View source for Claudio López, 2nd Marquess of Comillas

{{short description|Spanish businessman and shipping magnate}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| image               = Claudio López Bru.jpg
| image_size          =
| caption             = Oil on canvas, by Francisco Godoy
| honorific-prefix    = [[The Most Excellent]]<br />[[Servant of God]]
| honorific-suffix    = [[Grandee|GE]]
| name                = The Marquess of Comillas
| title               =
| nationality         = Spanish
| birth_date          = 14 May 1853
| birth_place         = [[Barcelona]]
| death_date          = 18 April 1925 (aged 71)
| death_place         = [[Madrid]]
| education           =
| spouse              = María Gayón Barrie
| parents             =
| discipline          =
| institutions        =
| practice_name       =
}}
{{family name hatnote|López|Bru|lang=Spanish}}
'''Claudio López y Bru, 2nd Marquess of Comillas''', [[Grandee|GE]] (1853 in [[Barcelona]] &ndash; 1925 in [[Madrid]]), was a Spanish peer, businessman, and immensely rich shipping magnate and landowner. He inherited the companies his father [[Antonio López y López]] had founded.
For thirty years, from 1895 to 1925, the Marquess of Comillas dominated Catholic policy-making on labour relations.<ref>Frances Lannon,  ''Privilege, Persecution and Prophecy'', p.148, 153</ref>
Comillas sponsored [[Antoni Gaudí]]'s trip to [[Tangier]] and [[Tétouan]] in 1892, where the architect was inspired by Franciscan {{ill|José María Lerchundi|es}} to design a complex for Catholic Missions in Tangier. The project was never realized but was a source of inspiration for Gaudí's lifelong endeavor the [[Sagrada Família]].<ref>{{cite web |website=Yabiladi |title=Gaudí à Tanger : Le projet qui n'a jamais vu le jour |author=Faiza Rhoul |date={{date|2018/05/12}} |url=https://www.yabiladi.com/articles/details/64754/gaudi-tanger-projet-jamais-jour.html }}</ref>
==Biography==
Claudio Lopez Bru was the fourth son of Antonio López y López —the founder and owner of [[Compañía Transatlántica Española]] and [[Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas]]— and Catalan lady Lluïsa Bru i Lassús.
He studied law at  Barcelona University ([[Universitat de Barcelona]]). In 1883, following his father's death, he inherited the title "Marquess of [[Comillas]]". Barely in his thirties, he ran all the companies his father had started, foremost of which were [[Compañia General de Tabacos de Filipinas]] and [[Ferrocarriles del Norte]]. In the following years, Claudio himself would expand his father's estate, with coal company [[Hullera Española]], Banca López Bru, Constructora Naval and Banco Vitalicio.
He promoted the Pontifical Seminary of [[Comillas]] ([[Cantabria]]) that had been financed by his father. The first building was inaugurated in 1890 and through a decree of the [[Holy See|Vatican]], it became the [[Pontifical University of Comillas]]<ref>Vatican decree "Praeclaris honoris argumentas", approved by [[Pius X]], March 19th 1904.</ref>
[[File:Comillas - Universidad Pontificia 1.jpg|thumb|left|[[Comillas Pontifical University]], which he promoted]]
In 1893 vessel ''Cabo Machichaco'', a ship not belonging to Claudio's CTE shipping line, exploded at the harbor in [[Santander, Cantabria|Santander]]. The explosion was of such magnitude that a thick mooring cable from the ship hit [[Peñacastillo]], 8&nbsp;km away, killing  a person. Santander harbor was destroyed and the death toll reached 500.
[[File:Cabo Machichaco en el muelle.PNG|thumb|Ship ''Cabo Machichaco'' after the explosion]]
As soon as he got the news, Claudio went to the spot and sent a train from Barcelona with doctors, nurses, firemen and medical equipment in order to treat the thousands of wounded.
After this action, Claudio consistently refused any attempt by the authorities to honor and reward him, stating simply that he had done merely his duty as a Christian.
He acted similarly after the [[1908 Messina earthquake]] that devastated this Italian town, causing tens of thousands of deaths. Claudio had his ship, the "Cataluña", one of his CTE vessels, transformed into a hospital and sent it rushing to the place.
