Among some 60 books and booklets he wrote most are popular and semi-scientific historiographic works, though he was known chiefly as a novelist, especially as the author of Con la vida hicieron fuego (1953).

[4] The family got very branched in course of the following centuries, yet none of its members rose to similar honors; one of its arms, the Casariegos, have always been related to Western Asturias.

[25] Already in 1929 he started contributing to the local Asturian daily Región,[26] in the early 1930s to Madrid-based La Nación and El Siglo Futuro,[27] and other periodicals.

[28] In 1935[29] Casariego married María Paz Aguillaume Cadavieco, granddaughter to a Frenchman[30] who in the late 19th century arrived in Asturias building a railway network.

His son and Casariego's father-in-law Manuel Aguillaume Valdes[31] held various post office managerial jobs in Asturias; a militant free-thinker, socialist and UGT activist, he was promoted by the Republican administration holding high postal jobs in Oviedo and Toledo, but charged with 13 crimes allegedly committed during the Civil War, he was later trialed and eventually executed during early Francoism.

[41] It turned out to be more that a juvenile sentiment, as during academic years in the early 1930s he openly declared himself the follower of the Carlist claimant Don Jaime[42] and member of Partido Católico Monárquico.

[44] Within the party he made himself known in 1933, when Casariego published a brief treaty on Traditionalist doctrine; it was preceded by a foreword by the Carlist political leader, conde de Rodezno.

[51] Most specific information is that Casariego led some 160 Carlist paramilitary when training warfare near Oviedo, engaged in Sanjurjada and briefly sought refuge in Portugal.

[68] At that time he already must have had access to at least some individuals forming top layer of Francoist Spain, Ramón Serrano Suñer having been one of them; he launched a bid to restart publishing El Siglo Futuro and La Nación, and possibly to assume management of one of these dailies.

[78] However, Casariego did not abandon his earlier ideological leaning: one of key threads which characterized El Alcazár’s profile of the period was "tradicionalismo de raíz carlista", combined with "hispanismo imperialista".

Romancillo de los tres Capitanes hailed Nazi Germany as "músculo y motor" which provided a new impulse "desde Flandes a Polonia", and applauded Hitler as Christian crusader against Bolshevism;[83] indeed it seems that the anti-Communist zeal prevailed over pro-German leaning, as during the Hitler-Stalin rapprochement Casariego kept lambasting Moscow as arch-enemy of Europe.

The new foreign minister demanded that germanophile tones in the Spanish press are de-emphasized; El Alcazár sort of complied, but went on exalting extremely militant anti-Communism, which in turn annoyed Jordana.

[85] The ministry-approved Casariego's departure from El Alcazár was not a fall from grace; in some Francoist spheres he remained an appreciated militant camaráda[86] and in 1946 was received at a personal audience by Franco,[87] the privilege granted also in 1948.

In 1941 Casariego obtained PhD honors thanks to a dissertation on Spanish imperial legal infrastructure in America,[89] which in turn enabled his assumption of teaching duties at University of Madrid.

[110] He dedicated more and more time to works of the Oviedo-based Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, recognized among chief experts on Asturian history and culture.

[125] All these bids bore no fruit and at the moment of Franco's death Casariego was among a group of Carlist orthodoxes left out in the cold by the Left-wing Partido Carlista.

As its delegate he ran for Senate from the Alianza Nacional 18 de Julio list in the 1977 elections, yet his Oviedo bid proved unsuccessful;[128] in the 1978 by-elections he was standing as the CT[129] candidate and lost decisively.

[130] Despite these defeats at times he assumed high profile as leader of far-Right groupings; during the nationwide rally against the constitution draft, the gathering which amassed hundreds of thousands of people on the Madrid Plaza de Oriente in November 1978, Casariego was among the key speakers.

For decade engaged in Institute of Asturian Studies, by some considered ideological outpost of Francoism in Asturias,[133] in 1978 Casariego was the first elected director of IDEA;[134] he held the job for the next 12 years.

[142] Despite public recognition and grand house in Barcellina his financial status was shaky and some claim he died "in austerity"; when admitted to the hospital it turned out he had no social insurance.

Popular among both readers and critics,[169] the book was dubbed "novela de una generación"[170] and applauded by intellectuals like Marañon;[171] many appreciated its Galdosian breadth.

[173] The late 1950s marked the climax of Casariego's popularity; though he kept writing his later volumes were addressed to limited audience interested in specific topics, like hunting, maritime history, Carlism and the culture of Asturias.

As a novelist[181] he is absent in general works on 20th-century Spanish prose,[182] reduced to short passages in accounts on "literatura fascista"[183] or civil war novel.

With political apologetics,[185] lively yet simple plot, nagging moralizing objectives and anachronistic message,[186] they are counted within "corriente martirológico-heroica" and denied major value.

[187] Even more damning are scholars who focus on pro-Nazi threads in Casariego's writings; they quote poems which exalted Hitler and his crusade against Soviet bolshevism or British plutocracy[188] and note that as late as 1953 protagonists of his novels identified with Fascism.

Apart from apparently ideologically-grounded references to "outstanding writer", also by foreign authors,[190] some students note that especially Con la vida was grounded in philosophical concepts,[191] protagonists remained complex figures in dialectic relationship with environment and the message was far from unambiguous proselytizing.