Time backs up the predictions contained in La matemàtica de la història.

Alexandre Deulofeu, author of a cyclic theory of history.

The uncommon republican intellectual Alexandre Deulofeu (1903-1978) had rare political intuitions which are now reaching their fulfilment: the Chinese ascent, the fall of the USSR, and the re-unification of Germany.

His impressive work, La matemàtica de la història, whose creation lasted all his life and which he developed in eight volumes (the original project foresaw twenty-two) and is now the object of a collective study being developed by historians Enric Pujol and Jordi Casassas, economist Francesc Roca, and Deulofeu’s grandson, Juli Gutièrrez Deulofeu. The book has been published by Brau Edicions under a title homonymous with that of the original work of the author to whom tribute is now being paid.

A student of pharmacy and chemistry in Madrid in the twenties —there Dalí introduced him to García Lorca, but he had a fixed idea in his head—, an active Catalanist republican in Figueres in the thirties —during the Civil War he was the mayor of the town— and in exile in France until 1947, Deulofeu spent the last thirty years of his life in his home town as an unobtrusive chemist, immersed in the writing of a grand, ill-understood, intellectual work.

But, what is La matemàtica de la història? It is a cyclic theory in the style of Oswald Spengler (1830—1936), the author who had the greatest influence on Deulofeu, much more than his coeval Arnold J. Toynbee (1884—1975). With respect to these writers, what is most original in the works of the Figueres scholar is that he not only fixes historic cycles, but also, under the influence of his knowledge of biology, he defines them with mathematical precision. Therefore, according to the author, every civilisation lasts 5.100 years divided in three periods of 1700 years each.

After 1934.

Deulofeu started to think out his theory very soon. In 1934 in his first book, Catalunya i l’Europa futura, he already proclaimed his historical law, on whose base he «announced the immediate decline of England, France and Spain, and submitted a brilliant and genuine theory concerning a future world confederation», as indicated by his grand-son, who also indicates that «at Montpellier in 1939, at the Résidence des Intellectuels Catalans, he astonished his scholarly audience by announcing the future power of Germany, coincidental with the fall of the ancient European empires, and the end of the Russian empire, that is the failure of communism and of the Marxist experience». The facts which happened immediately after that announcement did not confirm his predictions, but if we look at them to-day, in the long run he got them right.

In 1976 he kept feeling right about his predictions and he improved it: «France and England have lost their rank as great powers without any possibility of recovery. Germany is in full recovery and will carry on its upward process, whose most important and direct political feature will be the unification of the two Germanys, which will happen about the year 2000, while at the same time the USSR empire will break down. simultaneously there will start a great depression of the USA. Japan finds itself in a process parallel to that of the German empire that means that it will be getting near to its imperial fulfilment, while the actual attacking empire will be the very recent Chinese empire, which will seize the USSR territories in Asia».

That’s a mouthful! The only thing missing is the Islamic issue, after which we have the full political to-day’s world stage perfectly outlined.

The end of Spain in 2029.

Alexandre Deulofeu applied his peculiar and exact clock of history to the situation of the Spanish state, and forecast the end of the old empire for 2029, when it would become a confederation of independent states, according to this visionary scientist. Doesn’t this sound like the federal constitution advocated by ERC, including the right of secession? For sure the republican party knows the predictions of its ancient militant, and, besides, is ready to do whatever is necessary to make them true.