The history of science in Spain. A critical overview

This paper analyses how the history of science evolved as an academic discipline in Spain throughout the twentieth century. It attempts to identify the kind of questions, historical periods, and subjects that were scrutinized and the kind of domestic and international influences that shaped historians' work. The article also devotes to longstanding public debates such as the commonly accepted thesis of the lack of a solid scientific culture over the past two centuries and its influence on the ways of writing the history of science. It aims to discuss how new trends from international mainstream historiography can be appropriated by local scholars, and how new questions and new research agendas have emerged in recent decades. The paper also integrates some relevant contributions to the historiography of Spanish science made by non-Spanish scholars.