of his arrest. Like many nationalists, he sought refuge first in the Mexican embassy and later that of France, from where he was able to cross the border from San Sebastián into France and re-enter on the Nationalist side in June 1937. Carrero Blanco then served in the Nationalist navy first as corvette captain aboard the destroyer Huesca and later the submarine General Sanjurjo. Following the Nationalist victory and subsequent establishment of Generalísimo Franco as Caudillo of Spain, Carrero Blanco was appointed Chief of Naval Operations in August 1939. Political career In May 1941 Franco appointed Carrero (age 37) as Under-Secretary of the Presidency of the Government, replacing Valentín Galarza Morante. Following the 1942 Begoña incident, Carrero advised Franco to remove Ramón Serrano Suñer from ministerial rank and from the post of president of the Political Junta of FET y de las JONS, and so Franco did. Carrero was—as Joan Maria Thomàs puts it—"extremely faithful and submissive to El Caudillo", a polar opposite of Suñer, of whom the dictator had become weary (despite their family connection). Carrero Blanco was made Vice-Admiral in 1963 and Admiral in 1966. He was Deputy Prime Minister from 1967 to 1973. By that time, Franco even if he was still then the Head of State and concurrent Prime Minister, had already delegated the day-to-day running of the government over to Carrero Blanco himself owing to the former's old age and illness. And the latter excelled in this regard, in terms of carrying Franco's policies and in directing the ministries towards that direction. Upon the nomination of Juan Carlos of Bourbon as heir to Franco in the headship of State in 1969, it was believed than an authoritarian monarchy guided by Carrero would guarantee the continuation of Francoism without Franco, an idea underpinned by Franco's words themselves during the Bourbon's nominating speech: ('all is tied down and well tied down'). Carrero reached the peak of his political career on 8 June 1973, when Franco—as envisaged in the 1967 Organic Law of the State that separated the functions of head of government from those of head of state—appointed Carrero as Prime Minister. The supporters of the aforementioned authoritarian monarchic continuation to the Francoist regime (the solution) suffered two successive blows in the wake of the assassination of Carrero in 1973, and the overthrow of the neighbouring Portuguese regime in 1974. Death Six months after being named prime