page_title: Jesús Requejo San Román
section_title: Dictatorship
hierarchical_section_title: Jesús Requejo San Román / Dictatorship
caption_attribution_description: Español: Escudo de Acción Catolica
context_page_description: Jesús Requejo San Román was a Spanish Catholic militant, theorist of society and politician; the Catholic Church declared him a martyr and a candidate for sainthood. He was locally known in the provinces of Zamora and Toledo for his activity in education, charity and agrarian syndicalism. His key work, Principios de Orientación Social, made some moderate impact among Spanish Catholic intellectuals of the mid-1930s. Politically he evolved from centre-left to extreme right: initially Requejo supported the Romanonista dynastic Liberalism, then he turned towards accidentalist Acción Católica, and finally he joined Carlism. His career climaxed in the mid-1930s; since 1934 he headed the provincial Carlist structures in Toledo and in 1936 he served as a Carlist deputy to the Cortes.
context_section_description: As a property registrar in 1924 Requejo was reassigned to the town of Madridejos (Toledo province); at the time he was already an expert in real estate law and occasionally published in scientific periodicals. In Madridejos he resumed his trademark activities: charity and education. He donated money to various projects supposed to help the poor, funded scholarship grants for children and co-ordinated campaigns contributing to local culture. Banking on the 1926 secondary educational reform of Eduardo Callejo, Requejo launched the project of setting up a college in Madridejos and remained its moving spirit; the initiative was crowned with success in 1928, when Instituto Elemental de Madridejos became the second institute offering bachillerato education in the province.
  Though Requejo's public activity in Puebla de Sanabria was only moderately marked by Catholic flavor, in Madridejos it was increasingly formatted along religious lines. He paid for sacerdotal education of a number of seminarians from Madridejos, and some – including teenagers of African origin - indeed would later become priests. The couple engaged in Conferencia de San Vicente de Paúl and apart from various minor projects worked to set up a college for girls intending to enter religious orders. He donated royalties from Tierra Santa y Roma (1927), a book which provided account of his voyages, to Obra Pontificia de San Pedro Apóstol. In 1930 together with his wife they became godparents of José Luis Martin Descalzo, a local boy who would later gain name nationwide as a writer, publisher and priest. His zeal assumed a militant tone when he focused apostolic and missionary activities on the nearby town of Camuñas, a Manchegan centre of Protestantism known as “Spanish Geneva”; Requejo worked with the local parish to contain and possibly reduce its Protestant influence. In 1930 he was vice-president of a committee to erect monument to the Heart of Jesus in Toledo and took part in Congreso Mariano in Madrid.
  In the late 1920s Requejo gained in Madridejos the prestige he used to enjoy in Puebla de Sanabria, appreciated as a person who believed that education brings progress and the one who did his best to help the community he lived in. Due to his activities he gradually came to be known as the local “paladín de la cultura”. However, none of the sources consulted confirms Requejo's engagement in politics; he is not recorded as member of Unión Patriótica, Somatén or any other primoderiverista structures. After the fall of Primo he wholeheartedly engaged in Acción Católica; not only he attended its first National Congress of 1930 but remained on close terms with Herrera Oría and with cardenal Segura. Moreover, he prepared Notas para un ensayo de reorganización de la Acción Católica Española, a pamphlet which recommended new organisation of AC and in a competent, somewhat technocratic style dwelled on suggested main threads of its activity. Engagement in central AC structures soon became sort of his second job, especially that in the early 1930s Requejo was living partially in Madridejos and partially in Madrid.
caption: present AC logotype
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