5. March 1976: The Floodgates Open
The death of the hated dictator provided a powerful impetus to the revolutionary upsurge. It opened the floodgates through which the workers forced themselves in a wave of strikes and demonstrations. The ruling class now began to understand that change was inevitable if they were not to be swept away by the tide of revolution. The mood in the factories was one of open rebellion. My old friend and comrade Pat Wall, now sadly deceased, worked as a sales representative and travelled to many countries. But Pat was no ordinary ‘tourist’. A revolutionary Marxist all his life, from 1987 until his untimely death in 1990, he was Labour MP for Bradford North.
As a convinced internationalist, Pat always did his best to establish political contacts on his foreign travels. Sometime in 1975, I had a very revealing conversation with him about Spain. Pat told me about a visit he had made at that time to a factory in Vitoria in the Basque Country. With his friendly, easy-going manner, normally he would be able to connect with the workers in any workplace. But walking around this factory in the company of management, he could sense a bristling hostility on all sides. “I have never in my life experienced such a mood of burning class hatred”, he recalled. Pat’s instincts proved to be very sound. One year later, in March 1976, this mood burst to the surface in a semi-insurrectionary general strike.
Between 1976 and 1978 the number of working days lost in strikes rose to 13.2 million. More than 5.7 million workers (sixty per cent of the working population) were involved in this massive strike wave. Paradoxically, in the years of economic crisis, from 1974 to 1976, the wages of Spanish workers were actually increasing as a consequence of the stormy strike wave that broke out.
The strike movement was gradually loosening the bonds of dictatorship, undermining its very foundations. Through their struggles the workers tore up the ‘agreements’ that had been imposed from above by the bosses and the Vertical Union. Inevitably, demands of the workers initially had a mainly economic character: a sliding scale of wages to counter the effects of inflation, the lowering of the retirement age, the shortening of the working day and improved health and safety at work, etc., but under conditions of dictatorship, these economic demands were rapidly accompanied by political ones.
Under the irresistible pressure from below, the more honest enlaces and jurados of the Vertical Union resigned their positions at the request of their workmates. Other demands had an even more explicitly political content: an end to the dictatorship, full democratic rights, the right to strike and organise, freedom of speech and assembly, the freeing of all political prisoners, amnesty for political prisoners, the dissolution of the FOP (Forces of Public Order), etc. The immediate question was naturally the issue of democracy, but many people wished to go further. The advanced workers felt that power was within their grasp. They felt instinctively that the overthrow of the Franco dictatorship was not the end, but rather the beginning of a profound transformation of Spanish society. The movement was beginning to acquire a clearly anti-capitalist character.
The regime attempted to put an end to the strike movement the only way it knew how: by resorting to violent repression. More than 10,000 people were imprisoned in 1972 for subversive political activity. These included Marcelino Camacho and the other leaders of the CCOO. But repression in a period of upturn in the class struggle had the opposite effect to that which was intended. By this point the workers were losing their fear of the regime. Instead of cowing the workers, repressive acts only served to increase their anger, pushing them towards greater and even more radicalised struggle. The Spanish workers’ consciousness was rising by leaps and bounds. They were learning fast in the school of the class struggle. There is no better school.
In Madrid
In early January 1976, I arrived in Madrid together with my first wife Pam – who was also very active in the movement – and two small children: Lizzie, who was just over two and Stephany, who was eight years old. We moved into a modest flat in the working-class suburb of Carabanchel Alto. The weather was fine and sunny and Pam lost no time in dressing the children in their best summer clothes and going down to the patio to enjoy the sun. The neighbours were quite astounded by the sight of these crazy foreigners sunbathing in the month of January. But, as everybody knows, British people are greatly attracted by the sun, which is generally in short supply in our cold northern latitudes, especially in the month of January.
We had arrived at a moment when the class struggle was reaching a climax. The evidence of this could be seen even from one of the windows of our small flat, from where one could see the red brick walls of the notorious Carabanchel prison, where Marcelino Camacho and other leaders of the Workers Commissions were incarcerated.
By the beginning of December 1975, 25,000 metalworkers had already declared a strike in Madrid and the mines of Asturias were at a standstill. Starting with the factory workers, some of whom, like those at Standard Electric-ITT had been out for a month, the strike wave spread immediately with the start of the New Year and every day it seemed as though new layers of the working class were being drawn into this mighty movement.
In January, the Madrid Metro workers went on strike. They were followed by strikes of workers in the Postal and Telecommunications sectors. Strikes then spread to the rail network (RENFE), taxi drivers and hundreds of other companies in Madrid’s industrial belt, forcing the government to call in the military to keep the metro and postal services running. Alongside the 15,000 Standard workers came 12,000 Chrysler operatives, 3,000 in telecommunications industries, 3,200 in Getafe metal, 5,000 in Pegaso. The total number of strikers was officially given by the Madrid newspaper Informaciones as 100,000 (9 January). Unofficial estimates give double that number. When the police tried to stop a group of demonstrators in Madrid unfurling a red flag, there was a scuffle in which one policeman was stabbed.
In reality, Madrid came very close to a general strike situation in these few weeks. In that month alone, about 21 million working hours were lost in strike action. Practically every section of the workers had been involved in the labour disputes of the early part of the month: metalworkers, building workers, railwaymen, postmen, workers in the Telephone Exchange, the banks, the Metro, the car workers and even insurance agents. The movement of the workers was assuming an irresistible momentum.
Madrid took the lead in these impressive mobilisations throughout the month of January. The rest of the country quickly followed its example. Some of the most important companies in the country, such as Ensidesa, Hunosa, Standard Eléctrica and Motor Ibérica, among others, were on strike. The workers marched against the regime on May Day in Madrid, in Barcelona, in San Sebastián and other industrial areas. The police kept their guns in their holsters, or at worst fired over the heads of the crowd in Barcelona.
The Madrid Metro
The intervention of the Madrid Metro workers, who went on strike on 6 January for a wage increase, was a significant turn in the struggle. The Metro legally came under the heading of national security and, in any strike, it was liable to be placed under martial law. This was precisely what was done. The strike in the Metro – the most commonly used form of transport in Madrid – threatened to paralyse the entire economic and commercial life of the city. The government, therefore, sent in troops to drive the trains and break the strike.
The Metro workers showed, not only courage, but a high degree of class consciousness. They issued a statement that was publicised in the press apologising to the people of Madrid for the hardship caused by their strike “and especially to the other workers of the capital.” They also produced a statement directed “to the workers and employees of Madrid and the people of Madrid”, in which they pointed out that their wage rise could be met without putting up fares, “since the price of a ticket is entirely remote from the clauses of the collective agreement.”
The leaflet went on: “As a consequence of the completely negative and unjust attitude of the management, although we have presented our demands through legal channels, we have found that there is no other alternative but to carry out the actions decided by the assemblies for stoppages, etc., in order to make our voice heard.” Finally, the leaflet thanked “the people of Madrid for their indications of solidarity and understanding”.
