page_title: Francisco Estévanez Rodríguez
section_title: Early Integrist engagements
hierarchical_section_title: Francisco Estévanez Rodríguez / Early Integrist engagements
caption_attribution_description: English: Juan Olazabal Ramery
context_page_description: Francisco Estévanez Rodríguez was a Spanish politician, publisher, philanthropist, agrarian syndicalist and religious activist. He is best known as deputy to the Cortes during two terms between 1931 and 1936. Politically he was a Traditionalist, first member of the Integrist branch and then active within Carlism. He also published 2 small Burgos periodicals, continuously donated money and supported various charity schemes, strove to build rural trade unions which unite landholders and farmers, and was involved in numerous Catholic initiatives usually related to the Burgos archbishopric office.
context_section_description: Both paternal and maternal ancestors of Estévanez were Carlists. His maternal uncle Tiburcio Rodríguez could have been involved in the 1869 assassination of the Burgos anticlerical civil governor Isidoro Gutiérrez; he was later persecuted and joined headquarters of Carlos VII during the Third Carlist War. It is there where he met the father of Francisco, Aquilino, a young medic serving in the Carlist general staff. However, in the 1880s Aquilino Estévanez joined the Carlist breakaway faction, first known as Nocedalistas and later as the Integrists. The young Francisco was growing up as an Integro; already as a boy he was listed along his father and brothers as financially contributing to the homage of Félix Sardá y Salvany, one of the chief theorists of the group. In his teen years he started publishing in the Integrist Madrid daily El Siglo Futuro; the first piece identified comes from 1897. In 1901 in an open letter to the Integrist leader Ramón Nocedal he fully embraced the intransigent and vehemently anti-liberal politico-religious program of the group.
  Prior to 1904 Estévanez purchased a local Burgos daily El Castellano, founded in 1900 as “diario católico de información general”. He turned it into a belligerent Integrist press tribune which vehemently advocated adamant Catholic stand. His zeal produced conflicts and incidents; at one point he resigned from the director job but he kept contributing, not a step deviating from the fixed line which hailed great Christians confronting sinister Liberalism. Some of his pieces were re-printed in other periodicals, yet it seems at one point – perhaps as late as in the 1910s – he either sold or otherwise lost control of El Castellano. Another thread of his religious activity was charity, to become his trademark later on; from his teens engaged in organizations like Congregación de San Luis Gonzaga he took part in numerous juntas and committees. Energetic in the Burgos Integrist organization, in 1906 he grew to secretary of Junta Integrista Regional for the entire Old Castile region.
  As his law career progressed and in 1909 Estévanez was sworn as magistrado suplente of Audiencia de Burgos his prestige grew and his position strengthened. As Integrist politician he did not share the earlier anti-Carlist venom of the group and in 1910 he was noted speaking at a Catholic rally in Palencia jointly with Carlist militants Larramendi, Bilbao and Polo. The same year he was about to launch his first bid for the Cortes, and in Cervera de Pisuerga he was reported to stand as a joint Traditionalist candidate. His candidacy was agreed with the Carlist leader Feliú though it is not clear whether it was approved by the new Integrist leader, Olazábal; it seems that he withdrew in the last minute. In 1911 he was supposed to run on a joint Catholic anti-Liberal ticket in by-elections in Miranda del Ebro, but there is no confirmation of him actually standing. In the mid-1910s he focused on his law career and charity; there is no information on his political engagements.
caption: Juan Olazabal
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