[8] Following his childhood spent in Calatayud, the young Salvador entered a diocesan seminary in Zaragoza, a path typically leading to a career of a priest or a school teacher.

[34] In 1911 he emerged victorious from the contest for chair of Historia General del Derecho in Zaragoza, thus terminating the period of junior assignments and assuming a major academic position.

From 1911 to the early 1920s Minguijón published booklets formatted as textbooks for students, completed as a 12-volume series titled Elementos de historia del derecho español;[50] apart from the synthesis and update of earlier works they were heavily based on own research, related in particular to medieval and foral Spanish legislation.

As during the Republic years El Debate became a semi-official CEDA mouthpiece; Minguijón, at that time member of the supreme national court, preferred to publish rather in various regional Catholic periodicals.

[60] A "Salvador Minguijón" from Calatayud was noted as signing a loyalist Carlist address in 1886,[61] but for the first time he can be surely identified assuming public activity in 1897, taking part in local ecclesiastical educational initiatives.

[68] La crisis claimed that Traditionalist dogma was perfectly valid, though it had to be renewed and its application re-defined; Minguijón viewed it not as a fixed set of principles, but as an adaptive approach to problems of human civilization.

Indeed, some claim that he subscribed to a modelo maurrasiano, a new counter-revolutionary movement[70] exploring parliamentary opportunities to build a confessional, corporative and regional state;[71] others underline inspiration by the concept of Catholic unity, launched by ACNDP and pursued by its freshly set-up daily, El Debate.

[74] Some scholars consider Minguijón's strategy a reference to Sexenio Democrático, when Carlism served as agglutinatory factor for conservative forces;[75] it was supposed to lay path for peaceful transformation of liberal monarchy into a traditionalist one.

[78] Within Carlism Minguijón's proposal was appreciated as an elaborate and genuine attempt to revitalize the movement, though critics pointed out that it would be another version of Pidalismo,[79] an opportunist amalgamation of Traditionalism within a broad conservative spectrum.

[82] Following a period of hesitation, in 1915 Minimismo was eventually disavowed by the claimant Don Jaime, who confirmed intransigence on dynastical issues and permitted at best a neutral approach towards the moderate Catalanism of La Lliga.

[88] One more difference was that unlike a fiercely Germanophile de Mella, during the Great War Minguijón adopted a pro-Entente stand and even considered setting up a pro-French daily.

Together with a group of socially-minded Zaragoza scholars he had been co-operating with for more than a decade, especially Severino Aznar and Inocencio Jiménez,[90] in 1919 he co-founded Grupo de Democracía Cristiana, an organization under the auspices of cardinal Guiasola.

[102] The organization, intended as an agglutinatory force beyond a future broad right-wing platform, proved to have been just en episode; like all other political parties it was dissolved by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in 1923.

[104] Upon the advent of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship two months later he greeted the developments with cautious optimism;[105] by the end of 1923 the pesepistas voiced their support for renewal and reconstitución of political setting.

Underlining no support for violence, they hoped for increased social work, making vague references to agrarian reform, syndical liberties, cheap credit, municipal self-government and advanced labor legislation.

Many of them focused on his favorite topic, the question of property, advancing a thesis that increasing ownership among wide social strata was the best strategy for confronting both poverty and revolution.

[115] In the months and years to come Minguijón assumed a more specific stance; though he declared himself a monarchist (with an increasingly Alfonsist penchant),[116] at the same time he advocated constructive work under the republican regime.

[123] All the above stemmed from Catholic and not socialist principles; Minguijón firmly voiced against divorce[124] and called for a civilization based on a rural, traditional basis,[125] though he did not declare himself alarmed by the separation of state and church.

[126] Though in favor of common spirit, Minguijón opposed a dictatorship of the majority[127] and acknowledged the anti-democratic tide overwhelming Europe as a "crisis of liberty"; he compared Fascist, Nazi and Soviet regimes using the word totalitario, though he also distinguished between them.

[128] Denying Fascist identity, he admitted the superiority of the Italian system – respectful to religious and secular tradition – compared to the Soviet one,[129] praising also Piłsudski for stopping bolshevism in 1920 and Hitler for preventing a Bolshevik revolution in 1933.

[136] Politically he drew closer to CEDA;[137] it was thanks to its votes, combined with support from other right-wing groupings, that in October 1933 Minguijón was elected – according to some authors as tradicionalista[138] – to Tribunal de Garantías Constitucionales,[139] a 35-member body acting as the Republic's constitutional court.

Gaining seat in the Tribunal suspended Minguijón's university career, enforced his transfer from Zaragoza to Madrid and reduced his activity as a press pundit, though he continued sending commentaries to various periodicals.

As constitutional judge Minguijón found himself in an awkward position; the body was entrusted with safeguarding the juridical republican system, while at the same time he was growing increasingly disillusioned with the legal order of the Republic.

The verdict was possibly the key pronouncement of the Tribunal during Minguijón's tenure and pertained to two issues: Catalan autonomy and the social question, the latter related to vineyard tenants’ status.

[144] Having abandoned Aragón – this time for good – he resumed his role as highest judge and formally contributed to the forging of the Francoist system; until 1950 the Tribunal consisted of appointees deemed utterly loyal and entrusted with juridical institutionalization of the regime.

[157] He wrote about the Republic with bitterness and visible disappointment, lamenting that the regime was trapped in contradictions: it failed to eradicate the domination of the privileged classes and to introduce reforms based on the will of the people.

[173] He was recollected as skeptical – also in private – about both democracy and capitalism, deemed anonymous and amorphous forces which should be confronted by localismo cultural, based on tradition and – inevitably – small property.

Waking up around mid-day and working late into the night, he was busy writing a treaty tailored as a popularization of great philosophical concepts; it was supposed to amalgamate them within a new vision, intended for the future.

[176] As a conservative theorist who strove to stimulate organization of the working class, Minguijón failed; he is not noted as influencing Carlist syndicates either in their Catholic or pistolerismo format.

In public discourse he gradually fell into oblivion; from 1959 to date the popular Madrid daily ABC mentioned him seven times, in all cases briefly noting his name when discussing Christian-Democratic, Traditionalist or social thought;[184] a contemporary scholar declared him a "completely forgotten figure".