Autumn 1931 saw the end of the first phase of Carlism's response to the Republic. Both the Basque Nationalist alliance and participation in Acción Nacional involved close co-operation with those who in turn appeared willing to work within the Republic: an inevitably temporary and defensive strategy dictated by general uncertainty about the future and by Carlism's own weakness. As the Republic's orientation and ability to survive became clearer, and as Carlism itself began to revive and to recover its sense of identity and purpose, these early alliances were exposed as unsatisfactory and the Carlists briskly sloughed them off.

The alliance with the PNV lost its chief raison d'être once the goal of a clerical Gibraltar was rendered unattainable; even so it was the PNV which made the first move towards dissolving it by accepting a partnership with the Temporary Committees when the latter were entrusted by the government with the drafting of a new, ‘acceptable’ statute. The Basque Nationalists thus committed themselves to the Republic in the hope of winning some measure of autonomy – a step which Carlism as a party would obviously never take, even if individual Carlists might continue to work within the autonomist camp.

The situation regarding Acción Nacional was somewhat similar. Carlists had joined Acción Nacional as a temporary electoral organization, and as it developed during the summer of 1931 into something resembling an accidentalist political party, they began to pull out.