Juan Vázquez de Mella
Juan Vázquez de Mella y Fanjul (Cangas de Onís, Asturias, 8 June 1861, Madrid 26 February 1928) is not very well known in the English-speaking world. Some of his contemporaries have been translated into English and are commonly, if loosely, associated with Spanish traditionalism. The late Frederick D. Wilhelmsen stressed in a number of occasions the distinction between the views of true traditionalists, like Vázquez de Mella, and a number of prominent conservatives.
Donoso Cortés (a study on him was published by Eerdmands with an introduction by the same Wilhelmsen), although close to traditional positions at the end of his life, is not properly a traditionalist author. This excellent study on Donoso by Robert A. Herrera proves that he was really a conservative, and shows the evolution of his thinking. A similar conclusion can be applied to Ramiro de Maeztu, whose masterpiece Defensa de la Hispanidad is traditionalist in essence, but is also in stark contrast with the views he had fostered in his earlier writings, and even at the beginning of his influential magazine Acción Española. Menéndez Pelayo, author of the encyclopaedic Historia de los heterodoxos españoles is usually listed as a traditionalist, but if one is to be precise he should be included amidst the conservatives.
What makes Vázquez de Mella stand tall and apart from his more or less conservative contemporaries is that he upheld the pure and undiluted principles of Saint Thomas Aquinas in politics, presenting them in a practical synthesis which is the best that Christendom has produced in recent times. In addition, he incarnated the same doctrine to a remarkable degree. He practised the virtue of pietas to heroic extremes both towards God and towards Spain, his fatherland. Vázquez de Mella served as representative for the Traditionalist party, known as Carlism, and from that position his arguments in favour of Tradition illuminated the political scenery of the turn of the century in the Spanish Parliament. Born in Asturias, the cradle of the Reconquista, he received a very solid thomistic education in Santiago de Compostela, under the protection of St. James the Great, and eventually obtained a doctoral degree in Law. Nonetheless, his comparatively few writings and his many oratory pieces cover the fields of History, Philosophy and Theology in a very illustrious manner.
He was a master of Rhetoric and Dialectics in the service of Truth. The beauty of his speeches remains unrivalled even now, when we can only read them, but his delivery is said to have been even more outstanding. During his first intervention in Parliament, the Conservative Prime Minister, Cánovas del Castillo, who had been distracted and not paying much attention to the ongoing debate, was deeply impressed by his eloquence, and turning his head towards Vázquez de Mella, asked in wonder: "Who is this monster?".
In character, he was a gentleman, a knight, of such a calibre that he earned the respect of his most declared critics and opponents, as parliamentary chronicles show. Perhaps an anecdote can illustrate the character of our man. Cánovas had become Prime Minister again and tried to neutralise Vázquez de Mella’s opposition by offering him a position in the cabinet. He sent his personal secretary to the house of don Juan Vázquez de Mella, whom he found so austere and sober that the secretary felt compelled to say: "You live as a monk and as a warrior. Your home and the way you live is your best speech, don Juan." Vázquez de Mella refused the proposition, because he would have no part whatsoever in the conservatism that was ruining Spain. In his mind, such was the deep disagreement between Tradition and Conservatism. When Cánovas saw Vázquez de Mella in the Parliament corridors again, he shouted at him: "I know, I know, don Juan, that lions cannot be hunted with a sling."
Vázquez de Mella represented the noble virtue of gravitas on top of his unscathed pietas. Indeed, in a country where the honour (and benefits) of becoming Minister are so high, he did not do just a little in refusing the position.
Spanish Tradition can boast of having been immune to Cartesian philosophy, as well as to any other kind of liberal contaminants and additives. And this in spite of the fluid communication across the Pyrenees with France, where many traditional authors have been somehow affected by the common diseases of rationalism or liberalism. Vázquez de Mella is the royal banner of a long succession of names such as Ramón Nocedal, Aparisi y Guijarro, Manterola, Gabino Tejado, Villoslada, Víctor Pradera, Elías de Tejada, Rafael Gambra and many others, who laboured to carry pure Catholic principles into the spheres of society and politics. Moreover, the close proximity of some Spanish conservative authors to Tradition (Donoso Cortés, Jaime Balmes, Sardá y Salvany, Ramiro de Maeztu, Menéndez Pelayo, etc.) is largely due to the strong magnet of Tradition in Spain. This proves once more that true doctrine preached incessantly always renders wonderful fruits.
20th century Carlist thinking is largely based on the work and systematisation done by Vázquez de Mella. Carlists have been the most traditional party in Spanish politics for almost 200 years. During the 19th century, Carlists fought three wars against the liberals, following the dynastic dispute after the death of King Fernando VII. They supported Infante Don Carlos, a convinced Catholic who wanted to continue the Catholic Monarchy of Spain against the liberal party, deeply influenced and supported by the French revolutionaries and other more secret enemies of Altar and Throne. Carlism embodies traditionalism in Spain, and its soldiers and politicians have been staunch defenders of the Catholic way of life that the introduction of liberalism had broken. At the turn of the century, they gathered again under the leadership of Vázquez de Mella and consolidated as a small but significant political force, setting the stage for their resistance to Communism and Anarchism during the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, their participation was paramount to win the Crusade of 1936-1939 –considered by them as the 4th Carlist War–.
Juan M. Santos & Andrés Hermosa