Even as the Carlists danced on the political grave of Alfonsism, they were full of apprehensiveness at the arrival of a Republic. The exiled Don Jaime for once spoke not only for his own followers but also for the Integrist and Mellist schismatics when he warned that the most conservative of republics represented the first step in an accelerating lurch into what was indiscriminately labelled ‘bolshevism’ or ‘anarchy’; the new Republic in Spain, he was sure, was likely to be crushed beneath ‘the avalanche of international communism’, however patriotic and well-meaning the Republican leaders might be. The Integrist daily El Siglo Futuro discovered evidence of this in the nationwide disturbances with which it chose to fill its columns. Blaming them on ‘communists’, it urged its readers to stand firm against the social hurricane now sweeping Spain. A rather more sophisticated and, from the Carlists' own point of view, prophetic analysis was offered by the daily of the Navarrese establishment, El Pensamiento Navarro. Recent events, it suggested, were a triumph for the Socialists and their trade union organization, the UGT; having exploited the favourable treatment which they had received from Primo de Rivera, they were now collaborating with Republican moderates and intellectuals in creating a system which they were certain to find incompatible with their long-term social goals. When they came to realize this, the UGT's masses would bring disorder and revolution to Spain.

Carlism's historic role, its ideological anti-Republicanism and the probable reforming and anti-clerical orientation of the new regime made it inevitable that the Carlists would from the outset oppose not only Republican policies and legislation but also the Republic itself.