El Viatge d’un Naturalista was published in fascicules in the Diari Catalŕ by Valentí Almirall, the “entrusted heir” of Rossend Arús who founded the first public library in Catalonia. This library houses the only complete collection of the newspaper La Humanitat (1871 – 1872), which popularised evolutionism on the context of new socialist, anarchistic and rationalist ideas.
In view of the heightened ideological debate brought about by evolutionism, proposals for striking a balance between this new paradigm and the biblical story arose. The conservative proposal put forward by the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was defended by Miquel Crusafont i Pairó (1910 – 1983), a scholar of fossil mammals. He founded a school based on the Institute of Palaeontology of Sabadell.