In love with Granada and Ceuta, the places where he spent his childhood and adolescence, José Szmolka Clares was first a student and afterwards a professor of the Universidad de Granada, which today pays homage in a book with more than 900 pages, to his works as professor and researchers in the area of history.
This volume, which has just been published by the UGR Press, has been coordinated by professors Antonio Luis Cortés Peña, Miguel Luis López-Guadalupe Muñoz and Francisco Sánchez-Montes González, who say that the modesty of the researcher lead “people who only knew him superficially to undervalue his height as a researcher, a task in which he always showed an inestimable wittiness when it came to judging our past and understanding the problems of our time. Corroborating these qualities, his master, don José Cepeda, expressed not a long time ago that he wrote «in a transparent clear style, with a rich prose, with a rhythm that never tires», always finding the best way to solve problems that were confused up till then”.
When he finished his studies in the UGR, José Szmolka Clares started his professional career as assistant lecturer in the lecture rooms of the old Faculty of Humanities of calle Puentezuelas; afterwards, he passed as associated lecturer to the Colegio Universitario of Jaen, from which he returned as a professor to the faculty of Granada in the ear 1985-1986. He always had a pleasing memory of his years in Jaen, and certain nostalgia of that period.
According to the coordinators of the book, in which more than sixty experts and historians have participated, “the death of a close friend always causes distress and certain uneasiness, which in the case of Pepe Szmolka has not stopped growing all through the months passed since he is not among us. In his absence his figure has only been revalued and we perceive every day with more and more his great humanity and his deep sense of friendship; it all accompanied by an extraordinary naturalness which always made him keeping in the background, something that he chose consciously, as he did not pursue any type of post or distinction that involved renouncing, even in the slightest proportions, his longing for independence and, at the same time, his desire for not arousing in other people the sad defect of envy. With his disappearance we have lost a friend, something very difficult to find and, in addition, a man who knew how to give himself to the others when they needed him and whose main features, far from mere words, were his goodness, his honesty and his sense of solidarity with the weak.”
In the vast research legacy of José Szmolka Clares is singular for his contribution to the knowledge of the Granada mudejar and the figure of the Conde de Tendilla, one of his most outstanding facets in his varied historiographical production, unravelling some of the most unknown aspects –and therefore, more demagogically manipulated– of those years of Granada’s past. “We must warn–in the words of the editors– that this dedication did not come to narrow-minded localist views, as professor Szmolka always connected local or regional history with the wider parameters of the policy and socioeconomic life of the kingdom of the Catholic Monarchs. His first work in this field dates from 1969 and is titled «The removal of the corpse of Queen Isabel and her primitive burial». Afterwards, he made numerous contributions about that period from different perspectives, but always tackled with a global concept of the period”.
A wide historical production
In the field of the Mudejar question, the researcher and professor published, among others, a series of titles that, according to the coordinators of this volume, have been useful to open new research lines: «The subject Moslems from Granada as a result of their conversion» (1975), «The beginning of the Hispanicization of the kingdom of Granada» (1976), «The new regime of Granada after the conversion of the Mudejars. Problems» (1983) or «The beginning of an impossible coexistence: The Mudejar Granada (1492-1502)» (1995) are some examples. Those subjects are connected with other lucid approaches to matters as different as economy, political structure, military problems or other repercussions derived from the conquest of the Nazari kingdom: «The reactivation of the economy of Granada as a result of the conquest» (1978), «The military organization of the ancient kingdom of Granada» (1979), «Nobility and authoritarianism in Andalusia» (1979), «The weakness of the Spanish logistical system and the crisis of 1500. The move of the infantry from Naples to Granada» (1993) and «The naval forces of the kingdom of Granada. An exception in the Spanish military organization of the beginning of the 16th century» (1993), «Repercussions of the conquest of Granada in the kingdom of Seville. The case of Écija» (1993) or «Civil and military institutions» (2000) are examples of the broad and attractive thematic spectrum he dealt with in his research works”.
Reference
Prof Antonio Luis Cortés Peña. Department of Modern and American History
Phone number. 958 243 656 / 958 243 660. E-mail. acortes@ugr.es