Sympathy with the strikers was, in fact, widespread in spite of the problems caused by the dispute. Within three days of the strike, 70,000 pesetas (about £600 at the time) was raised for the Metro workers in factories, many of which were themselves on strike, such as Chrysler, Telefónica, RENFE, Standard, etc. An indication of the spirit of the men was shown by a letter sent by one of the local Sindicato officials (jurados) to the Archbishop of Madrid, Monsignor Tarancón, after the workers had been evicted by the police from a church in his diocese. An extract reads as follows:
We are very grateful to the Church for the collaboration, which until now and at all times it has been showing to us; however, we believe the time has come for Monsignor Tarancón to make himself clear: either he is for the workers’ demands or he is on the management’s side. We cannot permit a situation in which we do not know of a single meeting place where we can get together to talk about the grave problems which we are faced with at present. We are forbidden to enter our Sindicato offices, we are kicked out of all the churches in Madrid… All this is grievously unjust: the worker has no defence against his employers.
This letter, for all its naivety, brings out the burning sense of indignation of the Spanish workers against the employers, against the police and against the hypocritical Church leaders, who spoke in favour of liberalisation, but refused to openly come out in favour of the workers’ struggles. It is the voice of the developing consciousness of Spanish labour, which was rapidly drawing conclusions from experience.
The mood in Madrid
The following is an extract of what I wrote, describing the mood at the time:
A few days ago, I was buying stamps in a shop and asked the man behind the counter where the nearest post box was, “you needn’t bother”, he assured me, “They won’t be sent.” When asked what he meant, he almost shouted out with ill-suppressed glee: “BECAUSE THEY’RE ON STRIKE!” And it was true. The postmen had joined in the movement.
On 14 January, the front pages of Madrid papers were emblazoned with the banner: POST OFFICE MILITARISED. The next day the papers carried news of the arrest of eight postal workers, “in accordance with the decree of militarisation.” This decree meant that all post office workers above the age of eighteen were placed under military command and jurisdiction. Like their brothers in the Metro, the postmen were forced back to work.
The key telephone company remains strike-ridden up to the present time of writing. An attempt to arrest a workers’ leader at the Telefónica was met with an immediate walk-out, which soon secured his release. In general, most workplaces that have not been on strike have been downing tools every day for a set period of time – normally two hours.
This has been the case with the telephone company and the banks. But perhaps the key sector of manual workers in Madrid, apart from the engineering industries (metal industries, as they are known in Spain) is construction. This has been paralysed by a general strike affecting at least 100,000 workers. Building workers have struck in many other parts of the country apart from Madrid, and twenty per cent wage increases have been conceded.
There is also talk of resolving the engineering disputes. Evidently, the government is leaning on the employers to reach a settlement as soon as possible, as can be inferred from the following press report in Informaciones (16 January):
“This [re-opening of factories after the lock-out of striking workers] could be, on the other hand, the conclusion reached by the representatives of management after being in contact with high representatives of the government and Sindicatos, in which an immediate return to normal working was urged.”
The electric atmosphere in Madrid has been given concrete expression in a series of massive demonstrations in which the wage demands became mixed with political slogans. The transition is even more easily made in Spain at present because one of the first acts of the new-style ‘liberal monarchist’ regime was to introduce a wage freeze.
“Down with the wage freeze!” and “Down with the cost of living!” are among the most popular cries on demonstrations, along with “Amnesty!”, and demands for democratic rights. These latter demands were the main slogans of the demonstration last Tuesday night organised by the Socialist-led Democratic Convergence and the Communist-led Democratic Junta. The aim was to picket the residence of the Prime Minister Arias, but in the biggest show of force in Madrid since the war, the demonstrators were brutally repressed and dispersed by the police.
In the magnificent strike wave, which has petrified the royal dictatorship and the Spanish capitalists in recent weeks, the Spanish working class has risen to its feet to challenge the continued existence of the regime. Most of the strikes began in connection with the renewal of collective agreements between the employers and the fascist-type vertical trade unions, the Sindicatos.
The government claims that inflation in Spain is running at eighteen per cent, but the British Times estimated it as nearer twenty-five per cent. In fact, inflation has hit the Spanish workers and housewives hard in the last period. The price of foodstuffs, including basic foods, has risen to the extent that most items in a Madrid family budget would actually be higher than in London. Yet basic wages for most workers remain abysmally low.
The reply of the man in the street when questioned about the strikes would inevitably be: “What do you expect after forty years of fascism? It was bound to happen.” The attitude of the so-called trade union representatives to the Metro strike was entirely typical: “Go back to work and we’ll negotiate.” However, at a lower level, where some of the Sindicato officials are elected by the workers and subject to their pressure, the local officials (jurados) went along with the men in organising sit-ins in various churches in the city.
This has caught on and has become a general tactic among the workers. Denied the right to meet publicly and locked out of their Sindicato buildings, they have occupied churches in massive numbers all over the city. At just such a meeting, when the employers had threatened the intervention of the military, and the question of a return to work was put to the vote, out of 2,500 Metro workers in the meeting, only five voted to go back.
But the sending in of the military was more an indication of desperation on the part of the government than anything else. At the same time as eight postmen were being arrested, other workers and a labour lawyer arrested in the course of the dispute were released. In reality the government and the ‘forces of public order’, as the police are officially styled, have been reeling under the impact of mass strikes and demonstrations.
The government is clearly worried that if the strikes continue, they could become general and spread to other areas. Already there have been strikes of building and bank workers, as well as dockers in Barcelona, and scattered strikes and demonstrations in other industrial areas. Minister Fraga (former Spanish Ambassador in London) has warned that the government needs “peace and quiet” to carry on its programme of reform, while simultaneously praising the guardians of “public order” and warning that there is no room for communism and terrorism in a Fraga-style “democracy”.
The demonstrations have been too many and too massive (by Spanish standards) to describe. And significantly, for the first time, not all have been dispersed by the police. In some outlying industrial suburbs, which retain the character of small towns or villages, the demonstrators have virtually taken over the running of the places.
Where demonstrations have been dispersed it has been (again by Spanish standards) by ‘peaceful’ means, i.e., tear gas and rubber bullets, as opposed to the metal variety. The number of arrested demonstrators has been relatively small. The government evidently fears the possibility of bloody encounters provoking an explosion.
However, they have opted in favour of raiding strike committees and quietly arresting leading personnel. On the 16 January it was announced that, the night before, 120 workers active in the strike had been arrested at a meeting of the Co-ordinating Strike Committee. But nothing could suppress the movement.
The same evening it was announced that there had been a demonstration of some 2,000 women in the Calle Goya. The large number of working-class women who turned out, demonstrated against the high cost of living and for amnesty for political prisoners and democratic rights. The demonstration was broken up by the police. However, a number of women did get through to attempt to pass on a petition to the government, demanding the abolition of the decree on the wage freeze, freedom of assembly, association and expression, and a minimum living wage.
An indication of the real balance of forces and the underlying mood is shown by a mass meeting of 2,000 railway workers in Madrid’s large Chamartín railway station. A total of 5,000 railway men were affected by partial stoppages.
According to Informaciones (16 January 1976) the public forces invited the demonstrators to dissolve, which was done peacefully, to the applause of the representatives of law and order. Such is Madrid in January 1976!
