The Cañada Blanch Centre’s next seminar, War within the Spanish Church at the End of Franco’s Regime, presented by Dr. Eladi Mainar, will take place at 6pm on Thursday 28 January 2016.
When the Catholic Church began to adopt more liberal positions in the 1960s, the Franco regime had to react and did so ruthlessly. Since the Church had been one of the fundamental mainstays of the regime since the end of the Civil War, the strategy was clear: to derail the whole process of the Catholic Church’s move to a more democratic stance. The regime still had resources to stop the move to modernity in the Church, and the Franciscan Father Miguel Oltra was the right instrument to use. He was a friend of many in the Francoist authorities and even knew the Generalissimo himself. His involvement in the political and security structures of the regime was manifold. He was a close associate of the secret services and received secret reports. Oltra was thus a tool of Francoism against the new Spanish Church. His task was clear, to hinder the process of transition of the Church and its detachment from the regime. Together with other priests with the same ultra-conservative ideology, Oltra founded the Hermandad Sacerdotal Española (Spanish Sacerdotal Fraternity) and started a merciless war against the new Spanish hierarchy headed by Cardinal Tarancón.
Eladi Mainar completed his doctorate in History at the University of Valencia. Since 1985, he has been a teacher of Spanish history at the IES Montdúver de Xeraco School. Throughout his career he has written numerous articles and a number of books on the Spanish civil war, including L’alçament militar de juliol de 1936 a València (The Military Rising in Valencia in July 1936), first published in 1996, and most recently most recently El último cruzado español. El padre Oltra y el Franquismo. He has served as mayor for his hometown of Simat de la Valldigna in Valencia and runs a small publishing house, La Xara Edicions, which has published books since 1996 largely dedicated to historical themes. He is currently the director of the magazine L’Avenc de la Valldigna.
The event is free and open to the public. Seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
