It had been just over an hour since the bishops had elected Luis Argüello, 70 years old, president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE). But that March 5, the one chosen by an absolute majority did not seem like the most powerful man in the Spanish Church. He appeared distant to the group of journalists who surrounded him in Madrid at the doors of the EEC headquarters, as if his thoughts were at a distance. hundreds of kilometers from there. At that important moment in her life and his career, something had caught him by surprise: he had just reunited with Paula, an old acquaintance from when he was a rookie priest in Valladolid. They hadn't seen each other for decades. Now, he was president of the bishops and she was a victim of abuse in the Church who took refuge behind a banner demanding justice.
“Luis, do you remember me?” Paula asked him. Argüello nodded her head.
-Can i write to you? —she continued.
“We can also see each other,” Argüello answered as he caressed her cheek.
The new president said goodbye to her with two kisses and separated a few meters to return inside the building. Paula began to cry and, amid the small tumult, the archbishop's eyes became glassy.
Nobody expected that the new command of the EEC would take to the streets to greet that group of victims who had been demonstrating for a couple of days. Argüello, who had been spokesperson and general secretary of the EEC between 2018 and 2022, cooked up the argument that denied the pedophile scandal. First, saying that they were only “small cases” and that Spain was an exception in the Catholic world. After two years cornered by the evidence uncovered by the media, the discourse changed: everything is a campaign to damage the image of the Church. He always stressed that the bishops would not “proactively” investigate past abuses: “There is no data. What do we do? Take a time warp?,” he said in 2019.
These statements caused Paula a lot of pain. Argüello and several members of her family maintain a very close bond of friendship with her. Paula remembers a trip they took by bus with a group of Catholics to the French community of Taizé. They were the early years of the eighties and everyone saw Argüello as “the progressive priest.” She thought about writing him a letter to detail the abuse he suffered from Marist Brother Emilio Álvarez Estrada at the order's school in Valladolid repeatedly, when he was going to receive catechesis. He was seven years old and it lasted until he was eight. “The things he says hurt me a lot. He wanted him to look me in the eyes and repeat them to me,” says Paula. She never managed to write that letter and she did not expect to meet him that day, when he was elected last week, and “tell him this way.”
The first situation that Argüello has encountered, physically and figuratively, as president of the EEC is that of cases of pedophilia. With a known victim, without expecting it and under the attentive gaze of everyone. Paula felt that “something moved inside” him, that perhaps the meeting was “a shock” that could change the course of his discourse on abuse, a kind of return of the priest. progress.
Luis Javier Argüello was born in the Palencia town of Meneses de Campos in 1953, where today, as his father reminded him a few years ago, only “50 people sleep in winter.” His family, who affectionately called him Luisín, sent him at the age of 11 as a boarder to the La Salle de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes school, in Valladolid. From that year on, he never left the capital of Pucelana again.
Real Madrid fan
In the classrooms, together with more than 400 classmates, he formed his Christian spirit, but also a strong fervor for Real Madrid. Every Monday he avidly reviewed the copies of the As —always with the last page cut out by one of the teachers to prevent the students from seeing the photos of the half-naked women that were published in the newspaper— verifying the results and the sports reports. If his predecessor as president of the EEC, Cardinal Juan José Omella, as a child longed to be like the Teruel bullfighter Nicanor Villalta, Argüello was excited about Paco Gento and his six European Cups. He spent only eight years there, but his relationship with the school has never been broken. In the eighties he was a teacher and, since he was ordained, he has continued to visit him.
Those who lived with him there remember him as a “brilliant student” and “enthusiastic.” Jesús Miguel Zamora, current general secretary of La Salle, coincided with Argüello during his last stage at the boarding school. He never heard him laugh out loud, although he describes his humor as soft, far from shouting in arguments and “always available for a friendly encounter.” At that time, Zamora believes, that “intellectual” profile that defines him so much had already been established in Argüello: “he won the extraordinary national award. He was very intelligent, like now. He is able to easily join concepts and reflect on them. This was evident when he gave press conferences as general secretary. Everything he said he had surely thought about a lot before.”
