page_title: Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano
section_title: Author
hierarchical_section_title: Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano / Author
caption_attribution_description: Español: Su Santidad el Papa Juan Pablo II desembarcando del B-727 matrícula EC-CBC nombre Navarra, a su llegada a Santiago de Compostela en su primer vuelo a España donde permaneció del 31 de octubre al 9 de noviembre de 1982.
context_page_description: Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano was a Spanish entrepreneur, Carlist militant and author. Larramendi was as a longtime head of MAPFRE and is often counted among 100 most influential Spanish businessmen of the 20th century. He is recognized as sponsor and organizer of multifold initiatives related to Hispanic culture, mostly in Latin America. He briefly rose to Carlist executive, but is better known as engaged in promotion of Traditionalist heritage.
context_section_description: Larramendi fathered 8 books and published some 50 articles, mostly in specialized reviews. Majority are related to business, topped by Manual básico de seguros (1982). Most readers, however, would find his works on society and politics more interesting.
  Tres claves de la vida inglesa (1951) was result of Larramendi's spell in London. Formally discussing legal, commercial and insurance systems, the book was praise of the British social and state model; it was hailed as merger of efficient economic order and organization on the one hand, and traditional values and structures on the other. The British system was judged as balanced, especially compared to the French model, stemming from bureaucratic illusions as to state and its powers to build a new order. Fascination with British sense of continuity and intermediary institutions acting in-between state and society remained with Larramendi until the end of his life; Tres claves stands out as an anomaly in usually anti-British Carlist thought, lambasting Albion as a hotbed of Liberalism, plutocracy, freemasonry and greed.
  In 1977 Larramendi published Anotaciones de sociopolítica independiente, intended as discussion of post-Francoist Spain. The work was a non-belligerent advance of social-Catholic vision. In practical terms it vaguely proposed a hybrid regime with some regulatory mechanisms working as checks-and-balances versus politics decided by universal suffrage, thought most Francoist institutions were deemed useless. Francoism in general was acknowledged with mixed feelings as a system which ensured peace and socio-economic transformation, but was plagued by corruption and vengeance. Greatly in favor of Spanish integration within the West European structures, it also proposed "la gran Europa de raza blanca y herencia cristiana" as political entity for the 21s century. A thread repeatedly coming back was anxiety about a would-be Communist penetration of Spain, though the book acknowledged Socialism in its "non-maximalist" incarnations as an option to be discussed.
  In 1992 Larramendi published Utopía de la Nueva América, result of his American fascinations; the key thesis advanced was that Iberoamérica and Angloamérica would merge to create a new cultural entity. In the mid-1990s he commenced his written opus magnum, a series of 5 volumes intended as a response to perceived threats of global imbalance, disintegration of Europe and fragmentation of Spain; it was supposed to advance a proposal of "reforma operativa del estado español" though also to address general problems. The series was finally down to 3 books, almost 750 pages in total: Crisis de sociedad: reflexiones para el siglo XXI (1995), Panorama para una reforma del estado (1996) and Bienestar solidario (1998). All were holistic and on the other hand fairly detailed attempts to re-define key public institutions in line with the vision of Christian solidarity; Crisis tended to be more historical and theoretical, Panorama discussed key state operation areas, while Bienestar focused on key public structures, mostly related to education, labor and insurance.
  The final and possibly most popular book was Así se hizo MAPFRE (2000), discussing history of the company against fairly wide background of personal life and general business and social environment.
caption: Pope John Paul II when visiting Spain, 1980s
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