[20] His second wife descended from a well-established Zaragoza family;[21] her father was an entrepreneur[22] and the retail business he started was later developed into a large-scale enterprise.

[24] None of his descendants would become a widely known personality, yet Romualdo de Toledo Sanz gained some recognition as in the 1970s and the 1980s he ascended to high management positions in the publishing house Grupo 16.

[25] Among more distant relatives his maternal cousin José María Araúz de Robles was a politician an bull-breeder,[26] while his nephew-in-law Angel Sanz Briz became known for saving Hungarian Jews in 1944–1945.

First information on his political endeavors is related to the mid-1920s;[28] during the early period of Primo de Rivera dictatorship he joined the Madrid structures of the newly created state party, Unión Patriotica.

[29] The same year de Toledo as one of 64 alternate councilors entered the Madrid town hall,[30] in the dictatorship era not elected but appointed by the civil governor.

[41] He was noted conferencing on “problema escolar”,[42] writing articles,[43] and discussing issues like financing teachers by large municipalities[44] or city councils co-financing certain types of schools.

[51] He also lobbied for construction of Calatayud – Molina – Cuenca railway line,[52] the project which has never materialized, and remained engaged in some works on regulation of the water regime, carried out by Ministerio de Fomento.

In early 1933 he was for the first time mentioned by the Carlist mouthpiece, El Siglo Futuro,[70] later to appear frequently on its pages as an education pundit.

[103] As elections turned out to be chiefly a confrontation between Frente Popular and CEDA-led alliances, all independent candidates were trashed; with merely 9,442 votes gathered de Toledo failed.

[105] However, 4 days later, at the moment of the July 1936 coup, de Toledo was already on vacation in the small Gipuzkoan spa of Cestona,[106] where he holidayed together with another Traditionalist politician, Joaquín Beunza.

[107] It is neither known how he made it to the Nationalist zone; in June 1937, shortly after the fall of Biscay, he appeared in San Sebastián, allegedly “tras grandes peligros y persecuciones”.

Numerous newspapers issued in the Nationalist zone published his description of Republican-held Santander, though all accounts were singularly uninformative as to details of his personal lot.

[109] One scholar claims that when back in October 1936 Franco formed his quasi-government, Junta Técnica del Estado, de Toledo was along Joaquín Bau one of the “two of the more ‘collaborationist’ Carlists” who headed its departments, namely this of education.

Almost immediately de Toledo started publishing various articles on education, repeated in numerous press titles; the first one was printed in August 1937.

None of numerous works on wartime Carlism mentions him as taking part in party operations, and specifically whether he supported or opposed the unification.

[120] His immediate tasks were purging and re-constructing the teacher corps, forming the new curriculum, and work on the future primary education law.

[129] In the early 1940s Don Javier viewed these who joined Francoist structures without formal approval as half-traitors, yet de Toledo was not listed among these (like Rodezno or Bilbao) whose re-admission to Comunión Tradicionalista was out-of-the-question.

[133] When during first major redressing the system a quasi-parliament Cortes Españolas was set up, in 1943 by virtue of membership in Consejo de Toledo automatically became its member.

It is not clear whether de Toledo was forced to resign or whether he decided to go himself; following a solemn farewell ceremony, he left the ministry in July 1951.

He tried to block it with hundreds of amendments,[148] launched a counter-proposal of prolonging the existing budget,[149] claimed to defend “soberanía de las Cortes” and lambasted “persecución contra la gran propiedad”.

[151] Since 1937 de Toledo was not active in Carlist structures, though he cultivated personal relations with the collaborationist faction which sought rapprochement with the Alfonsists, led by conde Rodezno;[152] the latter once noted “Romualdo, tan identificado conmigo”.

After 1958 de Toledo held no political role, though he continued as member of the EFE managing board,[159] in the mid-1960s hailed as “consejero más antiguo”.

[160] There were some schools named after him,[161] few streets[162] and a “Premio José Ibañez Martin y Romualdo de Toledo y Robles”, awarded to the best Grupo Escolar.

As a propagandistic measure, intended to demonstrate that Traditionalists kept supporting the regime, a group of “prohombres de la Comunión Tradicionalista” was assembled to offer “fervorosa adhesion” to the dictator; the event received massive press coverage.

[165] In historiography de Toledo appears mostly as one of key individuals responsible for development of the Francoist primary school system and one of 3-5 most important people in the Ministry of Education during early stages of the regime.

[170] Scholars claim that his key objective was to build education system based on Catholic teaching,[171] going back to the model of St. Benedict[172] though saturating it with the Hispanic tradition.

[175] Single authors prefer rather to mention Traditionalism as his point of reference[176] and one sees him as “encargado de llevar el nuevo espíritu totalitario y católico a las escuelas”.

[177] He is usually criticized for implementing what is presented as outdated system, built on discipline and hierarchy[178] and stained by adherence to traditional social roles, nationalism and imperialism.

Until then he regulated primary schooling mostly by means of ministerial circulars,[181] though work on the law commenced in already 1938 and Ley Orgánica of 1942 – unclear to what extent drafted by de Toledo - specified some organization foundations of the system.

[187] In terms of numbers, during de Toledo's tenure the illiteracy rate dropped from 23% in 1940 to 17% in 1950,[188] while the gross enrolment ratio in primary education rose from 53% in the schooling year of 1940/41[189] to 69% in 1951.