These reflections have been installed in the newspaper archive as bricks that have cemented the conservative discourse of the Church. These were his first words about homosexuality in the priesthood: “We ask for celibate men who are entirely male and, therefore, heterosexual.” Others follow, such as her attacks on the ley trans and the change of registered sex. Recently appointed spokesperson for the bishops, he said that it was not rational for someone to go to the registry and say “my name is not Antonio, from now on my name is Mari Pili.” He had to retract some of them. His acquaintances, such as Zamora, warn, however, that his personality does not have a single face nor does his speech have indicators that only blink to the right.
Unlike most priests, Argüello did not enter the seminary after finishing high school. Among his plans was not to be a priest, but to study Administrative Law at the University of Valladolid. “This is very noticeable in his way of seeing social reality and the projects that he undertakes as bishop,” says Javier Burrieza, university professor of Modern History in the city and member of the Culture Secretariat of the diocese.
Argüello enrolled in 1971, during the earthquake of student revolts. Far from fleeing the mobilizations, he worked on the front line of the clash with the regime. He himself confessed to Burrieza that in 1975, when the Franco Government ordered the closure of his faculty, he got in a car to travel around Spain on behalf of the Communist Party and meet with different student groups.
During the closure, he was also part of the faculty of the Parallel University, the independent alternative that several teachers and students of the last years took so that no student missed their classes. They established secret meeting places to give lessons and exchange notes: private homes, bookstores, a few parishes or some taverns, such as the Corinto bar, two blocks from the Plaza Mayor of Valladolid, where Argüello met with classmates from the first years to teach them some subject.
Those years are still fresh in the memory of Jesús Quijano, professor of Commercial Law, attorney and former general secretary of the PSOE of Castilla y León. He lived with Argüello between 1976 and 1980, both already as professors at the University and surrounded by the atmosphere of change. Both inside the classrooms and on his outings to Peñafiel to eat roast lamb with Ribera del Duero wine, he discovered the “dynamic” and “restless” personality of Argüello, at that time very involved with some left-wing parties. One of them was the PSOE, of which for a few years he was cultural advisor in the Valladolid city council. That is why those close to him continue to be surprised by how his ideology is characterized in the press. “I don't think he can be labeled as conservative,” Quijano says.
Animosity towards neoliberal capitalism
It is possible that his animosity toward neoliberal capitalism, which he accuses of destroying “people's values,” and his constant demand for public institutions to regularize all undocumented immigrants, come from that time. In those years of red fervor, he himself told the ABC, also experienced political discontent. It was during an activist sit-in in 1983 to protest against Spain's entry into NATO, in which he was arrested. A stage in his life that he has used to attack the Minister of the Presidency during his clashes with him over registration and the Democratic memory law: “Here, the one who ran in front of the grays was me.”
He entered the priesthood late – at the age of 30 – but his ecclesiastical career soon took off: professor and rector of the seminary, vicar of the city and member of the episcopal council of Valladolid. With the arrival of Cardinal Ricardo Blázquez, he became his right-hand man and in 2011 he became vicariate general of the bishopric. The next step was to wear the purple, in 2016, at the hands of Pope Francis as auxiliary bishop. Two years later he was already secretary general and in four he would become the current archbishop of Valladolid.
His statements in recent years have strengthened the image of a conservative bishop, a hammer against the rights of the LGTBI community, abortion and euthanasia. The Catholic voice against pardons, amnesty and the 2030 agenda. A kind of winning horse for parties like Vox who, according to the vice president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Juan García-Gallardo, see him as “the leader who the Church needs.”
You can still see him walking through the streets of Valladolid, buying novels and talking to citizens. “He is a man who always looks for a middle ground. He cannot be labeled ideologically,” some say. “We don't know what happened to him. Now he is a fascist,” others say.
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