la Corte. Madrid, 1784. Rice.
• Memoria para el arreglo de la policía de los espectáculos públicos y sobre su origen en España. Gijón, December 29, 1790. He presented it in revised form on June 11, 1796.
• Representación a Carlos IV sobre lo que era el Tribunal de la Inquisición. 1798.
• Informe sobre la abolición de la prueba del tormento. Seville, 1768–1778.
• Plan de una disertación sobre las leyes visigodas. Madrid, 1785.
• Exposición sobre la organización de las Cortes. 1809.

Political writings

• Memoria leída en la sociedad Económica de Madrid sobre si se debían o no admitir en ella las señoras. 1786.
• Primera representación a Carlos IV. Valldemossa, Majorca, April 24, 1801.
• Segunda representación a Carlos IV. Valldemossa, Majorca, 1802.
• Representación a Fernando VII. Majorca, April 18, 1808.
• Memoria en defensa de la Junta Central. Santa Cruz de Ribadulla, May 2, 1811.
• Informe sobre las causas de la decadencia de las sociedades económicas. Madrid, October 3, 1786.
• Reflexiones sobre democracia. (n.d.).
• "Escritos políticos y filosóficos"

Biographical documents

• Notas biográficas. Cabarrús; Campomanes. Madrid, 1782.

Translations

• Translation of Voyage dans l’Egypte pour decouvrir les sources du Nil, by James Bruce. 1795.
• Extract and translation of the Historia de la Cartuja de Valldemuza, by Fray Alberto Puiz. 1801.
• Translation in hendecasyllabic romance verse of the tragedy Ifigenia, by Racine. 1794.

Botany

• Tratado de botánica mallorquina o Flora medicinal de Valldemosa. (1801).

Bibliography

• Caso, José. Vida y obra de Jovellanos. Ed. Cajastur. Oviedo, 2004.
• Sánchez Corredera, Silverio. Jovellanos y el jovellanismo. Pentalfa Ediciones, Oviedo 2004.

External links

• Fundación Foro Jovellanos del Principado de Asturias
• Portal dedicated to Jovellanos, recovered from web.archive.org, with links to several biographies.
• Jovellanos portal at the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library
• Jovellanos Birthplace Museum in Gijón (Asturias, Spain)
• Bibliography on Jovellanos.
• Digital library on Jovellanos, from the Instituto Feijoo del Siglo XVIII.
• Complete Works of Jovellanos in digital version (University of Oviedo)
• Video of the statue dedicated to Jovellanos in Gijón
• Digitized works of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain
• Archived page of the website of his bicentenary, 2011
• Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos in the Virtual Library of Polygraphs of the Ignacio Larramendi Foundation
• Biography in the Diccionario Biográfico of the Royal Academy of History, by Gonzalo Anes