Málaga his relations with the Movimiento were getting cold. Añoveros' increasingly vocal support for Catholic labor groupings, Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica (HOAC) and Juventud Obrera Cristiana de España (JOC), was putting him on collision course with the official policy, especially as the organizations were assuming an alternative and challenging format. Some of his gestures looked like manifestos, which pitted the world of poverty against that of glamour and officialdom. Also in his sermons he embraced similar threads, e.g. when he lamented the plight of agricultural workers in Andalusia and lambasted lack of social conscience by the upper strata. However, at that time Añoveros was careful not to enter an openly confrontational path; in 1966 he presided over the 1966 Ceuta celebrations of 30th anniversary of "Convoy de la victoria". After death of the conservative primate Enrique Pla y Deniel Añoveros became more vocal within the Spanish episcopate; he co-engineered condemnation of the official vertical unions, declared by the Bishops Conference in July 1968. Gradually his articles in HOAC bulletins, sermons and pastoral letters were assuming increasingly severe tone; some references, like the ones about "the oppressed", were no longer compatible even with most flexibly applied official line. Apart from focus on social issues Añoveros advocated also a new Church animated by the Vaticanum II spirit; he also voiced in favor of family values in what seemed like confronting a new, consumer lifestyle. With the censorship almost lifted, in the late 1960s his sermons were getting widely quoted in the Spanish press; their author gained a nationwide recognition, e.g. declared Person of the Year by the Catalan periodical Mundo in 1970. Añoveros approved of and supported the phenomenon of „curas obreros”, encouraging seminarians from Cádiz to take up labor assignments in local industry. This, combined with his focus on social issues and down-to-earth profile of a "parish bishop", drew comparisons to Hélder Câmara, chief exponent of the Latin American so-called liberation theology, though Añoveros has never admitted embracing the concept. At the turn of the decades Spain's officials lost any illusions they might have had about Añoveros; at one point police suspected him of having running a communist cell and in 1971 Dirección General de Seguridad counted him, together with Vicente Tarancón and Narciso Jubany, among "jerarquías desafectas". Bilbao: "caso Añoveros" and afterwards In December 1971 Añoveros was nominated the bishop of Bilbao. He was short-listed as the only candidate,