There is no lack of public support for the strikes and demonstrations. The same paper reported that when the women’s demonstration passed along the street, causing traffic jams, “numerous passers-by joined the demonstration and several motor-drivers got out of their vehicles to applaud the demonstrators”.
The conclusion is not hard to see. This regime, still more than its predecessor, is suspended in the air. It lacks any real basis of support in any section of society. It is weak and divided against itself. The rift in the government between the ‘Bunker’1 and those more far-sighted representatives of capital, who are frantically seeking to forestall an explosion from below by a series of controlled reforms from above, is daily becoming more evident.
Cabinet meetings go on for nine hours and more as the political representatives of the 100 families who control Spain desperately seek to find a way out of the impasse. It is possible that the government will succeed in riding out the present strike wave by a combination of stick and carrot. But the Madrid strikes have achieved one lasting result. Gone is the old fear of repression and the superstitious belief in the almighty power of the police.
The changed atmosphere is evident everywhere. The cowed liberal press has at last found its voice, stiffened by the example of the masses. In a country where twelve months ago the reporting of labour disputes was minimal, and mention of underground organisations was punished by fines and suspension, the recent reporting of strikes has been, if anything, more objective than in Britain, as we see from the reports in legal papers like Informaciones and the Barcelona Vanguardia.
Still more incredible is the now open coverage given to underground illegal organisations. The CP leader Carrillo is openly quoted at least in magazines and Felipe González, Secretary General of the Socialist Party (PSOE), is giving long interviews in various publications.
Andalusia was also on the move. Forty years of fascist reaction was not sufficient to quench the flame of revolt in the soul of the Andalusian people. I vividly remember one incident when Cádiz, one of the major centres of Andalusia, was shaken by the news that the shipyards Astilleros Españoles SA were to be closed. This would have spelled disaster for the entire province, not just Cádiz itself but all the surrounding villages. The reaction of the populace was immediate and violent.
A one-day general strike was followed by street fighting with the police in which the ‘forces of public order’ found themselves bombarded from the windows and balconies of the workers’ flats with what the press described as “heavy objects” and which included, among other items, a sewing machine and a refrigerator.
Shortly after these events, there took place a series of massive demonstrations involving millions of workers throughout Andalusia. While these demonstrations were formally called in favour of autonomy for the region, there is no doubt that what really stood behind this enormous display of popular anger were the desperate conditions of unemployment, misery and even actual hunger that hung over every town and village of Andalusia.
Revolt of the students
In February, militant demonstrations led to the closing of the University of Valladolid. The Governor of Girona adequately expressed the reality of the situation facing the regime:
[P]hrases and concepts were appearing, many of which were considered extinct. We witness the first signs of distress in the labour world and in some student circles, where hitherto there had been little political activity.2
Ana Muñoz recalls the movement of the students in Madrid at that time:
I entered the sociology faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid in September 1974. It was a real hotbed of revolutionary activity. The mood was highly politicised. Every conceivable left-wing group and party was present on campus: Communists, Socialists, Trotskyists, Maoists – all competing to win over students to their side. There were demonstrations and protests almost every day.
The University was buzzing with irrepressible political life. There were always discussions in the canteen. Every day, members of one group or other would come in with a big roll of paper, which they would unroll and tape on the wall. It would contain lengthy statements, protests, appeals or manifestos that would be read with interest by the students. Naturally these paper manifestos did not last long. The police would rapidly descend on the canteen and tear them down. But the next day some other notice would reappear, with the same consequences. The police would try to establish the identity of the culprits, questioning members of the canteen staff, but to give them credit they never let on.
The police suppressed every sign of protest with the utmost savagery. I saw students jump through plate-glass windows in a desperate attempt to escape brutal beatings at the hands of the police. The police had blocked all the entrances and the only way to get out was by throwing chairs to break the windows. Many students were injured in this way, suffering severe cuts from the shards of shattered glass. This fact alone shows that the alternative at the hands of the police was even worse than this.
The regime had its spies and informers among the students, who would turn up at mass meetings and pass on information about any planned demonstration, so that even before we arrived at the agreed place, it would already be occupied by armed police ready to crack down hard. It was easy to form the impression that the police had been present when our plans were being discussed. In point of fact, this was often the case.
There was a higher level of police infiltration. Any decision taken outside a very small group of activists was immediately known. Demonstrations used to be called in the Moncloa district of Madrid. This became normal practice, since there was no point in calling a demonstration on campus that would immediately be broken up by the police. In addition to this, it seemed better to demonstrate in a place outside the university where we would be seen by members of the public. But the police soon became aware of this tactic and acted accordingly.
My faculty was surrounded by a metal fence. The police turned this to their advantage in the following way. They drove the students into a confined space until they found themselves trapped against the fence where they were subjected to a savage beating. But the students drew the necessary conclusions. By the next morning the fence had disappeared.
My turn to be arrested came early in June 1975, just a few days before my twenty-first birthday. As it happened, that was a piece of luck for me. The students had called three days of struggle on the fourth, fifth and sixth of June in support of workers fighting against the regime. It began as usual with a mass meeting in the university and then a march to the Moncloa palace where a mass of students blocked the traffic.
As usual, the police were waiting for us. They lined the streets that led to the point of the demonstration, arresting anyone that was walking in that direction and taking them immediately to the waiting police buses. The arrests were so indiscriminate that many innocent passers-by must have been arrested. As far as the police were concerned, anyone in the vicinity was a suspected ‘red agitator’. I was one of those arrested in this way. They took away my identity card, without which one was virtually helpless and I was taken away with the others.
We were taken to the dreaded DGS (Dirección General de Seguridad – General Department of Security), which was situated in the Puerta del Sol, the celebrated central area of downtown Madrid. This area is well known to tourists from all over the world for its handsome eighteenth-century architecture, its fountains, shops and pleasant bars and cafés. But the place we were destined for was invisible to tourists and very far from pleasant.
We were held overnight in the cellars of the DGS. These closely resembled the kind of dungeons that one normally sees in Gothic horror films: dark, dirty and with a peculiar smell that produced nausea. It was impossible to sleep because, apart from the appalling conditions and the filthy mattresses provided, there was a constant noise of prisoners shouting their defiance, protesting, and generally making life difficult for the jailers. All night, these discordant noises reverberated in the corridors.
Next morning, I was taken for interrogation. I was taken to an office where I was questioned by some men in plain clothes – members of the secret police. I persisted in claiming that I was just an innocent passer-by, who had nothing to do with any demonstration. My interrogators were not amused and proceeded to slap and knock me about, shouting and swearing at me, demanding that I confess – which I refused to do.
I was lucky that day because so many people were arrested, they did not have time to give me a thorough going over. It was not the most pleasant of experiences, but I knew that other people had suffered far worse treatment. Even luckier was the fact that I was legally under age and had no previous convictions. Four days later, I would have been twenty-one years of age and liable to imprisonment.
One of my comrades, Jesús, was not so lucky. He had already been picked up on a previous demonstration on 1 May and was given a month in jail. His parents (he was from a working-class family) had to pay a substantial fine to get him out. He was highly annoyed at this, partly because his parents did not have that kind of money, and partly because he was quite looking forward to a month in jail in the company of men like Marcelino Camacho and other trade union leaders.
