Alberto Martín-Artajo

Who was Alberto Martín-Artajo?

Alberto Martín-Artajo Álvarez was a legal technocrat for the Nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War and for the succeeding dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and a Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs. He served as the Foreign Minister from 1945 to 1957. Ideologically, he was not a Falangist, but a monarchist and a leader of the dynamic and powerful Catholic movement within the Francoist coalition. During the time of the Second Spanish Republic, he had been a member of the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right.

He received his secondary education at the Colegio Nuestra Señora del Recuerdo. Martín-Artajo earned a law degree from the University of Madrid. He became a staff attorney of the Council of State in 1931. During the Republic, Martín-Artajo worked closely with Ángel Herrera Oria, the director of the Catholic newspaper El Debate and belonged to the lay "National Catholic Association of Propagators of the Faith". With the start of the Spanish Civil War, Martín-Artajo went over to the insurgent Nationalists.