In 1931, he was aide-de-camp to general Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer, chief of the Moroccan military forces and later of the Guardia Civil, whom he accompanied on his visits to garrisons of the protectorate and the Guardia Civil and command centres of Andalucia and Extremadura in Spain.
In 1934, he was assigned to Seville, from where he communicated with Cabanellas - then head of the 5th Zaragoza division - and Queipo de Llano, to lead the Nationalist rebel uprising in Andalucía.
On 7 September, he issued a list of instructions to the press prohibiting the reporting of details of the brutal and callous repression carried out by Nationalist rebels against their political opponents or the working public, and instructing them to soften the violent and sexually-explicit content in the terror-laden broadcasts of Queipo de Llano to more conservative reading.
Queipo de Llano was an alcoholic, with serious liver problems and Cuesta related frequently taking a glass of whisky from his hand as he was about to go on air.
[7]: 349 [8][9][10][2] Later, in December 1936, already qualified as a lieutenant colonel, Queipo promoted him to chief of staff of the Army of the South, a position that he held for the rest of the Civil War.
By then, the brutal terror campaign led until November by the sadistic Manuel Díaz Criado - who provided daily reports to Cuesta, Queipo de Llano and colonel Francisco Bohórquez Vecina - had resulted in 8000 executions in Seville alone.