Vicente Enrique y Tarancón (14 May 1907 – 28 November 1994), known in his country as Cardenal Tarancón or Tarancón, was a Spanish cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Madrid from 1971 to 1983, and as president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference from 1971 to 1981, during the difficult years of the Spanish transition to democracy. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1969.
Biography
Vicente Enrique y Tarancón was born in Burriana to Manuel Enrique Urios and his wife Vicenta Tarancón Fandos. His siblings included an older brother, Manuel, and a younger sister, Vicenta. At Vicente's baptism, his cousins Dolores Enrique Planelles and Vicente Ríos Enrique acted as his godparents. The baptismal register was later destroyed in a fire of the parochial archive in August 1936. After completing his initial studies at Colegio de la Consolación in Burriana, he attended the seminaries in Tortosa and Valencia. Tarancón was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Félix Bilbao y Ugarriza on 1 November 1929 in Tortosa, and then did pastoral work in the Diocese of Tortosa until 1933. He worked with Catholic Action in the Diocese of Madrid from 1933 to 1938, when he resumed his pastoral ministry in Tortosa.
In this position, he had to confront the difficult last years of the Francoist State and of caudilloFrancisco Franco, in which relationships between Government and Church were tense. As a close ally of Pope Paul VI, Tarancón was seen as an enemy by the most radical far-right Francoist elements. Some of them made popular the cry "Tarancón al paredón" ("Tarancón up against the wall", meaning to be executed by firing squad) during the funeral of prime minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, assassinated in Madrid by Basque terrorist organization ETA on 20 December 1973. Only one week after the death of Franco, Tarancón pronounced on 27 November 1975 an historical homily before King Juan Carlos I at the medieval church of Los Jerónimos: there the Cardinal asked him to be "the king of all Spaniards, and not only of part of them". During the first years of the Spanish Transition, Tarancón proved to be dialogant with all social and political forces.
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