Alejandro Pidal y Mon

Alejandro Pidal y Mon (Madrid, 26 August 1846 – Madrid, 19 October 1913) was a Spanish statesman and President of the Congress of Deputies of Spain during 5 non-consecutive years.

Biography He was the second son of Asturian politician Pedro José Pidal and Manuela Mon y Menéndez, sister of Prime Minister Alejandro Mon y Menéndez. His elder brother was Luis Pidal y Mon, also a politician and academic.

He graduated from the San Isidro Institute and the Law School of the Central University of Madrid. He joined a group of Neo-Catholics and, together with a number of like-minded people, founded the weekly magazine La Cruzada in 1867.

In August 1872, he was elected to the Congress of Deputies for the first time. He was actively involved in legislative work on issues of the Catholic Church and the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. He was not elected to the Constituent Assembly of the First Spanish Republic, but in 1876 he became a deputy again after the Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. From that moment until the end of his life, he was re-elected in a total of fifteen elections, adhering to conservative Catholic views. He was the author of two major monographs, on Thomas Aquinas and "The Triumph of the Jesuits in France" (1880). He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation and of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

He received the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Order of St. Gregory the Great, as well as numerous national and foreign decorations. Alejandro Pidal y Mon died on 19 October 1913 in Madrid, and was buried in Covadonga in Asturias.

Marriage and children In 1868 he married Ignacia Bernaldo de Quirós y González-Cienfuegos, daughter of the Marquis of Camposagrado, with whom he would have fifteen children, of whom thirteen survived, including : Pedro Pidal, 1st Marquess of Villaviciosa de Asturias (1870–1941).