page_title: José María Valiente Soriano
section_title: Juancarlista
hierarchical_section_title: José María Valiente Soriano / Juancarlista
caption_attribution_description: English: Juan Carlos de Borbón, Prince of Spain in 1971.
context_page_description: José María Valiente Soriano was a Spanish Carlist politician.
context_section_description: In 1969, Franco formally designated Juan Carlos de Borbón as his successor. Valiente considered the young prince an acceptable future king, a leader loyal to the traditional conservative values and averse to liberal democratic ideas, apparently nurtured by his father, thought to be an opportunist. In 1972, he addressed the successor-in-waiting with a letter, suggesting it was a favorable moment to build a conservative monarchy departing from the Francoist model. Following relaxation of the law on political organizations, Valiente started working around a new broadly based monarchist party, possibly with titular presidency of Juan Carlos. The organization eventually materialized in 1975 as Unión Nacional Española, co-founded with Zamanillo, Antonio de Oriol and Miguel Fagoaga, though falling dramatically short of the original designs and missing the royal support.
  Valiente welcomed the dismantling of Francoism, though not in the democratic direction eventually adopted during the transición. His new party, founded on the conservative, monarchist and Catholic basis, failed to gain popular support. UNE formed part of the broad right-of-the-centre Alianza Popular. In the 1977 elections, AP arrived fourth with 8% of the votes, trailing far behind the Center and Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and losing slightly to the Communists. He abandoned the Alliance in 1978, refusing to endorse the 1978 constitution; at that time Valiente already nurtured no illusions about Juan Carlos as a king ensuring some sort of conservative, possibly Traditionalist continuity. In 1979, he joined Derecha Democrática Española, a renewed and failed attempt to build a popular conservative party; it was dissolved a year after Valiente's death in 1982.
caption: Prince of Spain
exif: {}