Félix Sardà y Salvany

[1] Historian Roberto de Mattei reports that Sardá "was a popular priest in Spain at the end of the century and was considered exemplary for the firmness of his principles and the clarity of his apostolate.

"[2] For over forty years, he was the editor of the journal La Revista Popular, a weekly publication where all the current issues were discussed in light of the Catholic faith.

From 1907 and until 1914, he published a series of twelve volumes entitled Progaganda católica: it is a vast collection of short books, pamphlets, articles and conferences.

This republican form of government in turn had fallen to a military coup led by Arsenio Martínez-Campos y Antón that returned the Spanish monarchy in the Bourbon Restoration of 1874.

Article 11 of the Constitution of 1876 reaffirmed Catholicism as the official religion of the state, extending toleration to other creeds as long as all their speech and activities was done solely in private.

One literary man told Rose that he no longer believed in "the ceremonies or the rites of my Church; I pray to God at home"[7] but that he has not publicly "renounced that credo; it is more convenient not to have an open rupture".

Other figures opposed by the Integrists also tried to find a middle-path between conservatives and liberalism these include Alejandro Pidal, Manuel Durán y Bas, Josep Coll i Vehí, and Juan Mane y Flaquer.

[4] The Integrists, motivated by a desire to prevent the introduction of temporal things into the spiritual, also found opposition within the Spanish Catholic clergy on "how to reconcile faith with historical change, with modernity.

"[4] The critics of the Integrists and Sardá's journals and printed editorials questioned their use of mass-marketing techniques and the new freedom of the press and speech to spread their message (rather than relying on authority and traditional methods of communication) – this was seen as participating "in the very modernity they found so objectionable.