page_title: Jesús Cora y Lira
section_title: Carloctavista: between Don Antonio and Don Francisco (1954-1969)
hierarchical_section_title: Jesús Cora y Lira / Carloctavista: between Don Antonio and Don Francisco (1954-1969)
caption_attribution_description: English: Archduke Anton of Austria in the Challenge International de Tourisme 1930, in Warsaw
context_page_description: Jesús de Cora y Lira, 1st count of Cora y Lira was a Spanish military and a Carlist politician. In the navy juridical arm he rose to general auditor, a rank equivalent to counter-admiral. He is known mostly as political leader of Carloctavismo, a branch of Carlism which during early Francoism advocated a claim to the Spanish throne raised by Carlos Pio Habsburgo-Lorena y Borbón.
context_section_description: Though many Carloctavistas considered their cause hopeless and withdrew into privacy or joined other Carlist branches, Cora was determined to go on; he advanced the cause of an older brother of the late Don Carlos, Don Antonio, who seemed leaning towards some sort of political activity. Early 1954 Cora convinced most members of the Comunión Católico-Monárquica executive to welcome Don Antonio as Carlos IX, the move which caught him by surprise. Following a brief vacillation period, later that year Don Antonio declared that he would not assume any political activity. Though there were alternative options considered, Cora y Lira then set sights on Don Antonio's 17-year-old son Don Domingo. He launched a fund-raising campaign to facilitate his settling in Spain, until in 1955 furious might-have-been Carlos IX expulsed Cora – which was his third expulsion already – for "arbitrario ejercicio del mando".
  In 1956 another brother of the late Don Carlos, Don Francisco José, challenged his older sibling and claimed monarchical rights himself; it is not clear if and to what extent this move was inspired by or agreed with Cora, who rushed to promote the claim and became the chief advocate of the new claimant. During the following years he represented Don Francisco José in Spain, the task made easier by the 1961 withdrawal of Don Antonio into privacy. In more practical terms, Cora represented his king as a lawyer, fighting nobility-related legal battles before Spanish courts; in the early 1960s they were mostly about the duque de Madrid title, traditionally claimed by Carlist pretenders and at that time coveted also by another hopeful from the Javierista branch, Don Carlos Hugo. Though he was personally admitted by Franco in 1956, 1957, 1960 1964 and 1966, it is not known whether these meetings were anything more than routine courteous receptions.
  In the early 1960s Cora was leaning towards some sort of reconciliation between all Carlist offshoot branches which parted during the previous 20 years: Rodeznistas, Carloctavistas, Sivattistas and the recently separated politicians like Francisco Elías de Tejada or José Luis Zamanillo. Its objective was gaining critical mass to confront what was left of mainstream Carlism, at that time increasingly under the influence of socialist-minded Huguistas. Mocked by them as "Don Jesús", in 1964 he took part in Primer Congreso de Estudios Tradicionalistas, organized by a freshly created Traditionalist think-tank Centro de Estudios Históricos y Políticos General Zumalacárregui. At that time Carloctavismo was reduced to grouplets organized around few periodicals; their activity was boiling down to few isolated episodes. One of Cora's last public appearances was the 1966 Carloctavista gathering in Poblet. He died 3 months before his lifetime efforts crashed definitely with the July 1969 nomination of Don Juan Carlos as Principe de España and the future king of Spain. With his death Carloctavismo lost its moving spirit, not that much in terms of theory and ideology, but rather in terms of dedication and enthusiasm.
caption: Don Antonio (earlier photo)
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