His uncle was Gumersindo de Azcárate, a scholar, lawyer and Republican deputy of León for thirty years, head of the Republican-Socialist minority until shortly before his death in 1917.
[2] Justino's older brother Pablo de Azcárate (1890–1971) became a deputy of León and then ambassador to the United Kingdom during the Second Spanish Republic.
[3] At the age of 29 he was appointed Undersecretary of Justice to the Socialist Minister Fernando de los Ríos in the Republican Coalition government.
[4] He remained a member of Al Servicio de la República until it was dissolved in September 1932, then joined the National Republican Party(es) when it was formed under the leadership of Felipe Sánchez-Román.
[3] At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Azcárate was appointed Minister of State in the Government of Diego Martínez Barrio on the night of 18–19 July 1936.
He began travelling to Spain in the 1960s with the financial support of the Banco Urquijo(es), a Spanish private investment bank and industrial group.
He put the emerging Spanish private foundation movement in contact with Medoza and other leading philanthropists in Latin America and the USA.
[9] In 1973 Azcárate helped José Lino Vaamonde to prepare an account of the work done by the team to protect the Spanish artistic heritage during the civil war.
[10] On 15 June 1977 Azcárate had just arrived at his office in the Fundación Mendoza in Caracas when he received a call from King Juan Carlos I, who asked him to accept an appointment as a senador real (Royal Senator).
[1] Azcarate introduced a measure, passed by a wide margin, that called for repatriation of the physical remains of King Alfonso XIII and of Manuel Azaña, first president of the republic, and for the return to the Spanish people of Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, then being held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
[1] His nephew Manuel Azcárate was a Spanish journalist, politician and a leader of the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España, PCE) in the 1960s and 1970s.