Joaquín González Hidalgo, un malacólogo de los siglos XIX y XX. Desengaños y éxitos

A biography of Doctor Joaquín González Hidalgo (1839-1923), the main Spanish malacologist of the 19th and 20th centuries, is presented. In addition to important books on Spanish, South American and the Philippines molluscs, he described numerous mollusk species in the French journal Journal de Conchyliologie. This work aims to explain the complex personality of Dr. Hidalgo. We know that in addition to having lost his son in 1885, he had a series of problems to get his position as professor of malacology at the Central University, and his position in the Museum of Natural Sciences, positions that, for various reasons, were occupied by other people. For this, we have studied in detail the introductions that Hidalgo wrote in his different books, where we have found material, that although often repetitive, explains his relations with other Spanish and foreign naturalists. We also quote, often in quotation marks and in italics, his exact words, as well as we do with related texts from other authors. Another pretension of this article is to know why Hidalgo wrote, as introductions of many of his publications, hundreds of pages of revision of works of malacology that had been published so far, citing even works written in the sixteenth century. These revisions were called “Obras consultadas”. These revisions, long, sometimes disorderly, and always in constant change, were often accompanied by comments that Hidalgo poured against certain people, in chapters that he used to call “La malacología en España”. In short, this article suggests that the circumstances that accompanied Hidalgo in relation to the position he wanted to opt for, and the people who actually enjoyed it before him, are what made him repeat in his works the “Obras consultadas” until exhaustion, as well as the comments, sometimes very hurtful, against some Spanish colleagues, while repeating the praises that the foreign authors made of him and his work.