His paternal ancestors originated from Vascongadas; his grandfather, Jesús Chicharro de la Torre, was a military engineer and settled in the province of Ciudad Real following railway construction works.

In 1897 the young Jaime entered the Jesuit Colegio Nuestra Señora del Recuerdo in the Madrid district of Chamartín de la Rosa.

[11] As she inherited some 300 hectares[12] around Villarreal and Nules, the family moved to the spouse's La Salmantina estate, now located in the municipality of Les Alqueries (Castellón province).

[22] The leaning was further reinforced when during his Madrid academic years Chicharro met and got fascinated by Juan Vázquez de Mella, the top Carlist theorist.

[28] Also in 1911 Chicharro joined the Madrid Junta Católica, part of a national electoral effort engineered by the Church and intended to produce a grand Catholic political alliance.

At that time Valencian Carlism was divided between the mainstream purs and the dissident paquistes,[34] followers of Francisco Giner Lila;[35] Chicharro seemed to have allied with none and unsuccessfully ran a broad conservative ticket, forming part of the contenders loyal to the Murcian party leader, Juan de la Cierva y Peñafiel.

According to some, he represented the purs faction and was supported by a partially controlled newspaper, La Gaceta de Levante,[37] opposed by the competing paquistes fraction and the conservative mauristas.

[40] In the 1910s Carlism was increasingly divided between its top theorist Juan Vazquez de Mella and the claimant, Jaime III; the former tended to downplay dynastical issues for the sake of advancing a grand Right-wing formation, united by Traditionalist values.

Chicharro sympathised with his former Madrid master and emerged as one of the most vehement Mella supporters;[41] when in 1919 the crisis exploded and the Carlists were forced to take sides, he left the claimant and joined the rebels.

[56] Key beneficiaries of the project were the local Levantine landowners, who gained a gateway for the export of their orange production;[57] Chicharro kept lobbying for their cause in Madrid also during the decades to come.

[58] In recognition of his merits, the city of Burriana named Chicharro its hijo adoptivo;[59] upon his return from Madrid he was greeted with arches of triumph and venerating celebrations.

[62] While de Mella was firm on his Traditionalist principles and opted for a grand conservative party built upon them, Chicharro started to lean towards the vision of Victor Pradera, embracing a more loose Right-wing alliance held together by a lowest common denominator.

[63] In the early 1920s he effectively left the Mellistas; some scholars consider him paradigmatic for many rebellious Carlists who joined de Mella in 1919, but soon abandoned him to pursue their own goals and to amalgamate in other Right-wing groupings.

[95] In late 1931 Chicharro started to attend Traditionalist meetings,[96] gradually re-joining followers of the Carlist king and entering their new organization, Comunión Tradicionalista.

Though not counting among national leaders, in the press he emerged as one of the most-quoted Carlist speakers of the first half of 1932, extremely active touring the country and delivering public addresses.

In January 1932 he already gave lecture about collaboration and Carlism;[97] in February he presented a broad foreign policy program including control of Gibraltar,[98] federation with Portugal and confederation with Latin American states,[99] in March he labeled the proposed universal suffrage as unjust and lambasted the Republican government for overspending and highly inflated budget.

[112] In 1933 Chicharro was active mixing with the Alfonsist monarchists in the Tradicionalistas y Renovación Española alliance; by the local Castellon Liaison Committee he was agreed to represent it in the forthcoming elections.

Moreover, for the Carlist youth the landowners like Lamamié and Chicharro became marked men as privileged section of politically dominant potentates, who are "obstructing the Agrarian Reform by the feudal egoism of the odious grandees of grain".

[115] Discussing Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler he declared that Traditionalism, "though not one and the same thing, is very sympathetic towards them, as they are waging war against Judaism, freemasonry and Marxism, building an organized corporative state.

[117] However, running on the Carlist ticket to the Cortes from Castellón he narrowly lost,[118] though initially he was reported by the press as victorious[119] and his fellow Traditionalist Juan Granell Pascual was indeed elected.