Deulofeu had already foreseen the end of Spain.

Pages 6 to 7.

Histories of a short time ago.

The Mathematics of History, of Alexandre Deulofeu i Torres, the scholar from Empordà, foretold several decades ago the total hegemony of Germany in a New Europe, while England and France would be impoverished, and by 2029 the breaking up of Spain in to a confederation of small states.

Deulofeu had already foreseen the end of Spain.
Genís Sinca.

The morning beam of sun light penetrates crossways inside the cabin. It shows the out of tune presence of a black grand piano, a sideboard full of dusty books, four armchairs in a corner, a round table, and, above all, the oval mirror which must have reflected the image of this inimitable character thousands of times, his body lined crosswise by light, as if the sun itself had decorated him, with its natural gift to see what others cannot see: an illumination which allows him to see the future, to make with history a hallucinatory game of mirrors, as if mankind were actually a living being and not an inanimate entity.

And so, after his return from his French exile in 1947, when Germany had been crushed by the allies, he affirms that the country not only will rise again from its own ashes, but that in a short time it will take a leading role in Europe. And still more: based on a number of formulae, diagrams and parables, following Deulofeu’s calculations, the powerful Soviet empire has its days numbered, the U.S.S.R. is going to disappear about the year 2000, the Berlin wall will fall, and the victorious countries of World War II will simply break up. In France there will be a civil war, the Falkland Islands will go back to Argentina, the cities of Ceuta and Melilla will go back to Morocco, the Canary Islands will become independent, and China, one of the most powerful empires on earth, will invade the eastern half of Russia westwards, until Germany will put it in its place; the U.S.A. will suffer a disaster (they might go through an invasion), and even if they will recover they will not be able to avoid Argentina to spring up again, contrary to all expectations, and to become a great world power.

Alexandre Deulofeu, in the cabin he himself built at Mas d’Ordís./Family archives.

Many tell him he is mad, another illuminist of Empordà. But Deulofeu, who is a chemist, a physicist, a pharmacist by profession in the Figueres pharmacy founded by his father, is the perfect image of the gifted person. During his long experience of exile in France (1938-1947), when he stops seeing his wife (Pepita Gratacòs) and his two daughters during nine years, he spends his time studying history, making research in the Bordeaux and Toulouse libraries, and besides he has smelt the trends of the present times, working as a peasant (he plants trees without any soil using a number of chemical fertilizers), as a workman in a French aircraft factory, as a strolling musician (he plays the piano and the violin) with a group called Les étoiles de l’Espagne. In short, he has devoted himself to live with a drive which allows him to perfect the project he had already started with the publication, in 1934 before going into exile, of Catalunya i l’Europa futura, impelled by an eagerness which knows no rival. Still very young he goes into politics. He becomes a member of the Spanish parliament for ERC, and in 1937 he is the mayor of Figueres during some months. His exile at Montpellier, in France, grants him an essential thing: the necessary time to undertake a research task which is very large, terrific, on a very sound basis, which allows him to mix biology with history. In a natural way, diagonally crossed by this sun stripe which marks him as a visionary, some sort of time accountant, he studies the chronology of Egyptians, Greeks, Sumerians, the life span of empires, and the key moments to reach the final conclusion: the empires, the civilizations, are like living beings, they are born, they grow, they mature and then disappear.

The evolution of the Spanish empire, according to Deulofeu.
Source: La segona onada imperial a Europa (The second imperial surge in Europe).

He discovers that they last an almost exact period of 5.100 years, split into three phases of 1.700 years: primary phase, fullness and decline. Within these phases, the empires in each civilization (Romans, Byzantines, as much as the French or the Spanish ones), all of them without exception, go through the same process up to the end, for an exact period of 550 years, split up in perfectly accountable phases which, superimposed, mirrored in each other, become exact replicas, as the Roman with the USA, with the same biological cycles: a first aggressive process (federal structure), a great depression, a second aggressive process (an absolutist phase, often restrained by a military disaster), a phase of conservative fullness (Germany at present), with a final, irreversible, disintegration (France, England and Spain, even if at different times).

Following these 550 years of natural biological cycle, the Spanish empire, according to Deulofeu, is reaching its end: it started in 1479, and according to calculations the expiry date indicates 2029. Therefore, at present Spain is at the end of the last, inescapable, cycle: disintegration, the end of the unitary imposition and the onset of a chaotic phase, full of internal political divisions, where the central government will experience in a really dramatic way the evidence of the imperial downfall in favour of the peoples of the peninsula, for so many years submitted. A decentralization process which will transform the State into a confederation of small Hispanic communities, which will be on very good terms and in full fellowship among them: Catalonia, Andalusia, Castile, the Basque Country, Aragon, Valencia, Galicia, and including Portugal, depending on their individual matureness and always under the protection of Germany, they will live years of political, economical and cultural fullness after a period of a frightful chaos, with unexpected events, such as the loss of the last colonies in Africa and, perhaps, also the independence of the Canary Islands.

