More Than a Method: History and Outward Institutionalization of Post-Keynesian Economics in Spain

Since the first Spanish economists and their disciples rejected the historical and institutional approach, a methodological monoculture was imposed in Spain in the 1940s. It has operated until today as an effective restriction to everything that cannot be confined within it. At the end of the 1970s, Josep Maria Bricall imported post-Keynesian economics from France, where he had established contact with heterodox economists of diverse backgrounds thanks to the network of contacts established by de Bernis with Parguez — among others. Moreover, at the University of Barcelona, Bricall inspired a young Óscar Dejuán, who, after earning his PhD at the New School for Social Research, returned to Spain in the 1990s and began to publish and disseminate work on post-Keynesian economics. He was joined in this task by Eladio Febrero, Carlos Rodríguez Fuentes, Jesús Ferreiro, Felipe Serrano, Alfonso Palacio Vera, and Julián Sánchez, most of whom had been abroad and established contact with post-Keynesians. In the late nineties, Ferreiro and Serrano initiated a fruitful relationship with Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer that led to the organization of the International Conference Developments in Economic Theory and Policy (DETP) in Bilbao in 2004, which constituted an attempt to ‘institutionalize’ post-Keynesian economics in Spain.