Ángel Herrera Oria

Who was Ángel Herrera Oria?

Ángel Herrera Oria was a Spanish journalist, Catholic lay leader, politician and later priest, bishop and cardinal. He co-founded and presided the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas, and the rightist party Acción Nacional, presided Spanish Catholic Action, and edited the pre-Civil War most important Catholic newspaper, El Debate.

He studied Law at the Universities of Salamanca and Deusto, and hold his doctorate at the University of Madrid in 1908. That year, he co-founded, with the jesuit Ángel Ayala, the ACNdP. On November 1911, he purchased El Debate, a Catholic newspaper established a year before, and he made of it one of the most read newspapers in Spain. In 1912, the ACNdP established the Editorial Católica, a leading Catholic publishing house during 20th century Spain. In 1926 he founded the first Journalism School in Spain, associated with El Debate.

When the Second Republic was proclaimed, he founded the political party Acción Nacional, with very little political success. In 1933, he was elected president of Spanish Catholic Action and left edition of El Debate. That same year, the ACNdP founded the Centro de Estudios Universitarios.