[1] Following his attempted bombing of Spanish King Alfonso XIII's vehicle on return from his wedding in May 1906, which killed 24 bystanders and military, wounded over 100, and left the royals unscathed, the anarchist fugitive Mateo Morral sought refuge from Nakens.

For Nakens' initial months, he could not bear to read the newspapers and was not aware of the republican campaign for his royal pardon.

He received unlimited space in a republican daily newspaper, El País, where he wrote about sordid prison conditions and, in turn, improved his standing with those previously upset by his harboring of Morral.

Nakens wrote about prisoner malnourishment, disease, lack of heating, neglect from underpaid guards, and uncomforting clergy.

[9] Ultimately, President Antonio Maura recommended the pardon of Nakens and his friends in May 1908, which Alfonso XIII granted.

[12] Fallout from the affair appeared to favor the republican moderates (Gumersindo de Azcárate, Nicolás Salmerón), who condemned the radical, young republicans (Alejandro Lerroux, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez)[3] and made Nakens appear, by juxtaposition, to be unstable.

[12] Nakens was shortsighted to believe that his messages of egalitarianism, democracy, and cultural revolution would not appeal to the leftists he sought to avoid,[13] and his popularity within anarchist and radical circles reflected anticlericalism's status as a uniting force across the left.