Sixth International Congress of Entomology, Madrid (1935): politics and science
Using the Sixth International Congress of Entomology (Madrid, 1935) as an example, we present a representative case of science as a social construct and its importance to the history of the winning side of a war to construct a memory that supports its own version of events. The Congress was held prior to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939); however, the proceedings were not published until 1940. An examination of the proceedings and of archival documents show the exclusion of contributions initially intended for publication, particularly those by Spanish entomologists who were politically aligned with the Second Spanish Republic, the losing side, and who, as a result, suffered reprisals after the military conflict. These documents suggest that their contributions were rejected for reasons unrelated to their scientific investigations but due to the political inclinations of the editor.