Luckily, Spain is at the end of the phase which the French empire (1486) has just started, with the loss some years ago of Algeria, with the forecast of unthinkable internal upheavals (according to Deulofeu, a civil war). The same is foreseen for the British empire (1536), which within a few years difference is earmarked to suffer also an unexpected and dramatic end in favour of emergent countries in this new planetary redistribution: the loss of the last colony, the Falkland Islands, in favour of Argentina. According to La matemàtica de la història, by the Figueres scholar, 16 volumes out of the 22 he had in mind, the south cone countries (Latin America) are on the verge of experiencing a process which will take them to heights they had never dreamed of.

But the most dramatic step forward is the one Deulofeu anticipated for Germany. After the fading away of the political frontiers of the nearby receding empires, Germany is earmarked to reach a protective, hegemony position (as it befits the conservative phase the country is undergoing), managing a New Europe with the more and more impoverished and depleted French and British nations.

The Empordà scholar, who saw how his books were not translated at all by the German, through the fear the German authorities had of publishing a new Mein Kampf, foresaw, however, that in times of upheaval Germany would have to step into the French territory not as a warfare operation, but as a police force, which might also have to be done in the disintegration of Spain.

Germany’s friendly attitude will spread all over Europe to keep the peace in places where they may have invested their capital, pervading all the European industries, mainly in tourist areas, especially the Mediterranean ones, with countless properties bought by Germans. Excepted the northern countries and the new Slavonic adhesions, the other nationalities satellites to Germany will have to swallow their imperial pride of the past to enter a period of general wellbeing under Germany’s direction, which will respect the peculiarities of the subject peoples with a mind completely opposed to that of Hitler which, on the other hand, is so particular of the fullness phase of all the empires.

Likewise, this boundless vitality will overflow towards Eastern Europe, and will reach its acme the moment the German empire will start inevitably its decline (2320), when in some place of Central Europe, perhaps to be found in the new Slavonic countries, will have birth a new culture which will put an end to the Western culture, and will start a period in which men will have to try and find, once again, the drive of a spirituality which will not bring them face to face and, above all, which will free them from the material greed which will be the cause of the downfall of the previous empires, including the German one.

Deulofeu worked out his theory, up to the task of Toynbee or Spengler (who both came after him), in order to give mankind the key elements to avoid wars and to establish peace. Even if virtually nobody took any notice of him, and his works are not to be found in bookshops, he carried on writing with the same enlightened enthusiasm than the first day, convinced that in the end people would find out that what he had been foretelling in La matemàtica de la història was starting to happen. Unlike Dalí, who was born in the street Monturiol, where the Deulofeu pharmacy is still to be found today, the Figueres pharmacist, in spite of the outstanding singularity of the biological cycles, wasn’t able to make himself recognized. Reflected in the oval mirror which is still to be found in the cabin that he had built for himself in a corner of his property at Mas d’Ordis (at nine kilometres from Figueres), he would suddenly take his car (a black Peugeot) and start alone (but sometimes with friends) his famous trips to make research in the territories he was interested in, without being in the least concerned that people should know about the importance of what he was doing. Of course he makes inquiries in Germany, he travels through Italy, and he even demonstrates, almost by chance, that the first Romanesque art was to be found at a few kilometres from home, in the church of Sant Pere de Roda (Catalunya: mare de la cultura occidental). This fact, in the sixties was the cause of much opposition.

Deulofeu at work in his pharmacy at Figueres./Family archives.

Only once, thanks to an Argentinean friend, Abelardo F. Gabancho, did Deulofeu receive a magnificent homage at Buenos Aires. The Catalan scholar, crossed diagonally by that light which decorated him, found himself suddenly surrounded by people who admired him. It is 1978, he is 75 years old, and during some days he summons unforeseen numbers of hearers to the farthest halls of the country. They know he is ill with cancer, and this fact adds a preparatory emotion to the professor’s speeches. With open mouth they learn of the unstoppable ascent of Argentina, the downfall of Spain and France, the economic power of Germany, and what’s more: with images and parables which they cannot answer back, he explains that the U.S.A. are just at the end of their first aggressive phase, of their true expansionist fever, at the end of a federalist phase which carries in itself the seed of disintegration and catastrophe. Deulofeu explains that the great American power will suffer endless misfortunes: the horrors of the French revolution will appear multiplied proportionally to the large American population and the country will suffer a great depression, the lowest stage of the empire, followed by a very probable invasion from outside, with all sorts of incidents. During a brief moment (this happens when people are introduced to the scholar from Empordà) the Argentineans feel confused. Deulofeu’s setting out is bold, but the mirrors of time speak for him: the man who speaks, even if the U.S.A.’s hegemony will again be staggering, is no fake, he is a scholar of a high international level. A short time after that they know of his death, and find, to their surprise, that the Spanish newspapers don’t mention it. At home, nobody knows him.