page_title: Rafael Díaz Aguado Salaberry
section_title: Republic, war and Francoism (1931-1942)
hierarchical_section_title: Rafael Díaz Aguado Salaberry / Republic, war and Francoism (1931-1942)
caption_attribution_description: English: Rafael Díaz Aguado y Salaberry pronunciando un discurso durante un mítin tradicionalista en Sevilla el 2 de febrero de 1936.
context_page_description: Rafael Díaz Aguado Salaberry was a Spanish Carlist politician, active in particular during the final years of the Restoration regime and during the Second Republic. He is best known as deputy to the Cortes during two terms between 1907 and 1914. During the Civil War he periodically headed the Carlist underground relief organisation Socorro Blanco, operational in the Republican-held Madrid.
context_section_description: In 1931 Díaz Aguado was rumored to stand as Jaimista candidate for the Cortes in Álava; scholars claim he was rather to stand in Vizcaya or Gipuzkoa. However, the Jaimista electoral partners from PNV demanded that candidates running in Vascongadas be Basques. This condition ousted Díaz Aguado, who eventually competed individually in Valencia and lost miserably. He kept attending Traditionalist rallies as a speaker, touring the country from Navarre to Andalusia. At the turn of 1931 and 1932 he took part in unification of Traditionalist branches in Comunión Tradicionalista and remained its propagandist later on. He did not enter nationwide or Castilian executive structures of the party; instead, he was appointed regional jefe in Galicia. As representative of Galician Carlism he ran for the Cortes from La Coruña in 1933, again to no avail. In 1934 Diaz Aguado returned to the Madrid Carlist executive, nominated president of Círculo Tradicionalista in the capital; he brought with himself at least two older sons, as Jaime and Rafael appeared on the party membership rolls. Until 1936 he remained engaged in party propaganda activities from the very North to the very South and in 1936 was rumored to run for the Cortes from Madrid; it is not clear whether the news was false or whether he withdrew. None of the sources consulted notes whether Díaz Aguado was engaged in Carlist anti-Republican conspiracy.
  During the July coup Díaz Aguado was in Madrid and remained trapped in the Republican-held capital. No details about his fate are available. He spent the entire Civil War in Madrid, reportedly detained and maltreated by the Republican counter-espionage agency, SIM. The detention might have been related to his role in Socorro Blanco, an underground Carlist relief and mutual assistance organisation active in the Republican Madrid; according to later press notes he headed the group after its original leader, Pascual Cebollada, had been arrested. Scholarly works dedicated to wartime Madrid do not mention Díaz Aguado as head of Socorro Blanco though they note some members of the Aguado family engaged in other Fifth Column activities.
  Following the Nationalist takeover of the capital in 1939 he was recorded as taking part in homages to the Carlist dead and other funerals. It seems that he briefly resumed his earlier duties in juridical system and related to fighting juvenile crime, as in the very early 1940s he was nominated inspector nacional del Impuesto of Consejo Superior de Protección de Menores. He resumed Carlist activities and remained loyal to the leadership of Manuel Fal Conde; on his behalf Díaz Aguado used to chair sessions of the Carlist executive, though as an honorary president rather as a political protagonist. Despite his loyalty to Fal, he seemed somewhat uneasy about the regency of Don Javier and the Borbón-Parmas as would-be Carlist successors to the throne. The funeral of Díaz Aguado turned into a pompous ceremony, attended by minister of justice, minister of defense, jefe de la casa civil of Franco and the mayor of Madrid.
caption: speaking, 1936
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