My perspective -- What Constance thinks

Despite statements by Javier Solana that "I never planned my life," it appears that Javier Solana's life was planned -- if not by himself (improbable), by others. Obviously, Javier Solana was long and carefully groomed for his current positions. His chief inspiration appears to be his maternal grandfather, Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo. Hereafter, I will refer to him as “Madariaga.” To understand family inclinations, one must understand Solana's grandparents. His grandfather among his other prodigious writing, busied himself with all types of groups, right, left and center. He bragged that he could not be classified.i

Before beginning this portion of this series which will deal with the significant influences of Salvador de Madariaga on the life and work of his mentored grandson, I must confess that I enjoy reading Madariaga. He is very readable in the English and I suspect even more so in his native Spanish. I'm certain he would have been very entertaining as a guest at a dinner party. That he possessed as the French express it, savoir faire and the English, “great erudition,” is not at issue.

That de Madariaga was tempted and succumbed to the lures of occultism and its circles appears equally certain. That he supported world government and hated the USA for blocking same is a certainty. That he worked the left and right with near equal dexterity is most apparent. Regarding Spain's Civil War factions, Madariaga liked to describe himself as “equally distant from both sides.”

Madariaga was once amused to see his name on a list of Catholics teaching at England's Oxford University. He wrote sarcastically that he was so very happy that they could determine what he had never been able to determine for himself.

Indeed, it is difficult to determine where Madariaga sorted out on almost any issue. He was an apparent complex man of many seeming contradictions that make sense only if one understands, using New Age vernacular, a “third way” mentality. Madariaga denied being Jewish, but his writings express some sympathy for Europe's Jewish population and contempt for Nazi persecutors. He was accused of being Catholic, but his unwillingness to allow either of his two daughters, Nieves (Solana's mother) and Isabella to be baptized belies that theory.

He was supposedly opposed to violence; however, his spirited defense of the Mexican government's persecution of first its Catholics and eventually all professing Christianity belies that sympathy. He opposed national sovereignties and Communism with apparent equal vigor.

One thing is most certain. Salvador de Madariaga was an open proponent of a new world religion. It appears that Solana's interest in an Alliance of Civilizations may have had his seeds in his grandfather's instruction. Madariaga wrote in Morning without Noon that:

“Furthermore, I felt the need for some sort of a faith, a common faith that would hold together the world commonwealth. In the World Council of Religions there were some minds who then solicited my cooperation, guessing some sort of affinity; but in my view the several religious confessions, or as the English so wisely call them, denominations, seemed to me the equivalent of nations in the field of belief, so that they develop their own frontiers, definition and nationalism, even when they are not actually and openly nationalistic as is the case with some forms of Hinduism or Anglicanism.

“The religious slant in the search for an organic solution to the problem of peace seemed to me irrelevant. What was needed was a permanent state of consensus or at least of debate on what is going on in the minds of men, with a stress on synthesis. We needed a two-fold endeavour towards synthesis: one aiming at unity in the fundamental ideas on science, knowledge and the mutual illumination to be obtained from the confrontation of several disciplines and specialisations of our search fortruth; and another aiming at a unity or at least a harmony between the essential attitudes of so many peoples on earth . . .”[ii]