[10] By the late 1880s he was already operating a number of companies which grew to major business; active in all of Northern Spain from Galicia to Catalonia, they gave rise to a family fortune.

[19] Following premature death of Acisclo the widow moved to Barcelona,[20] but it is not clear whether the young Juan was raised in Santiago or in the Catalan capital; none of the sources consulted provides also any information on his early education.

[29] The best known of them, Juan Ignacio Sáenz-Díez de la Gándara, was to become a professor of Arabic studies,[30] expert in numismatics[31] and during early transición an UCD Cortes deputy.

[44] Though in terms of ownership the Sáenz-Díez branch saw their share of the Simeón García business reduced to some 15%, Juan was assuming key positions in more and more legal entities; in the early 1950s engaged in 3 companies, in the mid-1950s he was already active in 5 and in the late 1960s in 7.

[52] The early 1980s were the period when Sáenz-Díez was in the executive of 9 companies, but by the midst of the decade he started to withdraw from business engagements, shortly before death holding key positions only in few entities.

He hailed local Galician requeté units, heading towards the León front, and boasted of his 2-year-old son, Juan Ignacio, wearing a Carlist beret "con borla y todo".

[70] In late December 1936 Sáenz-Díez took part in a meeting of Junta Nacional in Toledo,[71] intended to discuss Franco's demand that the party leader, Manuel Fal, leaves Spain; nothing is known about his position on the issue.

[72] In February 1937 as delegado de intendencia[73] he travelled to the Portuguese Insua, where the exiled Fal had settled, to agree Carlist position versus the looming threat of amalgamation into a new state party.

[77] Upon the final 1939 Nationalist victory Sáenz-Díez was among signatories of Manifestación de los Ideales Tradicionalistas, a memorandum addressed to Franco and demanding instauration of a Traditionalist monarchy.

[78] In the early 1940s member of Junta Auxiliar, a loose and makeshift leadership group of increasingly fragmented and bewildered movement, he adopted a skeptical though not openly challenging stand towards the regime, in internal documents lambasting it as "intruso e usurpador".

[79] In 1943 he co-signed another manifesto, known as Reclamación de poder; handed to general Vigon and delivered to though not acknowledged by Franco, it re-emphasized earlier Traditionalist demands.

[83] In the late 1940s Sáenz-Díez remained member of the rather inactive Carlist leadership, in 1947 nominated to the first post-war Consejo Nacional[84] and taking part in meager party initiatives, also abroad.

[85] When in the early 1950s Manuel Fal commenced a project of launching a semi-official national Carlist daily, due to his business position Sáenz-Díez was entrusted with bringing it to a successful end.

[89] Sáenz-Díez entered Consejo de Administración and brought new staff to the newspaper, transferring his old collaborator Goñi Aizpurúa from El Correo Gallego and attracting other professionals.

[94] Fal resigned shortly afterwards; there was no successor appointed as Jefe Delegado, and in 1956 the party leadership was transferred to a new collegial executive, named Secretaria Nacional and presided by José María Valiente.

On the one hand, he tried to fight off a faction seeking dynastical alliance with the Alfonsinos and ensured that its representatives, like Araúz de Robles, were sidetracked;[99] firmly loyal to the Borbón-Parmas, he dissuaded the claimant from returning to a vague regency formula.

[101] He prepared a memorandum, advocating cautious co-operation with the regime; clinging to own identity, it proposed "June 18" as basis of common understanding with Falange.

[104] In 1957 the three negotiated ministerial jobs with José Luis Arrese;[105] the same year during an annual Montejurra congregation he was among those introducing the prince Carlos Hugo,[106] who in turn delivered a speech sounding like an offer to Franco.

Prior to the gathering the following year he even pre-agreed the Carlos Hugo speech with the regime officials,[107] in 1959 underlining common combatant past of the Requeté and the Falangists[108] and engineering further collaborative strategy.

[113] They took advantage of financial failure of Editorial Tradicionalista;[114] the Carlists by a small fraction lost control over the board,[115] resulting in Informaciónes slipping out of their hand.

[119] Though at that time some likewise concerned party pundits[120] dissociated themselves from Comunión, Sáenz-Díez did not; unhappy by what he dubbed camarilla of the prince, in the mid-1960s he merely started to withdraw to the second row.

In 1963 he ran for the Madrid ayuntamiento[123] from Tercio de Entidades Culturales, Económicos y Profesionales,[124] a pool reserved for corporate establishments; his bid was not successful.

[125] In 1967 he stood for the Cortes in his native Galicia, taking part in newly introduced, semi-free elections for the pool reserved for the so-called Tercio Familiar.

[138] In 1972 he was considered a would-be leader of a Carlist political association, about to be permitted by the regime,[139] but though estranged by Left-wing course of the prince, he still felt bounded by loyalty to the king; he also feared an ensuing long interregnum, which Carlism might not survive.

Falling short from claiming the throne or the regency, he declared himself a standard-bearer of Carlism; in December 1975 he nominated Sáenz-Díez his Jefe Delegado and entrusted him with reorganization of semi-legal Comunión Tradicionalista.

[150] In a second and more detailed press comuniqué, Sixtinos claimed success, consisting of preventing a Marxist meeting and profanation of sacred Carlist site with separatist and subversive plot.