A process of [[beatification]] began in 1945.<ref>Eduardo Fernández Regatillo, S. J.: '' Un marqués modelo. El siervo de Dios Claudio López Bru, segundo Marqués de Comillas'', Sal Terrae, Santander, 1950.</ref> His cause was formally opened on 22 December 1947, granting him the title of [[Servant of God]].<ref name="index">{{cite book |title=Index ac status causarum beatificationis servorum dei et canonizationis beatorum |date=January 1953 |publisher=Typis polyglottis vaticanis |page=53 |language=Latin}}</ref>
==Labour relations==
A Catholic, he was determined, according to a writer on the Spanish Catholic world, [[Frances Lannon]], 'to keep his employees pious and out of radical unions.' <ref>Frances Lannon, ''Privilege, Persecution and Prophecy'' , p.152</ref> He was a dominating influence in the National Council of Catholic Worker Corporations CNCCO, a kind of industrial branch of [[Catholic Action]]. A [[reactionary]] he was criticized by the [[Asturias|Asturian]] priest Maximiliano Arboleya Martínez who commented that : " The workers in our Circles are talked to about religion, about morality, about resignation, about their obligations - it is almost never that anyone talks to them about the injustices, about the obligations of the capitalists".
[[File:Comillascadiz.JPG|thumb|Monument to the Marquess of Comillas in [[Cadiz|Cádiz]], Spain]]
Claudio was a dominant figure in determining Catholic policy on labour relations. A workers section of Catholic Action was set up under his influence in 1894, followed in 1919 by a women's, and in 1924 by a youth section. They were firmly under hierarchical and magnate control, 'associations of leaders with few followers.'
The most characteristic efflorescences of Catholic Action  at this time were words and gestures rather than purposeful organisations, - congresses and processions rather than flourishing workers' associations.<ref>Lannon, p.149</ref> Claudio financed spectacular pilgrimages for working men to shrines in Spain and abroad. And, impressed  by  the Catholic Railwayman's syndicate, led by Agustin Ruiz, and its performance  in opposing the railway strike of July 1916 and the general strike of August 1917, tried hard to create an accompanying web of Catholic miners syndicates, especially in the militant Asturian pits, where he himself owned pits.
Claudio was also influential in the Popular Social Action (ASP) initiative, founded by a [[Jesuit]] priest, [[Gabriel Palau]], in 1907 in [[Barcelona]]. Palau wanted to make Barcelona the centre of a national network of social Catholic initiatives. It attracted bourgeois Catholics, and its financial needs were largely met by the Marquess of Comillas.  The syndicates that became associated with the ASP were called Professional Unions. "A recent study has emphasised their paternalism - at the most generous calculation they never accounted for more than 2% of the Barcelona manual work-force. They soon established a reputation as strike breakers."<ref>Lannon, p.158</ref> Claudio was an opponent of the ''Sindicatos Libres'' of Pedro Gerard, a Dominican who was convinced that workers must receive adequate wages, as of right, not merely subsistence wages. His Free Syndicates opposed the general strike of 1917 along with their confessional counterparts but the extreme conservatism of Claudio still found Gerard uncongenial and, : "one whose ideas if put into practice would cost capitalists like the Marquess of Comillas much more in higher wages than they paid into syndicate subventions and mass pilgrimages."<ref>Lannon, p.156</ref>
== Arms ==
<gallery class=center caption="Heraldry of Claudio López, 2nd Marquess of Comillas" widths=180 heights=250>
File:COA 2nd Marquess of Comillas.svg|Coat of Arms as Marquess of Comillas<br />(1883-1925)
</gallery>
==See also==
*[[Compañía Transatlántica Española]]
*[[Antonio Lopez (shipwreck)]]
==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}
== External links ==
*{{commons category-inline|Claudio López Bru}}
*[http://www.upcomillas.es/presentacion/pres_hist.aspx?nivel=3&id=90 Pontifical University of Comillas - History]
{{S-start}}
{{S-reg|es}}
{{S-bef|before=[[Antonio López, 1st Marquess of Comillas|Antonio López]]}}
{{S-ttl|title=[[Marquess of Comillas]]|years=1883–1925}}
{{S-aft|after=Juan Antonio Güell}}
{{S-end}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Claudio Lopez, 2nd Marquess of Comillas}}
[[Category:1853 births]]
[[Category:1925 deaths]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Catalonia]]
[[Category:Marquesses of Spain]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Barcelona]]
[[Category:Grandees of Spain]]
[[Category:Knights of the Golden Fleece of Spain]]
[[Category:Spanish Servants of God]]