Antonio Fontán or the magisterium of freedom
It is difficult for a person to bring together so many different facets and to be distinguished and recognized in all of them. Antonio Fontán was one of those privileged ones, and all those who passed through his teaching in journalism, in politics and in the university, have left abundant signs of their admiration for his figure, who has been paid tribute to regularly during the last ten or fifteen years. Also in my case, when I researched and wrote both the history of the newspaper Madrid, which he directed between 1967 and 1971, and the history of the School of Communication of the University of Navarra, which he started in 1958. We have lost a multifaceted man, a brilliant intellectual and, above all, a great person, always generous with his time, who has also left an important mark, always with his broad liberal mentality and as a Christian consistent with his faith.
Full Professor After studying Latin since 1949, his vocation for politics led him to enter public life in the late forties. He did not mind going down to the journalistic arena and obtained the ID card as a journalist at the Official School of Madrid in the fifties. In those early days, he founded magazines such as La Actualidad Económica (1952) and Nuestro Tiempo (1954), which were destined to have a long life. programs of study When St. Josemaría Escrivá wanted the University of Navarra to offer, for the first time in Spain, a university course in journalism, he entrusted him with the task. training Based on the experiences of centers for the study of journalism at universities in the United States and other Western European countries, he started the high school Journalism program in 1958, which he ran at director until 1962. The thousands of journalists and communication professionals who have graduated from the classrooms of Navarra owe much to the man who had the courage to be a pioneer in integrating journalism into Spanish universities.
The most conflictive stage of his life came when he took over the management of the Madrid newspaper in April 1967 at the request of Rafael Calvo Serer, president of the publishing house business since a year earlier. This newspaper, increasingly critical of the Franco regime due to the scarce political openness it displayed, ended up being closed by government order in November 1971, after having been initiated a score of proceedings, several of which ended in economic sanctions and even a four-month suspension in May 1968. Fontán defended and guaranteed the independence of the Madrid newspaper project against threats in an exemplary manner. All the workers of the newspaper, as they wrote to him when he presented his resignation a month after the closure, "we have been able to appreciate his manhood and his sense of loyalty towards all the people who have been making the newspaper".
This fact, together with his political work during the years of the Transition to democracy, within the Union of the Democratic Center, as president of the Senate during the constituent legislature and later as Minister of Territorial Administration, were key to his being named one of the 50 heroes of freedom of the press in the world in the second half of the 20th century by the International Press Association ( high school ) in the year 2000. The list included renowned journalists such as Italy's Indro Montanelli, Poland's Adam Michnik, France's Hubert Beuve-Méry, the American Katharine Graham and Argentina's Jacobo Timerman. He was a serene hero in the style of his admired Seneca. He was a professor, journalist and politician of clear human, religious and ideological loyalties, fully involved in his political passions as a good monarchist-liberal, intellectual as a good Full Professor, and journalistic as a good editor.
He did not consider himself a teacher or trainer of politicians, journalists and intellectuals. In an interview with him in 2000, he said: "I am not and have never wanted to be anyone's trainer. Neither in politics, nor in the university, nor in the press. I have tried to encourage the freedom of all those who were close to me in any of those fields". He knew how to exercise with talent, we can say, in order not to contradict him, the teaching of freedom. He was a great unifier of people and, in all the facets of his life, he knew how to form teams because he had a special ability to call people together. It is difficult for a person so involved in such thorny and controversial areas to have achieved such unanimous recognition and adhesion. Antonio Fontán's human and professional qualities, his life full of companies that have left their mark, are largely to blame for this.
Carlos Barrera
Professor of Communication School (University of Navarra)
article published in Diario de Navarra
Other obituaries published in the press:
Antonio Fontán and the extraterrestrials - El País (pdf)
The world without Fontán - ABC (pdf)
Catholic commitment, balanced attitude - El Mundo (pdf)
Antonio Fontán, a lover of freedom - Diario de Noticias (pdf)