Santiago Ramón y Cajal. El desafío de las cátedras

The public selection process for university professorships decisively shaped the trajectory of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Far from being a mere formality prior to his scientific consecration, they constituted a complex and extended process in which not only his talent was tested, but also his capacity for strategic adaptation, his intellectual discipline, and his understanding of the institutional rules of the Spanish university during the Restoration. This book reconstructs, based on exhaustive research in primary sources, the public examinations in which Cajal participated between 1877 and 1892: from his initial defeats to his attainment of the chair in Madrid. Through original records, regulations, testimonies, and memoirs, the author offers a rigorous microhistory that illuminates the actual workings of the nineteenth-century university system. Beyond the biographical account, this work raises a broader reflection: science does not advance solely through the power of ideas, but also through its capacity to find a place within specific institutions, with their rhythms, resistances, and balances. Understanding Cajal’s public selection processes means understanding the historical conditions that made the birth of modern science possible—and difficult—in the Spanish university.