My parents, who knew absolutely nothing about my political activity, were astonished when a girl friend of mine turned up at the house and urgently asked to go to my room to clear out any documents, papers or other incriminating evidence that could prove that I was an active member of the underground. They were even more astonished when she found such material hidden under the mattress and in other places of concealment. My father destroyed all the incriminating evidence, which I greatly lamented, since it was not easy to find political material in those days. However, if the police had found this material, it could have meant a prison sentence of several years.
Finally, I was released with a fine of 5,000 pesetas. This was an enormous sum at that time, approximately a month’s wages. I was determined not to pay the fine, preferring to go to jail. Fortunately, by this time, the underground organisations of the Left had the services of capable lawyers, who were experts in delaying tactics, appealing repeatedly against sentences and drawing things out for months or even years.
In the end, I benefited from an amnesty following the death of Franco. One day, I received a letter in the post, informing me that I had been pardoned. And that was that. Many others were not so fortunate. Some paid for their resistance with years of imprisonment, others paid with their lives. In the last period of the dictatorship, the level of repression against the students and workers was becoming increasingly ferocious.
Intellectuals and Artists Against Franco
It was not only the students who were involved in action. There were many protests involving layers of the middle class, intelligentsia and professional people, who had never been involved before: lawyers, doctors, university lecturers and newspaper editors manifested opposition to the regime. The journal Cambio 16 was closed down for three weeks on 3 March and its editor fined for “attacking government institutions and national unity.”
Practically all strata of Spanish society were opposed to the dictatorship. Under the influence of the workers’ mass strikes, artists, singers, theatre people, film directors and playwrights entered the fight against the dictatorship. The older generation were still quite content to listen to Lola Flores murdering songs that sounded vaguely like flamenco, or the cheesy lyrics of Raphael. But the young people of Spain were looking for more substantial stuff.
Miguel Fernández, the writer and Esperantist who we have already mentioned in relation to the death of Miguel Hernández, was active in the struggle against Franco. At the time about which I am writing, he was working in the Madrid telephone exchange. I asked him to provide me with a short list of names of singers who were prominent in the anti-fascist movement. The list turned out to be longer than I anticipated:
All the inclinations of intellectuals and artists were generally progressive or left wing, although most of the singers and songwriters were not usually formally identified with any particular political formation. There were some, however, whose political allegiance could be seen, in spite of themselves.
For example, singers like José Menese and Manuel Gerena. They did unprecedented and invaluable work in the field of flamenco, introducing the class struggle and workers’ demands into the texts used in traditional cantes. We all knew they were in the orbit of the PCE.
Let’s see the list of names:
The singer-songwriter par excellence was Paco Ibáñez. His work and his repercussion, not only at a Spanish level, but also internationally, were extraordinary. He put Miguel Hernández’s verses to music, at a time when almost nobody knew who he was, as well as León Felipe’s. He also wrote songs with the texts of Lorca, Alberti, José Agustín Goytisolo and Gabriel Celaya … even Quevedo. Was he in the PCE? Yes, he probably was.
Nor must we forget Joan Manuel Serrat, who mainly put the words of Antonio Machado and Miguel Hernández to music. A great singer-songwriter, his Mediterráneo song, translated and sung in many languages, including Esperanto, is considered the best theme of light music of our time.
Thirdly, we have a real giant, a man who did sing well and played the piano and composed wonderful things. That man was Lluis Llach. His immortal song L’Estaca is internationally famous. His Campanades a mort (Bells of death) is dedicated to the murdered workers of Vitoria. It is a monumental work, almost a symphonic piece … when he denounces those responsible for the massacre as “Murderers of reason and of life!”
Then there was Luis Eduardo Aute. His Al alba, dedicated to the last executions by the Franco regime, is impressive. He was a complete artist (musician, singer-songwriter, film director, actor, sculptor, writer, painter and poet).
José Antonio Labordeta had nobility, skill and a huge heart. What good people they all were! His lines: Habrá un día en que todos / al levantar la vista / veremos una tierra / que ponga libertad (There will be a day when everyone / looking up / will see a land / that gives us freedom) will always excite me, always, always…
Then there was Raimon. His song Al vent has become legendary, as well as his concert at the Faculty of Economics of Madrid in 1968. He has to be placed in the very front rank.
And I have yet to mention singers and songwriters as important as Luis Pastor, Elisa Serna, Pi de la Serra, Mikel Laboa, the Basque singer songwriter who sang in Euskera, Carlos Cano, Pablo Guerrero (Extremadura), Rosa León, and many more…
At a Madrid theatre, the actors interrupted a performance to announce that they were joining a strike, and were enthusiastically applauded by the audience. The writing was on the wall for a regime that had exhausted itself and the people had had enough.
The revolutionary mood affected many middle-class, or even upper-class families. One example was Luis Osorio, who was known as ‘Rati’, a student with whom I began a very fruitful collaboration in 1975. He was a very able young man with a seemingly boundless store of energy. His father was a Galician businessman who would have been horrified to discover that his son was an active member of a revolutionary Marxist organisation. There were many other cases like this.
Ana Muñoz reminded me of an amusing example, a comrade from Malaga called Emilio. He had the fiery temperament of an Andalusian and was completely dedicated to the struggle against the Franco regime, although I knew nothing about his family or his past. His revolutionary spirit led him to extremes, although he was not a fanatic but a pleasant, easy going person with that sense of humour that is typical of people from the south in general and Malaga in particular.
As long as Franco was alive, Emilio always dressed in black – that is to say, all in black: black shirt, black trousers, black shoes etc. But the day the dictator died, he changed his appearance. From that moment, every day, Emilio dressed all in red. Being driven through the countryside in a car by Emilio was quite an experience. He maintained a constant conversation as he belted along. But whenever he approached a village, he would stop speaking and turn on a cassette player that blasted out the Internationale at top volume, so that everyone would know he was passing. He was, in effect, a one-man agitprop.
Ana recalls a conversation she had when they finally arrived at his house, which was a very decent sized flat in a middle-class area. She said:
“This is a very nice flat.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It used to belong to a fascist.”
“Really? Who?”
“My father.”
It is just as well his father was no longer alive to give his opinion. The opposition of broad layers of the middle class and the intellectuals showed that the regime, devoid of a mass base, was now utterly rotten and ripe for overthrow.
Enter Don Arias Navarro.
The Arias Government
The death of Franco immediately provoked a series of movements at the top of the regime. Franco had named Carlos Arias Navarro, a lawyer and former Mayor of Madrid, as Prime Minister in December 1973. Arias Navarro, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, Martín Villa, Calvo-Sotelo: It read like the most wanted poster of known criminals in a police station. The government of Arias Navarro promised to maintain order with “firmness and severity”, while developing “political participation” within the framework of Franco’s misnamed “organic democracy.” In other words, Arias promised to square the circle.
