Carlos Seco Serrano, dean of Spanish historians and one of the great experts in Modern and Contemporary History , has died this Sunday in Madrid, at the age of 96, the Royal Academy of History has confirmed to Efe.

Although the cause of death has not been corroborated, according to various media, everything indicates that it was due to an infection derived from the coronavirus.

The son of a military man, loyal to the Second Republic and shot by the rebels at the beginning of the Civil War, Seco Serrano (Toledo, 1923) spent his childhood in Tetuán, Villa Alhucemas and Melilla, where he studied Baccalaureate and lived his adolescence.

In 1941 he moved to Madrid to study Philosophy and Letters at the Central University, where he finished his studies four years later with an outstanding and extraordinary prize. In 1950 he obtained his doctorate in History with the thesis on Diplomatic Relations between Spain and Venice in the time of Philip III , with which he obtained outstanding cum laude.

Between 1953 and 1957 he worked as an assistant to the chair of General History of America and in charge of the History of Geographical Discoveries at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Madrid. In this last year he was appointed professor of General History of Spain in Barcelona and in 1974 he chose the chair of Contemporary History of Spain and went to the Faculty of Information Sciences in Madrid, where he retired in 1989.

In February 1978 he was elected academic of the Royal Academy of History, of which he was a member since 1967. His entrance speech was on Eduardo Dato's political and human profile. He also belonged to the Academy of Good Letters of Barcelona, ​​and in May 1980 he directed the exhibition Alfonso XII and his time in Seville.

In addition, the Spanish historian was holder of the Luis García de Valdeavellano Chair of History of Spain, of the Fundación Duques de Soria, based at the University of Valladolid, during the academic year 2003-2004. Apart from the work for which he received the 1986 National History Prize for Militarism and Civilism in Contemporary Spain (1985), Carlos Seco Serrano is the author of eight other books: Society, Literature and Politics in the 9th century ; Carlist triptych ; Contemporary era ; Godoy, the man and the politician ; History of Spanish conservatism ; Alfonso XIII's Spain , awarded the Villa de Madrid Prize for Essay and Humanities José Ortega y Gasset; the compilation of articles of diverse origin From the times of Cánovas , and Alfonso XII.

Former head of section of the Fernández de Oviedo Institute of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Seco Serrano has given numerous conferences, such as the one dedicated to The Regency: Completion and decline of the Canovas construction , which in 1997 closed the cycle celebrated in the Ramón Areces Foundation on the centenary of the murder of the politician and intellectual Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.

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