The young Manuel was brought up in a fervently Catholic ambience; in the 1890s he studied law in Barcelona and Madrid. By the turn of the century he returned to Alicante, launching his own career as a lawyer in 1897. Representing his clients in cases ranging from private to commercial law, he gradually grew to prominence and got engaged in politically sensitive cases, like a dispute over a forcibly closed local parish cemetery, speaking for the Alicantine San Nicolás community before the Supreme Court; in 1903 he was already one of the Alicante municipal judges. Manuel Senante married Joséfa Esplá Rizo (1870-1957), daughter of the Alicantine merchant marine captain and also a local Alicantine municipal counselor. The couple had 6 daughters (3 of them became nuns) and a son, Manuel Senante Esplá, also a Carlist activist. A lawyer, in the 1930s he defended in court individuals charged with engagement in Sanjurjada. He followed in the footsteps of his father and entered the publishing business, serving as member of the board of "El Siglo Futuro" in the 1930s; during early Francoism he served as municipal judge in Madrid. Senante's daughter Immaculada married Francisco Urries, "catedrático" of philosophy in Madrid. The family initially lived at the estate of Santa Rosa in San Juan, now a bedroom suburb of Alicante; in the early 20th century it moved permanently to Madrid.