Carlist loyalty towards the military leadership of the rising received its first serious test at the end of September 1936. For some time now it had been widely recognized in the political circles of Nationalist Spain that drastic military and political changes were necessary. A unified military command was obviously going to be needed before the great assault upon Madrid which, it was hoped, would all but end the war; perhaps more important still was the desire to give the Nationalist cause a more positive form of political leadership than was to be expected from the Defence Junta. Quite apart from domestic considerations, the requirements of dealing with Nationalist Spain's fascist patrons and of impressing the non-intervening democracies made change urgent. By September there existed behind the façade of the Defence Junta's leadership a de facto triumvirate consisting of Mola in the north, Queipo de Llano in the south, and Franco effectively dominating the centre. Of the three it was Franco, whose invasion had saved the rising from stagnation and possible defeat and who alone was conducting a dynamic campaign, who had the look of a Generalissimo. In much of the foreign press it was already ‘Franco's rising’, while German agents in Spain were informing Berlin of Franco's effective ascendency. ‘The Commander-in-Chief,’ wrote one of them, Seydel, on 16 August, ‘is definitely Franco.’

The issue was finally forced by a cabal of mainly Alfonsist officers led by Orgaz and an air-force general, Kindelán, who apparently believed Franco to be the most likely of the leading generals to favour a restoration.