page_title: Juan Vázquez de Mella
section_title: Provincial columnist to Madrid editor-in-chief (before 1890)
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Vázquez de Mella / Provincial columnist to Madrid editor-in-chief (before 1890)
caption_attribution_description: Español: Número 4019 de El Correo Español
context_page_description: Juan Vázquez de Mella y Fanjul was a Spanish politician and a political theorist. He is counted among the greatest Traditionalist thinkers, at times considered the finest author of Spanish Traditionalism of all time. A politician active within Carlism, he served as a longtime Cortes deputy and one of the party leaders. He championed an own political strategy, known as Mellismo, which led to secession and formation of a separate grouping.
context_section_description: Juan was orphaned by his militantly Liberal father when entering the teenage period; despite Carlist antecedents among his paternal uncles, there is neither any indication that he inherited Traditionalist outlook along the family line. Scholars tend rather to suspect that the young Vázquez de Mella embraced it during the academic period. For some time he served as secretary to professor José Fernández Sánchez, an acquaintance of Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo; de Mella had access to their lengthy correspondence and got exposed to the doctrine. He left the University already as a Traditionalist; unlike most Carlists, he espoused the concept not by means of inheritance or intuition, but as a result of intellectual speculation. In the early 1880s he was first noted in public realm as an orator in the compostelan Ateneo and in Academia Católica de Santiago.
  At unspecified time though probably in the mid-1880s de Mella commenced co-operation with some conservative periodicals; the two identified are La Restauración, a Madrid weekly managed by Francisco de Paula Quereda, and the Santiago daily El Pensamiento Galaico. Little is known about his contributions, as there are almost no copies of both preserved in the archives. At least his Pensamiento pieces must have made an impact beyond Galicia, as they were noticed in Madrid; this refers in particular to a series of vehemently anti-Nocedal articles, published in wake of the Integrist breakup from Carlism in the late 1880s. As the breakaway Nocedalistas controlled El Siglo Futuro, previously the national party mouthpiece, the claimant Carlos VII decided to set up a new semi-official Carlist newspaper; the daily materialized in 1888 as El Correo Español, desperately short of good contributors. According to some scholars it was the Carlist political leader, Marqués de Cerralbo, who invited de Mella to contribute; according to the others, it was rather the manager of Correo, Luis Llauder.
  At the turn of the decades de Mella started to contribute to Correo as a correspondent; in the meantime he grew to manager of El Pensamiento Galaico, the job held until 1890. Initially he kept publishing under various pen-names, most of his essays having being doctrinal ones, with some focus also on society and regional establishments. At some point de Mella was invited to move to Madrid and enter the editorial board, the offer he accepted. When Correo achieved stability and moved out of its teething phase, Llauder decided to return to Barcelona; his position of director was assumed by the former redactor jefé, Leandro Herrero, whose job was in turn offered to de Mella. Either in 1890 or 1891 de Mella became editor-in-chief, formally subordinate of Herrero, but politically instructed to follow the guidance of Cerralbo. Scholars are not certain who followed whom; they note that already at that point Cerralbo was visibly impressed by de Mella and tended to accept his authority of a theorist.
caption: El Correo Español
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