Some of the faces at the top had changed, but very little else. As far as the public were concerned, his was the face of solid continuity. The new government was packed with a host of personalities who were notorious for their slavish loyalty to the dead dictator and his regime. Many of them subsequently became leading figures in the PP, a party which, under a not-too-conspicuous fig-leaf, represented a continuation of the old regime under new management. Arias Navarro’s cabinet of loyal Francoists had firm control of all the key state institutions, including the Council of the Realm which nominated the terna, the list of three candidates for prime minister to be approved by the king.
Let us consider the dramatis personæ, starting with the prime minister. Arias Navarro was a die-hard Francoite, who had earned the nickname ‘the Butcher of Malaga’ (Carnicero de Málaga). This was on account of the role he played in the wave of repression in Malaga following the Civil War, when he was involved in signing thousands of death warrants. A man of small character and an extremely narrow vision, he was an uninspiring speaker. During his television appearances – which were mercifully rare – he always looked like a man who had just swallowed half a pint of vinegar, or a pet lapdog that has just received a kick from his master.
His appointment to the highest post in the land was evidently the result of his close personal relationship with the Franco family, and especially the dictator’s widow, María del Carmen Polo y Martínez-Valdés, popularly known as La Collares (‘the one with the necklaces’), owing to the enormous strings of pearls that always hung from her neck, which must have weighed more than the medals on the chest of a Soviet field-marshal.
Under Franco, Madrid’s main street was renamed Avenida de José Antonio (José Antonio Avenue) in memory of the founder of the fascist Falange (it has now reverted to the old name, the Gran Vía). In that street are to be found some very exclusive jeweller’s shops. The story goes that every jeweller on the aforementioned street had to sign up to a mutual insurance policy as a safeguard against losses.
So what? You might say. Every business needs an insurance policy against burglars and shoplifters. Indeed, they do. But the losses referred to here were a safeguard against a rather different kind of robbery. Among her many other virtues, Doña Carmen was an avid shopper. Together with her entourage, she would drop in, completely unannounced, to pay a visit to one of the jewellers of the Avenida de José Antonio.
Delighted with the sparkling goods on display, the First Lady would help herself to a goodly quantity of the most expensive products, without bothering to pay for them. “Send the bill to the palace,” she would advise the horrified proprietor, who by now had a shrewd suspicion of what would happen to such bills. Without the existence of a sound insurance policy, the poor man was staring bankruptcy in the face. Since such occurrences were all too frequent, the terrified jewellers all signed up.
When her husband was already ill, the First Lady played a major role in the election of Carlos Arias Navarro, one of her favourites. She also showed a keen interest in censoring the press, which she regarded as a bit of a hobby, although maybe not quite as interesting as her lifelong passion for amassing a huge collection of hats, dresses – and pearl necklaces.
We take our leave of Doña Carmen with some regret, since she at least provides us with an element of humour – something that cannot be said of Arias Navarro, who seems to have been completely devoid of any trace of humour, and very little of any discernible human emotion whatsoever.
Fraga and Areilza
A very different kind of personality is presented by the second man of the regime. Manuel Fraga Iribarne undoubtedly had the advantage over Arias in terms of intellect and ability (though, to be frank, this is not saying very much). On 12 December 1975, he was appointed vice president (deputy prime minister) and Interior Minister (Ministro de la Gobernación) in the new government, a post he held until 5 July 1976. A long-serving member of the Franco regime, he was the Minister of Information and Tourism from 1962 to 1969, Ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1973 and 1975, Minister of the Interior in 1975 and Deputy Prime Minister from 1975 to 1976.
Fraga stands out against the mass of grey, fascist bureaucrats by his pugnacious character, driving ambition and all-consuming egotism. He was also not unintelligent, with an unfailing sense of smell when it came to sniffing out possible paths to self-promotion. As Minister for Tourism he had gained a reputation as a ‘liberal’, although in those days, that word must be understood in the broadest possible sense.
Love him or hate him, it cannot be denied that Fraga, in complete contrast with Arias Navarro, was what they call a ‘character’. A Galician by origin and temperament, a bon viveur and a lover of good food and drink, he could regale journalists to pulpo a feira (octopus with paprika), washed down with plentiful glasses of the juice of the thick-skinned albariño grape, small, sweet but also high in acidity, producing excellent white wine. And, after a copa (glass) or two of Galicia’s famous aguardiente, the finest after-dinner drink in the whole world, any self-respecting journalist could hardly fail to form a favourable impression.
Oh yes, Manuel Fraga was a man of character, a man capable of turning on the charm whenever that was required. But the charm was only on the surface. Behind the façade of bonhomie there was a cold, calculating, ruthless and utterly amoral character, a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his ends. Even in his person, he somehow resembled a bull, and he certainly acted like one in politics. Lacking any discernible principles other than self-advancement, Fraga’s political line consisted of a continual zigzag to the left, then to the right. But his most fundamental instincts always dragged him unerringly to the right.
As we have seen, Fraga occasionally flirted with the idea of reform and tried to cultivate a liberal image, especially when visiting London or Bonn. But finding himself outflanked on the left by his rival and sworn enemy, José María de Areilza, and finally outsmarted by the upstart, Adolfo Suárez, he swung sharply to the right, on the principle that it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Despite his undeserved reputation as a ‘reformer’, he clamped down brutally on protesters, treating them as enemies of the state to be rounded up by the police. Fraga earned notoriety for his statement: “La calle es mía” (The street belongs to me), an affirmation as empty as it was provocative. It was typical of this fiery, bull-necked man. It ought to have been inscribed on his tombstone.
The third man in this Holy Trinity was Don José María de Areilza y Martínez-Rodas, the Count of Motrico. An aristocrat with the dignified bearing of old-school Spanish nobility, he was the most prominent liberal in the new government, although, like the other members of the cabinet, he had supported Franco in the past. In 1938, during the Civil War, he became Mayor of Bilbao. Between 1947 and 1964, he served as Spanish Ambassador to Argentina, the USA and France. In 1964, he resigned from his office and was asked by the exiled King Don Juan to head the monarchist opposition to Franco.
At this point, he emerged as a prominent member of the Arias government, serving as its Foreign Affairs Minister between 1975 and 1976. Intelligent and urbane, he was on the ‘left’ of the government, and many people thought he would be the natural successor after the fall of Arias. But in the end, both he and Fraga were overtaken by a man who nobody expected to win.
Torcuato Fernández-Miranda
Then there was Torcuato Fernández-Miranda. A shady, Machiavellian figure and a master of intrigue, he was the éminence grise of the Falangist movement. Franco so trusted him that he handed him the responsibility of the political education of Prince Juan Carlos, whom he wished to carry on as his successor. A master of intrigue and manipulation, Fernández-Miranda was a powerful decision-maker and adviser who operated in the shadow of power, and helped to determine it.
Torcuato also occupied a high-ranking position in the Movimiento Nacional (National Movement), the only legal political party in Franco’s Spain. This master manipulator joined the Cabinet of Premier Luis Carrero Blanco and was an outspoken opponent of political reform. As Carrero Blanco’s deputy prime minister, he was expected by many to get the job of prime minister after his assassination. But that was given instead to Carlos Arias Navarro, who immediately saw in him a most dangerous rival. The danger was increased by his manoeuvres with the king.
