On 17 March 2006, the Proceedings of the IX Congress of Ibero-American Academies of History, published by the Rafael del Pino Foundation in its History Collection under the title "La América Hispana en los albores de la emancipación", were presented at the Royal Academy of History. The event was addressed by Gonzalo Anes, Director of the Royal Academy of History, the Academicians of History, Guillermo Céspedes and José Antonio Escudero López, and Amadeo Petitbò Juan, Director of the Rafael del Pino Foundation.
The Director of the Royal Academy of History began his speech by thanking the Foundation for the sponsorship that has made it possible "to bring together all the papers and communications of the IX Congress of Ibero-American Academies of History, held at this Institution and at the Rafael del Pino Foundation from 4 to 6 November 2004, and which was dedicated to Hispanic America at the dawn of emancipation".
Gonzalo Anes recalled that "Iberian action on the American continent from the end of the 15th century to the 19th century was unparalleled in human history, from Rome to the present day. Indeed, what the Iberians of those centuries achieved in America, what was learned there and what was transmitted there to the rest of Europe and the world, is perhaps the greatest contribution that a people can have made to what we call Western civilisation". In this sense, the Director of the Royal Academy of History insisted that the discovery of the New World came to expand "the spatial and human scope of the West, until the Atlantic Ocean became, as the Mediterranean was for Rome in Antiquity, a true Mare Nostrum, a sea proper to the Christian West".
For his part, the Director of the Foundation recalled that "Rafael del Pino y Moreno's wish was that the Foundation created by him, and which bears his name, would have among its aims to contribute to the knowledge of history, as well as to promote Hispanic cultural heritage", adding that "in our five short years of existence we have faithfully fulfilled his wish".
The Director of the Royal Academy of History went on to point out that Hispanic action meant, in the first place, the incorporation of almost the entire American continent into the cultural and scientific values and political and economic approaches of Western civilisation. Moreover, knowledge of America accelerated the tendency to replace the criterion or principle of authority as the basis of knowledge with those of observation and experimentation: "To describe and understand the realities of the New World it was not possible to rely on Greek and Latin knowledge, so that the criterion of authority was replaced by observation, which, together with experimentation, was what led to a more rapid and more general scientific and technical development".
Another essential feature of Iberian action in the Americas was urban development in those territories, which resulted in unprecedented economic growth: "This can be measured by the accelerated process of urbanisation, both in terms of the number and population of cities. In 1850 there were some 225 cities in Hispanic America. In the fourth decade of the seventeenth century they numbered 300. The population they housed, in those fifty years, had increased threefold and tended to be concentrated in the large cities, with straight, grid-like streets, large squares and magnificent buildings. During the 18th century, as in Europe, the main Indian cities improved with sewers, water supply, fountains, avenues, promenades and the paving of streets and squares". Parallel to this urban and economic growth was demographic growth, also driven by the general development of agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport and trade. "Mexico City grew from 115,000 inhabitants in 1790 to 130,000 in 1810. Havana, in the same years, went from 51,000 to 85,000. Buenos Aires, from 24,000 in 1778 to 55,000 in 1822. Caracas, from 24,000 in 1772 to 42,000 in 1812".
This growth, and the changes derived from it, were based on the political and economic unity formed by the Spanish-Indian group: "Free trade in the greater whole, applied in the last decades of the 18th century, allowed trade to intensify and favoured economic growth in both areas". However, the political evolution and the string of losses and handing over of some of those territories to other European powers, mainly England and France, meant that the inhabitants of overseas territories lost the certainty that the great Spanish-Indian grouping could be perpetuated.
"The defeat of Trafalgar and the invasion of Spain by Napoleon's armies favoured the rupture, foreseeable since the most enlightened inhabitants of cities such as Mexico, Havana, Lima, Quito, Popoyán or Caracas, influenced by the reading of French and English works, and by the declaration of independence in 1776, as an example, in the United States, began to organise themselves and to plan the possibility of following the example of the British colony to the north. All this, despite the fact that the Cortes meeting in Cadiz in 1810 would be attended by American deputies, who in the Constitution of 1812 would contribute to defining the Spanish nation as the gathering of all Spaniards in both hemispheres".
In conclusion to his words, the Director of the Royal Academy of History highlighted the fact that, at the beginning of the 19th century, the kingdoms of the Indies "enjoyed greater prosperity and a higher degree of civilisation than the independent United States three decades earlier. Divergences occurred after emancipation, very intensely in the 20th century, until they reached today's unevenness. As historians, we must be attentive to these facts in order to maintain our objectivity, without being influenced by the interests of the governments of the day. Research and independence of judgement must be our guiding principle, not pandering to the powers that be.
The content of this research materialised in the work "La América hispana en los albores de la emancipación" (Hispanic America at the dawn of emancipation) published in 2005.