For a hundred years, Cajal has dwelled in his garden.
On 24 April 1926 the sculpture of Cajal was inaugurated in Madrid’s Retiro Park. The Academy of Medicine had commissioned the work from Victorio Macho in 1922 to honour Don Santiago on his retirement at seventy. The imposing piece, in limestone, marble and bronze, was funded by public subscription.
Cajal did not attend the inauguration. He disapproved of tributes paid in life, of his likeness with a bare torso, and of the dictatorship. The speech by Primo de Rivera was booed by the crowd. Despite the ban and the heavy police presence, students, disciples and friends gathered that same afternoon beside the monument to make visible, together with the Ateneo’s board, their support for the master and their opposition to the regime. Some paid for that daring with exile, foreshadowing the banishment of the sculptor and of many artists, scientists and collaborators of Cajal after the Spanish Civil War.
Cajal chose to live in Madrid next to the Retiro, his favourite garden, where he enjoyed countless walks. It is possible that the biodiversity of this oasis, overflowing with life and beauty, reminded him of his origins in Navarre and Aragon, as well as of the images of his histological preparations under the microscope; walking among its trees and flowers, he may have felt himself the protagonist of his science-fiction tales, travelling through the interior of the neuronal forest that he described with so many botanical metaphors.
The sculptural group depicts Cajal between the fountains of life and death, supported by Minerva, goddess of wisdom and the arts. In 1935 it was immortalised on a 50-peseta banknote issued during the Second Republic by the Bank of Spain. That same year, the park was declared a Site of Cultural Interest. Cajal’s Legacy had to wait until 2024 to receive the same level of recognition and protection.
Madrid’s Retiro Park is recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It is no coincidence that it hosted the headquarters of the first Institute of Biological Research on the Cerro de San Blas. It is part of the Paisaje de la Luz (Landscape of Light), together with the Paseo del Prado and the Landscape of Arts and Sciences, which includes Madrid’s main National Museums, such as the Prado, the Reina Sofía Contemporary Art Centre and the Museum of Anthropology, which housed Cajal’s laboratory for three decades.
Culminating the Ramón y Cajal Research Year 2022-2025, and coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Ramón y Cajal Fellowships, the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities announced that the future Cajal Museum will have its epicentre at the Aula Cajal.
The headquarters of the Cajal National Museum will connect the Network of Cajal Spaces and will host the Legacy of Santiago Ramón y Cajal and that of the Spanish School of Neurohistology, which have been part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World since 2017. It will be a beacon of science, art and hope for the world. It will illuminate the Paisaje de la Luz from the heart of the Faculty of Medicine, where Cajal carried out his fundamental activity, educating as a master of masters dozens of generations.
Following in Cajal’s footsteps, it is highly advisable to cultivate the arts and to walk through the Retiro, or through any other natural setting, appreciating and enjoying its beauty. The World Health Organization recognises the value of Social Prescribing and its positive impact on people’s health; scientific evidence confirms that walking in nature or pursuing artistic activities contributes to wellbeing and to the healthy longevity of body and mind. If we set our minds to it, we can sculpt our brains by reconnecting our butterflies of the soul with the gardens of nature.
Cajal’s seeds keep sprouting and bearing fruit in the lives of those who have been fortunate enough to know his ideas, scientific discoveries, technological developments, works of art and social commitment. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to keep cultivating a world that continues to flourish with science, art and conscience; the community is the true Garden of Cajal.
Text by Juanjo Rubio, Distinguished Cajalian, published on the centenary of the inauguration of the monument to Santiago Ramón y Cajal in Madrid’s Retiro Park (24 April 1926).
