page_title: Francisco Elías de Tejada y Spínola
section_title: Historian of political thought
hierarchical_section_title: Francisco Elías de Tejada y Spínola / Historian of political thought
caption_attribution_description: English: Hagonoy, Bulacan (Barangay, Hanga, San Agustin, including Good Friday processions in the [http://www.church.nfo.ph/list-of-parishes-roman-catholic-diocese-of-malolos/ Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish Churdch in San Pedro, Hagonoy, Bulacan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Malolos Vicariate of St. Anne along the Malolos-Paombong-Hagonoy Provincial Road).
context_page_description: Francisco Elías de Tejada y Spínola Gómez was a Spanish scholar and a Carlist politician. He is considered one of top intellectuals of the Francoist era, though not necessarily of Francoism. As theorist of law he represented the school known as iusnaturalismo, as historian of political ideas he focused mostly on Hispanidad, and as theorist of politics he pursued a Traditionalist approach. As a Carlist he remained an ideologue rather than a political protagonist.
context_section_description: As historian of political ideas Tejada clearly focused on broad Hispanic realm: he published studies on Castile, Catalonia, Navarre, Vascongadas, Extremadura, Valencia and Galicia, produced works intended as synthetic accounts for Spain and Portugal, dedicated separate works to Franche-Comté, Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, Flanders and Malta and wrote on Hispanic Florida, Texas and California, Portuguese holdings in Africa and Asia, the Philippines, Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Latin America in general. However, his comparatistic zeal made him discuss history of political thought also beyond the Lusitanic and Hispanic realm, e.g. in England, Arabic and Sephardic traditions, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Hungary, Japan, Thailand, Borneo, Ethiopia, Mozambique and elsewhere.
  Tejada strove to reconstruct and define a Hispanic political tradition and vacillated between the role of historian and theorist. His understanding of Hispanidad was based on the concept of Las Españas, seen as embodied in confederal political shape but its essence having been pre-state commonality. Relying on the unity in diversity recipé and incorporating local traditions, including the fueros, Hispanic tradition consisted of two features: Catholic vision of life combined with missionary universalist spirit pursued by a federative monarchy. According to Tejada Hispanidad was born in the Middle Ages, climaxed during the early España de los Austrias and declined due to centralist French tradition imported by the Borbones. His recurring subject was confronting Hispanic and European traditions, the latter born out of anti-Catholic, revolutionary, modernist thought and ultimately responsible for breaking the Hispanic community by force.
  Tejada understood political thought as a vehicle of sustaining tradition and ignored the imperial and ethnic dimensions of Hispanidad. He viewed the Hispanic political community as forged by will of the people forming its components, not as a result of conquest. Ethnic features were merely means of transmitting heritage and a nation was defined as commonality of tradition, as opposed to positivist definitions focusing on features like language, geography, regime etc.; it enabled implantation of Hispanidad in vastly different settings of the Philippines, Uruguay or Franche-Comté. Tejada saw the Hispanic tradition against a decisively providential background, e.g. when confronting Islam, Protestantism or the New World; scholars saw this approach as indebted to the vision of Giambattista Vico. Another frequently applied personal comparison was that to Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo: the two shared passion for Hispanic patrimony, massive erudition, reconstructive profile and Traditionalist leaning; Tejada's approach is dubbed "menéndezpelayismo".
  Tejada's first work on history of political thought appeared in 1937 and the last ones in 1977. Unlike in case of theory of law, he did not produce a synthesis which would stand out; his thought is scattered across countless books, articles or minor opuscolos. Single works to be listed first are perhaps case studies, the monumental Nápoles hispánico (1958-1964) and an unfinished Historia del pensamiento político catalán (1963-1965). Publications attempting more general overview to be named are La causa diferenciadora de las comunidades políticas (1943), Las Españas (1948) and Historia de la literatura política en las Españas (1952, published 1991).
caption: Hispanidad: observing Good Friday, 11,600 km from Madrid
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