[4] The father of Melchor, Antonio Ferrer Arman (1845?–1899),[5] in the 1860s studied engineering in Barcelona[6] In 1870 he applied for a job at Instituto de Tarragona but failed,[7] eventually he landed a teaching position in the Valldemia college, which at that time was already run by the Piarists.

[13] In the 1890s he was also active as ingeniero municipal,[14] land surveyor and tonnage inspector,[15] co-founder of Associació Artístich-Arqueológica Mataronesa[16] and author of semi-scientific works, like Geometria analítica (1898).

[30] First contributing minor pieces to youth and party bulletins, in 1910 he formally entered the editorial board of El Correo Catalán,[31] an established Barcelona-based daily and a regional Carlist mouthpiece.

[33] Though Ferrer delivered lectures at meetings of Carlist paramilitary organisation requeté[34] he had no military experience himself when in 1914, heavily influenced by Maurras and admirer of L'Action Française, he decided to join the French army and fight the Germans.

According to contemporary press the pro-German stand of Correo[37] combined with anonymous denunciation[38] cost Ferrer arrest; presumed to be a spy, he was court-martialled in Lyon but spared a sentence ending up in Légion étrangère,[39] the fate he accepted with resignation as result of his idealistic and perhaps childish "chiquillada".

As a result, upon his return to Spain in the spring Ferrer was nominated director político of El Correo Español,[45] the Madrid daily serving as national Carlist mouthpiece; his task was to ensure loyalty of the newspaper, so far controlled by the dissenting Mellista faction.

[46] As he was largely unknown beyond Catalonia[47] some Carlist heavyweights suspected dirty tricks on part of Don Jaime's secretary Melgar and asked for confirmation, which finally permitted Ferrer to assume his post.

Ferrer remained in close touch with his king; he used to travel to Paris for consultations[49] and in late 1919 took part in the massive gathering known as Magna Junta de Biarritz,[50] where he represented Castilla La Nueva.

Apart from those discussing ideological threads, some were also his first incursions into the field of history, like piece on aristocratic titles conceded by Carlist monarchs[65] or a summary of party's political leadership during the previous half a century.

[67] A recently established newspaper, it was in fact successor to El Pueblo Católico, a Traditionalist daily issued since 1893 by Francisco Ureña Navas; the latter underwent ownership changes and finally closed, to be reborn under a new name.

[75] It is not clear how Ferrer made a living; at unspecified time he assumed teaching duties in the local Escuela Náutica San Telmo and at preparatory courses to entry exams to military academies.

[76] It is in the early 1940s that he started publishing Historia del tradicionalismo español,[77] a series which would become the source of income but which also in few years would earn him – still fairly unknown in the Carlist realm across Spain – enormous prestige nationwide.

The nature of his mandate is unclear, as he did not held formal posts in the party structures;[78] it was probably related to his personal friendship with the Carlist leader Manuel Fal Conde, also resident of Seville.

Confronted with growing fragmentation and bewilderment among the Traditionalists Ferrer maintained total loyalty to the regent Don Javier and used his pen to fight off competing factions.

Designed as response to earlier Franco's meeting with Don Juan and increasing prospects of Alfonsists restoration,[83] the booklet denounced such a possibility as treason to the spirit of July 1936, allegedly shaped by a pact between the Carlists and the military.

In 1961 he opposed attempts to set up a board co-ordinating Carlist propaganda,[93] put forward by orthodoxes concerned with new tones advanced by periodicals like Azada y Asta.

Dubbing himself "the bellboy of Carlism" Ferrer noted he was happy to keep the door open for Zamanillo to leave,[99] in aggressive and mocking tone lambasting also other dissidents like Sivatte or Cora.

[111] According to others he acted on suggestion of Fal Conde, who in 1939 proposed that to maintain Carlist identity in wake of political amalgamation into one Francoist state party, a general history of Carlism was badly needed.

In 1941 Ferrer and two other Seville-based authors, José F. Acedo Castilla and Domingo Tejera de Quesada, published in the local Editorial Católica Española[115] the first volume of Historia del tradicionalismo español, intended as a general, in-depth history of Carlism.

[117] According to one author, the delay was caused by problems with censorship;[118] eventually volume XXX, covering the period of 1931–1936, was edited posthumously by Enrique Roldán González and released in 1979, attributed to Ferrer only.

[122] In general terms they prompted Ferrer to advocate renewal of Carlism; unlike many, he totally disregarded Vázquez de Mella and considered Traditionalism of the 1920s[123] stuck in Romanticism, old esthetics and 19th-century schemes.

Both concepts were usually neglected if not mistrusted by Carlist thinkers;[126] Ferrer considered them crucial for modern outlook and strove to ensure their central position within the Traditionalist ideological toolset.

[128] In terms of economy Ferrer acknowledged collapse of the Liberal order, challenged by social utopias on the one hand and technocratic estatismo on another; his own recipé was "reorganización corporativa".

[132] He preferred Italian Fascism, born out of fundamental opposition to the spirit of 1789, liberalism and individual rights and offering a syndical approach of concerting all social interests.

However, he noted that armed with Traditionalism, Spain needed no foreign models;[133] some see it as Ferrer's refusal to accept "física social" of Comtean positivism, forming the basics of Maurras’ integral nationalism.

[134] Admirer of L'Action Française, Ferrer despised its Spanish copy, Acción Española, and charged Carlists involved in the project, especially Pradera, with "tradicionalismo de corto alcance".

A fellow Carlist Jaime del Burgo judged harshly that Ferrer's approach to bibliography was excessively light and that he lacked sufficient source criticism;[141] a strict inspection revealed glaring errors in documents quoted and another scholar identified 64 inaccuracies on just 4 pages of one of the appendices, in 1967 delivering a damning judgement that Historia was "a work with no scientific value".

[143] It reflects the scope and breadth of the work, which as a party history is perhaps unique globally; even the massive Soviet История Коммунистической партии Советского Союза pales in comparison.

[148] More balanced comments praise Ferrer principally for exhaustive data provided;[149] at times he is also commended for scientific rigor,[150] combination of erudition and readability;[151] vast documentary part,[152] attractive writing style, personal familiarity with persons/issues and, last but not least, passion.