In the person of Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, Juan Carlos found a firm and reliable point of support. Realising this, Arias took the necessary steps to place Torcuato out of harm’s way. Fully aware that his main competitor was Fernández-Miranda, Arias Navarro enthusiastically supported the idea of sending him to the Presidency of the Cortes. Since that tame institution was firmly under the thumb of the government, such a move was a neat way of neutralising a dangerous enemy.
In the days of the Roman Empire, wealthy Romans were often sent to the Senate as a means of extracting money from them. The joke circulated widely that so-and-so had been ‘exiled to the Senate’. That became the fate of Fernández-Miranda. But if Arias imagined that by this device, he could take his main rival out of the picture, he was badly mistaken.
While Arias was manoeuvring against Fernández-Miranda, and Fraga was intriguing against both of them, Adolfo Suárez remained, as ever, in the shadows, as silent as the grave. He was biding his time. But behind the appearance of taciturn indifference there lay a burning, all-consuming ambition. This was to emerge, not gradually but suddenly, to the astonishment of friends and enemies alike. But the moment for this remarkable transformation had not yet arrived.
Feet of Clay
Despite its appearance of strength, the dictatorship had feet of clay. It lacked the one mechanism that could provide it with a strong line of defence against the class struggle. In democratic bourgeois regimes, the ruling class can rely upon the labour bureaucracy to control the workers, police them, and guide their struggles into harmless channels. But this mechanism was not available to the Spanish regime.
There were more days lost to strikes in January 1976 alone than for the whole of 1975. Interior Minister Manuel Fraga warned workers and those marching on the streets “not to expect any other treatment than that meted out by all states when they see their very roots under attack.” These words were to acquire a sinister meaning on 3 March 1976.
The demand for the amnesty of all political prisoners now assumed a tremendous importance. This gathering campaign was the focal point of pressure on the government, which attempted to defuse the movement by promising elections within two years. But such promises from a hated government fell on deaf ears. The strikes and protests continued unabated, all the time growing in intensity.
As always, the first reaction of the ruling class was to resort to violence. That was the essential meaning of the Arias-Fraga government. All protests were ruthlessly repressed, but the apparent strength of this government was purely illusionary. When its strong-arm tactics failed – as they were bound to – the ruling class had to look around for a second option. Behind the scenes of this unstable transitional regime, other forces were stirring.
The two wings of the regime represented in the new government, who were referred to in the newspapers as the ‘hards’ and the ‘softs’, were constantly divided and arguing among themselves over the content and method of carrying out reform. This was a faithful reflection of the atmosphere which prevailed among the ruling class. Behind the façade of comforting unanimity, the reality was very different. From the start the new regime was riven with contradictions. Behind the scenes and hidden from public view, its main representatives were fighting like cats in a sack. The main contradiction, in reality, was between Juan Carlos and Arias.
‘Reform’
The celebrated French historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform itself. That was clearly shown in the case of the Franco dictatorship in Spain. The liberals feared the workers and demanded concessions, while the reactionaries feared that the liberals would make concessions that would open the door to further radicalisation of the working class. The split between liberals and reactionaries that de Tocqueville describes is to be observed at the beginning of every great revolution in history. The liberals say: we must reform in order to prevent revolution; the reactionaries reply: if we reform the regime, it will mean revolution. And both are correct. We saw this very clearly in Spain.
The workers’ organisations, still operating under conditions of illegality, were not yet under the control of a consolidated bureaucracy. Therefore, the strike movement unfolded in an elemental and uncontrolled manner, which threatened the regime’s very foundations, provoking a serious crisis. In response to this threat, the government devised various projects for political reform, each more reactionary than the last, which were clearly designed to safeguard the essence of the old regime.
In January 1976, Arias introduced proposals for his reform, which was no reform at all but merely an ill-concealed attempt to maintain the dictatorship with a pseudo-democratic image. Meanwhile, in the streets nothing had changed. The Arias plan was presented by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, who depicted it as a gradual process, strictly controlled by the government, consisting of small changes to Franco’s Fundamental Laws. This was also known as “reform in continuity”, or to put it more plainly: change everything in order that everything will remain the same.
In February 1976, the anti-terrorism decree was modified and the clauses affecting the press removed. But the fascist elements, frustrated and angry, started to take the law into their own hands. On 2 February 1976, Don José Antonio Martínez Soler, editor of the weekly magazine Doblón, was seized and driven into the countryside where, bound and blindfolded, he was beaten on the head and soles of his feet. His crime was to have published a mild article about the Civil Guard in which he said that some were members of the banned Democratic Military Union. His kidnappers wanted a list of names. Soler was lucky enough to break free, or he would probably have frozen to death in the forest where he was left tied up.
Wobbling uneasily, like a man walking on a tightrope, Arias struggled to explain his law to foreign journalists on 19 February: it was to be broad enough to admit Christian Democrats and even socialist groups and would not exclude any ideology “by name” but “of course they would have to accept honestly the rules of the game, which demand nothing more than the acceptance and respect for our Constitution.” Furthermore, “We must … respect opinions [and] not exclude anyone except those who exclude themselves by adopting extreme attitudes of one or the other side [and by] acting through violence, hate or subversion.” Moreover, the new law “explicitly does not exclude any political force or any political entity [but] implicitly [those] communist and separatist tendencies [were excluded, which] in an antagonistic way oppose the philosophy, politics and raison d’être of the National Movement.”
In a speech to the procurators of the Cortes on 28 January 1976, Arias Navarro said: “You have the task of bringing our laws and institutions up to date as Franco would have wished”. (My emphasis, AW.) He declared that, in reality, the government’s proposal was the continuation of Francoism through “Spanish-style democracy” and also thought the changes should be limited.
Here we have the ideal recipe, not for a democratic transition, but for Francoist continuity. The so-called Arias-Fraga Reform was a blatant attempt to preserve the Francoist regime under the guise of reforming it. Arias Navarro moved even closer to the regime’s ‘hard-liners’ following his confirmation. His plan for reform would signify the election of a semi-democratic Cortes and the legalisation of some parties (such as the PSOE) but not others (above all, the PCE).
This plan was doomed to failure from the outset. In a situation of mounting class struggle, strikes and demonstrations all over Spain, the idea that it was possible to carry out a limited reform (which in reality changed nothing) while leaving the Communist Party, the most decisive force in the workers’ movement, out in the cold was clearly a non-starter. It indicated that the tendency represented by Arias Navarro was hopelessly out of touch with reality.
The ruling clique was compelled to try to forestall revolution from below by making certain concessions. But the nature of these changes was very feeble and its scope incredibly limited. It was clearly designed to preserve as much of the previous regime as was possible, making cosmetic concessions on secondary matters, that it failed to convince anybody. But such meagre concessions, far from satisfying the Spanish people, merely stimulated their appetite for more.
On 28 April 1976, Arias Navarro once more attempted to soothe the jangling nerves of his colleagues in the National Council of the Movement, by explaining that the government’s proposals amounted to a very limited change. The content of the speech was so empty and vague that it satisfied nobody. Informaciones expressed serious concerns about it: “The slow pace leaves an uncomfortably long period of time in which things can go badly wrong.” Translated into plain language this means: “By dragging your feet you are risking a social explosion.”
