page_title: Melchor Ferrer Dalmau
section_title: Historian
hierarchical_section_title: Melchor Ferrer Dalmau / Historian
caption_attribution_description: Español: Periodista y político tradicionalista
context_page_description: Melchor Ferrer Dalmau was a Spanish historian and a Carlist militant. He is known mostly as principal author of a massive, 30-volume series titled Historia del tradicionalismo español, considered fundamental work of reference for any student of Carlism. Ferrer is recognized also as "periodista", chief editor of a national and a few local traditionalist dailies and contributor to a number of others. Politically he maintained a low profile, though periodically he was member of the party executive, and during internal party strife of the early 1960s his support might have tipped the balance in favor of the progressist faction.
context_section_description: Ferrer was educated to be an engineer and his professional career is usually described as this of a periodista, though perhaps not a very successful one. He demonstrated no particular interest in history until in the mid-1930s he penned a few articles discussing the Carlist past, especially La dirección política de la Comunión Tradicionalista desde 1876. According to some authors already during his idle years in Jaén of the Civil War he started gathering materials for a general history of Carlism. According to others he acted on suggestion of Fal Conde, who in 1939 proposed that to maintain Carlist identity in wake of political amalgamation into one Francoist state party, a general history of Carlism was badly needed. One more group of scholars claim that Ferrer and his collaborators commenced their work to counter Historia de la guerra civil y de los partidos liberal y carlista by Antonio Pirala Criado, a 19th-century study which until 1939 was the only work serving as the overall history of the movement. In 1939 a former Carlist militant Roman Oyarzun published the first concise historiographic account of Carlism, Historia del Carlismo, yet his work was greeted with mixed feelings among the Carlists. Many considered Oyarzun's book an unorthodox attempt and were near to dismissing it altogether, still calling for sort of an "official" Carlist history.
  In 1941 Ferrer and two other Seville-based authors, José F. Acedo Castilla and Domingo Tejera de Quesada, published in the local Editorial Católica Española the first volume of Historia del tradicionalismo español, intended as a general, in-depth history of Carlism. The team kept working on further volumes, though contribution of each of its members is difficult to gauge; Tejera passed away in 1944 yet all 11 volumes published until 1949 were attributed to all three authors. As Acedo left orthodox Carlism, starting volume XII Ferrer was named as the sole author. He managed to keep momentum and there were 18 volumes published in 15 years until 1956; during the following 5 years Ferrer completed subsequent 11 volumes, in 1960 releasing volume XXIX and bringing the narrative to the year of 1931.
  Ferrer kept working on consecutive volumes, yet he did not live to see them released. According to one author, the delay was caused by problems with censorship; eventually volume XXX, covering the period of 1931–1936, was edited posthumously by Enrique Roldán González and released in 1979, attributed to Ferrer only. In total Historia del tradicionalismo español amounts to around 9,300 pages; each volume includes some 50–150 pages of documental appendices and a bibliography. The series clearly focuses on military history; the First Carlist War is covered in 15 volumes and the Third Carlist War is treated in 4 volumes, while 32 years in-between both conflicts deserved just 5 volumes; 33 years of 1876–1909 are discussed in just 1 volume and 22 years of 1909–1931 in another. A concise version of the massive work was released by Ferrer in 1958 as Breve historia del legitimismo español.
caption: Domingo Tejera
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