to personal entourage of the prince. Initially the rapprochement with the regime, masterminded by Valiente and the Massó, looked promising. The socially radical Falangist leaders, José Solís Ruiz and Raimundo Fernández-Cuesta, started to frequent Carlist rallies. During formation of the new Cortes in 1961 Franco followed Valiente's advice and nominated all the individuals suggested. The regime permitted opening of Círculos Culturales Vázquez de Mella, a network of semi-official Carlist offices, and authorized a few new Carlist periodicals; some of them, like Montejurra, gained popularity and became vehicles of mobilization especially among the youth. Valiente had long audiences with Franco in 1961 and 1962; the dictator declared that he had not decided on his successor and the future monarch yet, and explicitly invited the Carlists to lobby for their cause. Carlos Hugo was personally admitted by Caudillo later in 1962. Leader: descent (1963-1968) Valiente, dubbed "the strong man of Carlism", in the early 1960s had to share more and more power with Don Carlos Hugo and his team. Following setup of Secretaría Política in 1962, other new bodies mushroomed and diluted the powers of jefe delegado, with Masso and José Maria Zavala emerging as dynamic new leaders. The closest Valiente's collaborators, Jose Luis Zamanillo and Juan Sáenz-Díez, were getting increasingly marginalized. What started to amount to an open friction was not merely a personalist squabble; Zamanillo and Traditionalist theorists like Francisco Elias de Tejada were alarmed by ambiguous, socially-driven rhetoric of the carlohuguistas. The conflict climaxed in 1963, when Zamanillo was expulsed, Sáenz-Díez was demoted from treasury, while intellectuals related to the Siempre magazine, like Elias de Tejada and Rafael Gambra, distanced themselves from the organization. Valiente, also somewhat uneasy about new ideas advanced by the prince, eventually consented to the measures adopted; he was guided by loyalty to the king. However, the showdown left him increasingly isolated in the Carlist executive, now dominated by the progressist youth. In the mid-1960s it became clear that the strategy of posibilismo, which initially produced some results, was not leading any further. Censorship imposed almost total media blackout on the 1964 wedding of Don Carlos Hugo, who was also denied the Spanish citizenship; no ministerial nominations materialized. In 1965 Valiente was again admitted by Franco; during the conversation he realized that collaboration has reached its limits, that no more concessions could be expected and that the crowning of Don Carlos Hugo was not even