In June 2018, Pedro Duque, an aeronautical engineer and astronaut who has been to space twice (in a U.S. space shuttle as well as on the international space station) became a minister in the new Spanish government. He was appointed Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities and gave clear signals that Spain will continue investing in research, development and international cooperation in the aerospace industry. Spain actually has a lot to be proud of in these areas. In the early history of aviation, two figures in particular dominate in an international context.
Spain has a long tradition in subjects such as physics, meteorology, astronomy, engineering and mathematics, but the country has also distinguished itself when it comes to concrete inventions in the fields of aviation and space research.
A key figure in early Spanish aviation was Count Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu (born 1895). The count was born and raised in Murcia, and trained as a civil engineer, pilot and aeronautical engineer. His most important contribution to aviation came as early as the 1920s, when he was still in his twenties. From about 1920 until the final test flight in 1923, he worked on developing a precursor for today’s helicopters, the so-called autogyro.
De la Cierva’s autogyro was an attempt to develop an aircraft that could fly safely at low speeds. His autogyro is simply put a propeller plane with a rotor mounted on top of the fuselage to give it better lift. It thus needed a much shorter runway than ordinary propeller planes. With Juan de la Cierva’s construction the first stable rotary-wing flight in history was achieved.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, de la Cierva, like many in the Spanish elite, sided with Franco and his so-called nationalists. Among other things, he helped the nationalists obtain the plane that carried the rebel general from the Canary Islands, where he was serving at the time, to Morocco. As is well known, General Franco was to initiate the uprising against Spain’s elected government from his base in North Africa.
Juan de la Cierva died in 1936, the same year that the Civil War broke out, but Franco would not forget the aviation pioneer and his contribution to the nationalists’ success. The same year the general came to power, i.e. at the end of the Civil War in 1939, de la Cierva was honored with a stamp with a portrait of him and his autogyro on it.
On the opposite side of the bitter Spanish Civil War was the famous space pioneer Emilio Herrera Linares. He was born in Granada in 1879 and trained as both a military engineer and a physicist before focusing his efforts in aviation. Linares was a versatile guy, he was interested in cosmology, high-altitude flying and in making an early computer.
Today we know him best as the inventor of what is considered by many to be the forerunner of the world’s first spacesuit. His suit should provide protection against pressure drops and surround the body with an artificial atmosphere. Admittedly, Linares primarily developed his suit for use during balloon flights in the stratosphere, an area that can be described as a belt or layer that envelopes the globe and extends between 10 km and 50 km above the earth’s surface. The conditions up there are tough for a human body due to low oxygen levels and very cold temperatures.
Unlike Count Juan de la Cierva, Linares was loyal to the Second Spanish Republic until his death. In the middle of the Civil War, in 1937, he was even appointed general. After the war, he held ministerial posts in several Spanish governments in exile and even served as president of the republic between 1960 and 1962.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, research and development in civil aviation slowed. But even later, under Franco, these disciplines experienced relatively difficult conditions.
In 1986, however, the Spanish parliament passed a new law, which put more ambitious research goals and added resources in place. Since then, the country has become an increasingly active participant in European and international space travel and is, among other things, a full member of ESA, the European Space Agency.
In 2018, ESA had a budget of 5.6 billion euros. Through its participation in ESA, companies in the Member States receive space-related contracts for approximately the same amount as the country contributes to the organization. It gives ESA countries the opportunity to develop world-class technology companies.
Want to see a list of Spanish companies listed with ASDSource or the AeroSpace and Defense Companies Source, just click here: ASDSource Spain.
And if you want more information about this subject, you can read this article from MIT Technology Review in cooperation with the Spanish Trade Commission: Spain’s Aerospace Industry.
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