Jaime Ortega Lázaro presents in Madrid, on Monday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m., the most rigorous study published to date on the Hermandad Sacerdotal Española, the association of priests that resisted the doctrinal confusion of the post-conciliar period by paying the price that those who speak the truth untimely always pay: silence and oblivion.
In 1968, when the Spanish Church was living one of the moments of greatest disorientation in its modern history, a group of priests made a decision that would cost them decades of marginalization: to remain faithful. Not to a current. Not to a bishop. To the perennial magisterium. What followed was a story of loyalty without reward, of combat without chronicle, of fidelity without witnesses. Until now.
The historian Jaime Ortega Lázaro publishes Hermandad Sacerdotal Española. Fidelidad hasta el final, the first exhaustive study on this priestly association that was born, fought, and was systematically ignored precisely by those who should have protected it. The publisher Bibliotheca Homo Legens presents this work for what it is: not a minor book of ecclesiastical history, but a first-order document of cultural combat. A testimony that fidelity, even if no one applauds it at the time, always finds its reader.
Through rigorously documented research, Ortega Lázaro recounts all the vicissitudes of the Hermandad from its foundation in 1968: the internal tensions, the external pressures, the institutional silences, and the unwavering coherence of those who decided that the «good combat of the faith»—in the words of Saint Paul—admitted no neutrality. An era in which being orthodox was suspicious, and being so publicly was a form of silent heroism.
Gabriel Calvo Zarraute, priest, historian, and author of the prologue, will accompany the author at the presentation, whose perspective on the spiritual and historical significance of the work adds a second layer of depth to a book that not only recovers the past: it interprets it. And in that interpretation, there are keys to understanding the current situation of the Church in Spain with a clarity that the chronicles of the moment could not offer.
Homo Legens publishes this book because it works to ensure that certain stories do not continue to be buried. The story of the Hermandad Sacerdotal Española is one of them: the story of men who understood that the Catholic unity of Spain was not a political slogan but a pastoral responsibility, and who acted accordingly when doing so was neither comfortable nor safe. This is the type of book that Homo Legens exists to publish.
«We must transmit the dogma and not our own ideas,» warned Monsignor Guerra Campos at the Cuenca meetings of 1974, before more than two thousand priests gathered at a time when saying that out loud was already an act of resistance.
The book Hermandad Sacerdotal Española. Fidelidad hasta el final, written by Jaime Ortega Lázaro and prologued by Gabriel Calvo Zarraute, has been published by the publisher Bibliotheca Homo Legens. The presentation will take place on Monday, April 13, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. at the publisher’s headquarters (C/ Nicasio Gallego, 9, local, Madrid), with free entry until capacity is reached, prior registration at this link.