of licenciado en derecho confirmed by the Madrid alma mater in 1927. In the late 1920s he commenced work as auxiliary professor at Central; at the same time he practiced as abogado. In 1933 Valiente married a girl from Santander, Consuelo Setién Rodríguez (died 1986); she was descendant to a family of noble Cantabrian landowners and would later claim the title of Marqués de Pelayo. The couple settled in Madrid at calle General Castaños 4 and had at least 3 children, born in the 1930s; Lucía, Rosa Blanca and José Ignacio Valiente Setién. None of them became a public figure, which is also the case of Valiente's grandchildren. Among other relatives the best known is his nephew Alfredo Prieto Valiente, who was an important Asturian politician and in the years of 1977-1979 served as the Unión de Centro Democrático deputy to the Constituent Cortes. One more Valiente's sister married into the aristocratic Toll-Messia family and his another nephew , Fernando Toll-Messia y Valiente, was the XIII. Conde de Cazalla del Río. In Christian organizations (1924-1935) In his youth Valiente's father was a liberal, though in the 1920s he moved to more conservative positions and supported the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The first information on Valiente Soriano's political engagements comes from 1922: he entered the Madrid branch of Confederación Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos. In 1924 and jointly with Gil Robles he co-founded Vanguardia Social Popular, designed as a youth branch of Partido Social Popular. 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