page_title: José María Valiente Soriano
section_title: Christian politician
hierarchical_section_title: José María Valiente Soriano / Christian politician
caption_attribution_description: Català: Almanac de La Traca
context_page_description: José María Valiente Soriano was a Spanish Carlist politician.
context_section_description: In 1927, Valiente set up Juventud Católica de España, the ostensibly apolitical grouping concerned with defence and dissemination of Catholic values among the youth; in 1931 it was federated with Acción Católica, a broad organization of lay Catholics led by Ángel Herrera Oria. Later the same year, once the militantly secular course of the Republic began to take shape, he moved to politics by co-founding Acción Nacional (which in 1932 changed its name to Acción Popular), a broad though heterogeneous conservative alliance, and became the vicepresident of its first National Committee. Since Acción Catolica banned its members from holding political party leadership roles, Valiente had to resign from the JCE leadership.
  
  In 1933, Valiente proceeded to build the Acción Popular youth organisation, Juventudes de Acción Popular, and became its president. Soon afterwards AP transformed itself into Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas. JAP, now forming a juvenile branch of CEDA, retained its name and structure; Valiente continued to lead the organisation and became one of the national CEDA chieftains. Under his guidance, Juventudes became an aggressively anti-Lefist and pro-authoritarian group, though falling short of a typical "shirt organization" and denying similarity to Fascism. During the 1933 elections to the Cortes, Valiente, thanks to his Cantabrian family links, negotiated a place on the local Unión de Derechas Agrarias list of candidates and was comfortably elected from the Santander-Cantabria district.
  In early 1934, Valiente at least twice secretly travelled to France to speak with Alfonso XIII. His aim was to negotiate the terms of modus vivendi between the monarchists and the accidentalist CEDA, and specifically to ask that for the time being the deposed king refrains from any statements that might impair CEDA's political fortunes. It is not exactly clear to what extent this mission was agreed with the party leader José Gil-Robles, since the two gave conflicting accounts of the incident, but it is usually accepted that the latter was at least approvingly aware. When the news of the Fontainebleau talks leaked to the press CEDA, the party which despite repeated declarations of loyalty towards the Republic was customarily accused of anti-Republican designs by the Left, found itself cornered and embarrassed. Eventually, the official version adopted by CEDA presented the incident as a monarchist plot within the organization. Valiente, apparently with his consent, was made a scapegoat and was expelled from the party. It is not unlikely that the militancy of JAP, perceived by the more acquiescent cedistas as compromising, might have contributed to the harsh line taken against Valiente. He had to leave JAP as well, replaced as its leader by José María Perez de Laborda.
caption: Secular republican propaganda
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