This pessimistic appraisal was an accurate expression of the real situation.
Torture
By this time serious divisions in the regime were increasingly evident. Arias threatened that the government would “crush with all the force of authority at its disposal” the movement of subversion. Yet the Supreme Court, which re-examined the case of Marcelino Camacho and nine other underground trade union leaders in February 1975, reduced their sentences and four were released.
In other words, the government tried to combine a mixture of concessions and repression. That satisfied nobody. The real face of the Arias government was particularly well known to the Basques. The repression in Euskadi was even more ferocious than in the rest of Spain. In the province of Vizcaya, in the first two weeks of May 1975, over 1,000 people were arrested.
The Spanish constitution allows the police to keep anybody under arrest without charging them for three days, but twenty-five per cent of those dragged off the streets were in for longer than nine days. In many cases, this time was utilised to beat and torture the prisoners to force them to provide information and denounce other people.
In his well-written and informative book, 3 March: An Unfinished Struggle, Arturo Val del Olmo details the kind of tortures that were used:
At that time torture was normal and generalised. Pushing the head into water to produce asphyxia (‘the barrel’), hanging by the wrists or feet, being beaten on the stomach and the sex organs while the victim is spread-eagled on a table with the upper half of the body hanging over the side (‘the operating theatre’), electric shocks (‘the cattle prod’), the crushing of fingers, beatings with wet towels or continually holding one leg between handcuffed arms while being beaten with truncheons: these were some of the habitual practices.3
Arturo’s own wife, Cristina Valverde Ibáñez was arrested and tortured, after being denounced by an agent provocateur. In May 1975, a report was issued by the Paris information office set up by the underground Spanish workers’ parties. It contains fifteen pages of facts concerning the arrest and torture of activists in the Spanish workers’ movement. Extracts were reprinted in the Solidarity Bulletin of the British Labour Party Young Socialists. I reproduce here just a few examples.
Sworn statements in the report, which contains names in full, read as follows:
“They beat me up, hitting every part of my body. They dragged me by the hair until it came out.”
“I was beaten up frequently. They gave me pills which they forced me to swallow by shoving the barrel of a gun into my mouth. They threatened to take my girlfriend and rape her in front of me.”
“One comrade was within the police HQ for twelve days and for the first five days he was injected in the vein before the interrogation began. He confessed to absurd things. His comrades in there testified that he had to be carried back to his cell.”
“He was tortured so much that even before he had been detained for fourteen hours, he was unconscious and disfigured to the point where he had to be moved to Basauri hospital. X-rays showed serious damage to internal organs. His kidneys and spleen were ruptured.”
“I was tortured twice a day for nine days. They put me on a short, narrow table, with my legs and heads sticking out at each end. I had to stay in the rigid horizontal position. If I let my head or legs drop, they beat me up. I lost consciousness.”4
The provocative tactics of Arias and Fraga were indeed threatening to cause an explosion. The Arias-Fraga reform was a case of too little and too late.
The Game of Thrones IV: Checkmate
It was the weakness of the regime that compelled the ruling class to close ranks around a strong man, in this instance, one with a crown on his head. All the reactionary forces of Spanish society rallied around the figure of the king, or rather, the embodiment of the institution of monarchy that constituted a bulwark against revolution. But this strong man was an essentially weak individual.
A colourless mediocrity, Juan Carlos was an accidental figure, thrown up by the tide of history to occupy a position for which he had no qualifications other than a determination to defend his own interests and a certain ability in the field of intrigue and Machiavellian manoeuvres. The apparent strength of Juan Carlos is not to be found in any of his personal qualities, but in the peculiar class balance of forces that arose at that time. As a person, Juan Carlos was even more insipid, lifeless and impotent than his grandfather Alfonso, and far less entertaining than his fiery, whiskey-swilling father, Don Juan.
His public speeches created a most unfavourable, not to say painful, impression. He spoke mechanically, without the slightest emotion and even less intellectual content. Limited and provincial in his thought, lacking both intellectual depth and emotional drive, he was unable to deliver any speech without reading it, and that he did poorly with a dry, monotonous tone like an automaton. The banality of his utterances was equalled only by the poverty of their delivery, which was far inferior to even the most incompetent junior student in a drama school.
Yet, despite the complete barrenness of the content of his speeches, the representatives of the ruling class hung upon his every word, as if they were receiving the stone tablets Moses once got on loan from the Almighty.
The reason for this sudden fascination with monarchism is not to be found in the personal attributes of the man himself, but in the dangerous power vacuum created by the death of the dictator. The Spanish ruling class had to fill that gaping hole, and fill it rapidly. In such circumstances, they were prepared to utilise any material that was available. To paraphrase the words of Voltaire, if Juan Carlos had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him.
Juan Carlos played a key role as a willing tool of the ruling class in its efforts to avoid being completely overcome by the revolutionary wave, whilst at the same time defending his own subjective (and extremely substantial) dynastic privileges. This was the moment when the young King was hastily pushed forward as the new head of Spain. He had already been named as Franco’s successor by the dictator himself. When the moment of Franco’s death seemed imminent, he moved with alacrity to assert his right to the throne.
He sent General Díez Alegría to Estoril to convince his father not to write any manifesto that would hinder the restoration of the Monarchy in the person of his son. But these moves provoked a furious reaction on the part of the man who thought that he, and not the puppet Prince, should be seated on the throne of Spain. Don Juan de Borbón was not the only one to be annoyed at the presumptuousness of Juan Carlos. When he learned of his manoeuvring, Arias Navarro flew into a rage and threatened to resign. This amounted to blatant blackmail, and it succeeded. Such a step in a delicate moment would have provoked a crisis with unforeseen consequences.
Driven into a corner, Juan Carlos was forced to beat a hasty retreat and pleaded with Arias not to resign. Arias maintained his post and strengthened his position, but his bad habit of threatening to resign in the end proved to be a double-edged weapon. His blackmailing tactics irrevocably damaged relations between him and Juan Carlos, who had no intention of allowing things to remain like this. He retired into his corner to sulk, lick his wounds and prepare his revenge.
The King’s New Suit of Clothes
The failure of the Arias government to take decisive action began to arouse serious doubts on the part of Juan Carlos, who feared this growing social radicalisation posed a serious danger to the monarchy itself. The fate of his brother-in-law, Constantine, who had lost the throne in 1967 as a result of his support for the Greek dictatorship, was a sobering thought.
Unknown to Arias, Juan Carlos was preparing to act as the matchmaker in the ‘marriage made in heaven’ between Adolfo Suárez and the leaders of the opposition. This was a necessary part of his manoeuvres to save the regime by making cosmetic concessions, and persuading the workers’ leaders to put the brakes on the revolutionary movement of the working class.
