He was an exemplary representative of the class which benefitted from Mendizabal's desamortización,[2] purchasing a number of estates in Ciudad Real province[3] and in Madrid, where he became one of the largest urban proprietors of the mid-19th century.

[9] Ramón's father, Cándido Manuel Patricio Nocedal Rodriguez de la Flor (1821-1885), was one of the key politicians of Partido Moderado, its long-time parliamentary representative and briefly (1856-1857) the Minister of Interior.

[12] Ramón's maternal aunt, Joaquina Romea Yanguas, was married to the moderado prime minister, holder of various ministerial posts and Isabel II's lover, Luis Gonzalez Bravo.

[24] When commencing his public activities in the early 1860s Ramón has followed his parent; at that time, Cándido Nocedal has already departed from the moderados camp and formed part of the neocatólicos.

The movement, with its foundations laid in early Isabelline years,[25] strived to politically accommodate orthodox Roman Catholicism within the framework of the liberal monarchy; in the 1860s Cándido acted as one of its leaders.

[30] This short-lived weekly served as a tribune for publishing his highly militant articles, often re-printed in other ultraconservative periodicals;[31] underlining the role of Christianity, they turned against the idea of krausist “examen libre”.

[33] In late 1867 neocatólicos mounted a last-minute attempt to resuscitate the Isabelline monarchy by building a grand counter-revolutionary party[34] and launching a new daily La Constancia as part of the project.

[49] In 1869-1870 he made his name as author of theatrical plays,[50] scholarly pieces[51] and short novels,[52] all formatted as part of the Catholic political campaign and at times causing violent clashes among the public of Madrid theatres.

[56] In 1870 the neos and the Carlists formed a joint electoral alliance, Asociación Católico-Monarquica,[57] with Ramón unsuccessfully running on its ticket in supplementary 1870 elections in Alcala de Henares.

[66] On the other hand, historians consider the Nocedals the opponents of violent action, as both father and son believed that Traditionalist monarchy might be reinstated by legal means and advised the Carlist claimant Carlos VII accordingly.

[70] Their political activity was reduced almost to nil; unable to and indeed uneasy about openly supporting the rebels, they allowed themselves only veiled demonstrations of enmity towards the newly established republican regime.

The claimant commenced his bon vivant period leaving political leadership in hands of an inefficient military junta; his followers suffered detentions, expropriations and exile.

The Nocedals promoted the concept of a movement, formatted along ultra-Catholic lines and with guidance provided by massive press machinery;[83] its strategy was defined as immovilismo or retraimiento, and consisted of total abstention in official political life.

[89] When managing and writing to El Siglo Futuro he focused on Catholic and Spanish values, with regionalist and monarchist themes – let alone dynastical ones – reduced to secondary role.

[99] The aperturistas immediately mounted an offensive, trying to use any formal Carlist initiative as a launchpad for electoral action;[100] Ramón Nocedal counter-attacked, with the claimant opting for a compromise: official party abstention in elections, but with individual candidates permitted here and there.

[101] As the 1887 rumors nominating general Cavero the next Jefe Delegado proved unfounded,[102] with continuous guerra periodistica,[103] Nocedal boycotting de Cerralbo's initiatives[104] and both parties complaining about chaos,[105] Carlism was increasingly stalled in internal strife, decomposition and paralysis.

With ultramontanism gaining upper hand over more conciliatory political incarnations of Catholicism after the First Vatican Council, and with the new approach made popular in the neighboring France by Louis Veuillot, the 1888 schism was nothing but a local Spanish manifestation of the trend.

[134] The program, summarized in Manifestación de Burgos, focused on building an orthodox Christian state as the ultimate objective and confronting sinister liberalism[135] as the target for today.

[143] During last decade of the 19th century dynamics of the nocedalistas was powered mostly by mutual and extremely bitter hostility towards Carlists, who by far outpaced liberals as primary foes;[144] occasionally the enmity has even erupted into violence.

The rivalry was made particularly pungent by geographically overlapping Integrist and Carlist zones of influence: though their national electoral strength remained an untested quality, it was clear that both groups enjoyed most support in Vascongadas and Navarre.

[146] During the 1891 campaign the Integrists won 2 Cortes mandates compared to 5 gained by the Carlists; though they had to acknowledge numerical inferiority, Nocedal boasted personal success in the Gipuzkoan district of Azpeitia.

[147] His victory was indeed made triumphant, as he thrashed the provincial Carlist jefe Tirso de Olazábal[148] and as Carlos VII seemed more interested in defeating Nocedal personally than in result of electoral competition in all other districts.

[151] In mid-1890s Nocedal realized that his bid to launch a nationwide Catholic ultraconservative party had failed; clinging to his intransigence, he nevertheless refused to reconsider the Integrist project and thought it his moral duty to represent orthodox Christian values and confront liberalism against all odds.

[153] As early as 1893 the Integrist pundits, Juan Ortí y Lara and marqués de Acillona, advocated reformatting the party as a looser Catholic alliance;[154] once their proposal was rejected, they left.

[163] The turn of the centuries produced gradual rapprochement between Integrists and Carlists at the local level;[164] regional juntas agreed electoral deals first in Gipuzkoa[165] and later in Navarre.

[172] Though Nocedal calibrated all his political activity according to religious principles and though he intended to be the Church's most loyal son, he enjoyed significant support only amongst lower parochial vasco-navarrese clergy[173] and in Society of Jesus.

[179] Though at this point even the Jesuits turned away from Integrism,[180] as probably the last political initiative of his life Nocedal joined forces with the Carlist pundit Juan Vázquez de Mella and set up Alianza Católico-Antiliberal, a diehard electoral platform he did not endure to test.

[181] Some contemporaries concluded that Integrism died together with Nocedal,[182] the opinion which reflected his immense personal influence on the party but which underestimated the mobilizing potential of ultraconservative, militant Spanish Catholicism.

Until the early 1930s the party – at that time named Comunión Tradicionalista-Integrista[185] – maintained its branches in almost all Spanish provinces[186] and kept winning some seats in local elections, apart from the Vasco-Navarrese area gaining also few mandates in Catalonia and Andalusia.