Historia contemporánea (Jun 2020)
The Viscount of Eza, the Champion of Catholic Conservatism in the First Third of the 20th Century
Abstract
The Viscount of Eza was a distinguished politician of the Restoration and also excelled as agrarian and social reformer. But, above all, he was the champion of Spanish catholic conservatism in the first third of the twentieth century. On the one hand, he developed a huge and prolonged work as a publicist and disseminator of its ideological principles, with a constant presence in all the media of the time. A relevant example of this work was his campaign in favor of industrial consortiums, within the current of economic nationalism. On the other hand, he tried to put into practice the aforementioned principles from the various positions of power that he enjoyed, even in a so specific area as scientific knowledge: in particular, he was responsible for the conservative reorientation of the Spanish Association for the Progress of Science, truncating what could have been a good support for Spanish scientific development, and anticipating in a certain way the scientific policy of the first Francoism.