From that moment, a tantalising but preposterous idea began to form in his mind. Why do I need this man Arias? Why can I not follow a policy that suits my own interests? I need to find allies. But what allies? That is the question. The space to my right is already occupied by men who are only interested in grabbing power for themselves. Arias treats me with contempt and Fraga is not to be trusted either. No, the only hope is to strike a blow at the right by leaning on the left. Then I can tame both. But in order to do that, I have to acquire democratic credentials, and do so quickly.
From Juan Carlos’ point of view, such a policy was necessary in order to safeguard his own interests and dynastic privileges. But he faced a problem, and it was a ticklish one. The opposition in Spain was overwhelmingly republican and saw him quite correctly as Franco’s heir. On the one hand, Juan Carlos had to conclude a pact with the opposition that would open the way for a democratic transition. On the other hand, he had to make sure that the monarchy would be preserved.
But how was he to convince people of his democratic credentials? Completely unknown to the thousands of workers and students who were struggling against the dictatorship, facing years of clandestine activity, prison, torture and exile, Juan Carlos was living a life of idle luxury and fawning at the feet of Franco and his clique.
Up until the summer of 1976 there is no record of Juan Carlos even mentioning the word democracy, let alone fighting for it. We find nothing – not a single word or gesture – that remotely suggests any allegiance to, or inclination towards, democracy. His entire adult life had been spent currying favour with Franco and his generals and furthering his own selfish interests, even against those of his father and family.
During all this time, nobody had ever witnessed a single act of defiance or courage from Juan Carlos in the face of the Franco regime. On the contrary, here was a man who had supported and assumed full responsibility for the crimes and oppression of the dictatorship in its final years. Now this spoilt child of the regime was to be presented as a figurehead in the struggle for democracy. This was an absolute outrage that ought to make the blood of any honest person who had fought for democracy in Spain boil.
If there was one idea that was universally shared by communist and socialist workers, it was the assumption that a future Spanish democracy would naturally take the form of a republic. Nobody in their right mind could have supposed that the leaders of the PCE and the PSOE would accept a monarchy, and much less under a man who had been personally appointed by Franco as his heir. In all the intense debates among the activists of the workers’ movement following the dictator’s death, such an abomination was never even mentioned as a theoretical possibility. Yet that was precisely what occurred.
They say it is impossible to square the circle. But squared it was. His whole life had turned Juan Carlos into a chameleon with an uncanny ability to change colour to suit the current environment. He now decided to present himself as a convinced democrat, the guarantor of a reconciliation of all Spaniards. What a superb disguise! But could he get the opposition to fall for it? That was the 64,000-dollar question.
Juan Carlos need not have worried. The secret of his success is to be found in the famous tale by Hans Christian Andersen about the emperor’s clothes. The reason why the emperor succeeded in convincing all his sycophantic courtiers that he was elegantly dressed even though he had not a single rag to cover his bare backside was simply because the latter were predisposed to accept anything that the ruling monarch and his courtiers told them.
The entire farcical performance, embarrassing to any thinking person, was a striking manifestation of the weakness of the regime, its lack of any central idea, principles or ideology. All that was lacking was the little boy who was either sufficiently brave or foolish to point a finger in the direction of the throne and shout out: “The king has no clothes!”
The Regime Looks to Europe
The Spanish economy at that time was one of the sickest in Western Europe. Years of protectionism, cheap credits and subsidies under the Franco dictatorship bred a pampered, effete and utterly degenerate capitalist class that was totally incapable of competing in world markets against more powerful capitalist rivals in conditions of world recession. Spanish capitalism desperately needed help from Europe: more investments, more tourists, more access to the European market. But Spain was an international pariah. Its image, despite Fraga’s attempts to paint it in brighter colours, had been irrevocably tarnished by the trials and executions of the recent period. The death of Franco and the massive wave of protests and strikes in Spain caused growing anxiety in European capitals.
In the midst of the recent labour and student disturbances, the Madrid government launched a diplomatic drive in an attempt to negotiate Spain’s entry into the European Economic Community. The time had come for a charm offensive and what better man for that task than Spain’s new Foreign Minister? The urbane and charming José María de Areilza toured European capitals with friendly smiles and warm handshakes. This was the nice face of the Spanish government.
But the leaders of Europe were not fooled. In a memo to the Irish government from the Irish Ambassador in Madrid, Areilza’s tour was considered a “cosmetic exercise” and the Spanish government was reported to be “frightened by what had happened in Portugal.” This is a fair assessment of the real situation.
Even when Areilza was sipping champagne with his European hosts, a crisis meeting of senior political and military figures was being held in Madrid. Those present were informed of “a dangerous increase in the level of communist subversion”, and that the military was “ready to defend Spanish values – the Catholic faith, the family and political unity.”
Germany, which had now established itself as the undisputed leader of Europe, took a special interest in the state of affairs beyond the Pyrenees. For the shaky Arias-Fraga government, support from Bonn for its pseudo-reform was crucial. Fraga, the former fascist and Franco’s former Information Minister was seeking to reinvent himself as the “liberal leader of the political centre”, and for this complicated conjuring trick he was in desperate need of help. This was generously provided by the West German government acting under the guise of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. Fraga visited Bonn where he was warmly greeted by the German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
Genscher helpfully expressed his belief that an early opening of the political system would be far-sighted and that this would ensure a smooth transition to a stable democracy. At the same time, he warned Fraga that “nothing would be more dangerous than being faced with regime change unprepared.” Genscher pointed to Portugal as proof that “democratic parties and unions” had to be given a chance to operate legally if communists were not to dominate the opposition in illegal conditions.
The flirtation of the SPD with elements of the Franco regime came under criticism in Germany itself. But the SPD’s foreign policy spokesperson Bruno Friedrich bluntly rejected an end to political communication with the Spanish Government, arguing that the authoritarian regime would eventually collapse anyway and that “large parts of Spanish society were not under the control of the government anymore”. These remarks were carried in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 5 April 1975.
This line of argument is very revealing. It shows that the leaders of the SPD shared the concerns of the ruling class in relation to the situation in Spain. The serious representatives of capital understand the class struggle very well. They saw that the days of the dictatorship in Spain were numbered and that the turbulent movement of the Spanish working class could overthrow it at any moment. That is the meaning of the statement that “large parts of Spanish society are not under the control of the government anymore.”
The perspective of an ‘uncontrolled transition’ filled the European politicians with terror. They needed a lever with which to exercise control over the workers’ movement. The experience of Portugal showed them that the leaders of the socialist parties could serve as a useful counterweight to the Communists and they needed to get control over these leaders. They were aware that the Socialists were at a severe organisational disadvantage compared to the more powerful organisations of the Communists. They also knew that they were short of funds. This was a very powerful lever indeed.
On 2 March, Areilza reassured the British government that “his country was moving towards a more liberal and democratic regime.” His words belied the reality. The very next day Spanish police launched its murderous offensive against striking workers in the Basque city of Vitoria.
[1] An analogy with the last days of Hitler, to characterise the ultras of the right.
[2] Quoted in Antonio Cazorla Sánchez, op. cit. p. 212.
[3] Arturo Val del Olmo, 3 de marzo, una lucha inacabada, Fundación Federico Engels, 2012.
[4] ‘Spanish Young Socialists Defence Campaign Bulletin’, June-July, 1975.