Writer, journalist and geographer, Gonzalo de Reparaz is a secondary character that nevertheless appears with insistence in some of the most important events that happen in Spain between 1880 and 1939, having also a long professional trajectory.
Gonzalo de Reparaz was born in Oporto in 1860 son of Antonio de Reparaz (1833-1886), musician and composer of Basque origin, and is a far descendant, by maternal way, the General Carlist Zumalacarregui.
After traveling his first 10 years of life, together with his family, along the peninsula accompanying his father in his musical career, in 1870 he will begin his student life in Coimbra focusing on the geography studies, although he will never complete the race. In these years he will come into contact with prominent members of the Portuguese regenerationism, known as “Generation of 1870”, among which Oliveira Martins stands out, and is influenced by his thought as well as by the colonial wave that was lived in Portugal of The time.
In 1881 and due to the economic problems of his family and the lack of expectations in Portugal, Reparaz will move to Madrid, where he began his career as a journalist. In these early years in Madrid his ideas regenerationists and Africanist will lead him to come into contact with the main Spanish regenerationists, especially Joaquín Costa, through the free institution of education. The Spanish regenerationism of the moment was especially focused on the promotion of africanism and the need for Spain to refound itself through the assimilation of Morocco through tactics of peaceful penetration and Reparaz will unite Entusiasticamente to him.
Following the active spirit that characterized them Costa, Reparaz and other members of the free institution will be incorporated to the geographical Society of Madrid in 1883, with the aim of dynamizing their colonist activity and take it out of the speculative passivity that had shown until then. Fruit of this entry will be the organization of the Congress of Colonial and Mercantile geography in 1883 and the creation of the Spanish Society of Africanists and colonists in 1884, in which Reparaz participate as a founding member. This society had as its objective to act as lobby of pressure before the government and the main economic powers, but it will fail in its commitment to the passivity of both and since the Congress of Berlin of 1885 the Regenerationists are going away from the Africanist idea…
