14. Decline and Fall: Demoralisation
In the course of my political activity of nearly sixty years I have seen many changes in the morale of the working class, both positive and negative. But I have never seen, either before or since, such a terrible collapse of morale as in the years 1978-80 in Spain. The depth of the collapse corresponded to the colossal hopes and expectations of the previous period. As in mechanics, so in politics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The policies pursued by the leaders produced a tremendous despondency and collapse of morale among the activists. The result was tragic. Many of the most militant and self-sacrificing elements returned to their homes burnt out and frustrated. It may be true that the working class, and even its most advanced elements, did not have a clear idea of where they wished to go, but they nevertheless felt keenly that the leadership had let them down. In their hearts they knew that they could have gone far further and achieved far more than what they did. If they did not do so, it was not for lack of will or because it was impossible to do so, but because at every stage the leaders were applying the brakes, putting their relations with the Suárez wing of the regime before all other considerations.
The endless pacts and compromises at the top produced a mood of bewilderment among the activists that eventually communicated itself to the masses. The period of revolutionary flood tide was replaced by a gradual and debilitating ebb of the movement. Deafened by the chorus in which the voices of former enemies were united with those of leaders that previously enjoyed their full confidence, the workers began to lose faith in themselves. The mood became increasingly confused, anxious and even fearful.
On the surface, all was sweetness and light. An artificial carnival mood was deliberately cultivated by the media, which presented the abortion of the Transition as a great victory for all concerned. Yet thinking people could see that it was not so. In every great class struggle, there are winners and losers. But who were the winners and who were the losers? On all sides the bosses and the old reactionary politicians were raising their heads, filled with a new confidence. Behind the false façade of democracy, the old state machine, the bureaucracy, the Church, the Civil Guard, the old Franco politicians – everything remained as before.
While the politically inexperienced masses celebrated, the old workers of the underground and the revolutionary youth were bitterly disappointed. Among this layer there was a thoroughly depressed mood and feeling of helplessness in the face of what seemed to be irresistible forces. In reality, however, there was nothing irresistible or inevitable about this outcome, which was entirely the product of unprincipled pacts and deals arrived at by the leaders behind the backs of the working class. The result was a wave of complete demoralisation among the active layer, who instinctively felt, to quote a Spanish expression, that they had been sold a cat instead of a hare.
Disillusionment
The leaders of both the PCE and PSOE limited their political objective to a formal democratic regime that left intact the economic power and apparatus of the Francoist state, betraying the socialist aspirations of millions who correctly linked Francoism with the capitalist regime itself. In addition, they dedicated themselves to praising the monarchy and washing the face of the king, describing Suárez and dozens of other former Franco supporters as converted “lifelong democrats.”
Not only did the leaders of the PCE and the PSOE refuse to use the enormous force deployed by millions of workers, women, young people, professionals, impoverished small landowners and progressive intellectuals to fight for socialism – that was clearly too much to ask of them. But by deliberately applying the brakes to the mass movement, they effectively renounced the fight for genuine democracy.
The depressed mood among the workers was further deepened by the economic crisis that led to a wave of factory closures and mass unemployment that persisted for a long time. Coming after a political defeat, mass unemployment, far from playing a revolutionary role, had the opposite effect. The workers felt isolated and impotent. The class struggle was replaced by the struggle for survival. In 1980, the graph of strikes registered a steeply descending curve. This accurately reflected a sharp drop in the confidence and fighting spirit of the class.
A new kind of leader was emerging: in place of the old, class-conscious working-class militants, who for decades had made extreme sacrifices under the difficult and dangerous conditions of underground work, there arose a new generation of middle-class intellectuals, university professors, lawyers and other professional people anxious to take their place at the head of the movement ‘for democracy.’
The new ‘cadres’ were eloquent, disciplined and utterly loyal to the line that was handed down to them from above. Skilled at argument, and experts in the art of pseudo-dialectics, that is, able to present black as white and white as black, they elbowed aside the class-conscious workers, who were unable to answer their clever, but entirely false arguments. These people were certainly democrats (although not even consistent democrats) but communists they certainly were not. Something similar occurred in the Socialist Party, where the leadership was seized by something like an internal coup d’état by Felipe González and his faction.
Hundreds of thousands of workers, women and youth departed from the field of political and industrial struggle, tired and disoriented. Membership of political parties and trade unions fell precipitately. Under these circumstances, the proletarian revolutionary wing that had developed in the underground days became isolated and removed from the leadership of the workers’ parties, crowded out by an influx of raw, inexperienced elements and above all by the new wave of opportunists who were looking for positions in parties that suddenly had a future.
I remember a few really tragic cases from my own experience. One example was Francisco (Paco) J, a loyal old veteran activist of the PSOE. Paco’s father, a leader of the young socialists in Jaén, Andalusia, had been shot by the fascists during the Civil War. Paco was an active socialist during the long hard years of clandestine work. At considerable risk to himself and his family, for a time, he published the illegal socialist newspaper El Socialista in his flat in Madrid. But he was enormously depressed by the conduct of Felipe González and the Socialist Party leaders and fell into inactivity.
An even more tragic case was an old comrade of ours called Rafael. He had been a member of the Socialist Party and the UGT in Navarre since the 1930s. He had the number one membership card of both organisations in that province. That was at a time when Navarre was a hotbed of fascist reaction. He remained a loyal member of the Socialist Party throughout the hard years of underground work. After the fall of the dictatorship, he was made chairman of the Casa del Pueblo (local labour hall) of Pamplona, the capital of Navarre.
The betrayal of the leaders broke Rafael’s heart. One day, without consulting with anybody, this old man walked quietly into the Socialist Party offices in Pamplona. Without saying a word, he placed his party card on the table and walked out, never to return. He then went to the UGT offices and with the same, quiet proletarian dignity, placed his UGT card on the table and walked out. It is hard to put into words just how much this meant to that man. In those two little cards was contained his entire life, his struggles, his sacrifices and those of the class to which he belonged. Was all this for nothing in the end? One can just imagine the thoughts that were going through his mind that day.
These were not isolated incidents. There were thousands of cases like this all over Spain, not only in the Socialist Party but also in the PCE. In this way, an entire generation of proletarian militants, the flower of the working class, the men and women who had fought the dictatorship to a standstill and brought about its downfall, were shamelessly cast to one side, thrown onto the scrapheap and forgotten as if they had never existed. Their names are not mentioned in the history books. They were never elected to the Cortes and they never enjoyed what are known as the ‘fruits of office’.
They have no monuments, no statues were erected to them, no streets or airports are named after them. Yet these men and women are the real heroes and heroines of the so-called Democratic Transition in Spain. We owe a duty to them to restore their memory and their honour, just as we have a duty to expose those leaders who brought about this terrible tragedy. The memory of the class fighters will be covered with honour by future generations. That of the latter will be covered for ever with shame.
The PCE
After Franco’s death, the majority of the PCE’s activists and leadership confidently assumed that the Party would play a leading role in the country’s politics. In its issue dated 15 May 1977, Mundo Obrero estimated that over 5 million took part in actions to celebrate May Day, despite repression. People were filled with a sense of optimism and hope for the future. In January 1977, a few months before the elections, Mundo Obrero summed up this mood in these words:
We are going to win the elections so that the people can recover sovereign control over their own destiny, and open the way to socialism and freedom… We are – every observer agrees – the main party of the working class. Winning millions of votes for the PCE’s candidates is a realistic objective given our influence over broad sectors of the people.
At first sight, this optimistic appraisal was based on solid foundations. In the three years from 1975 to 1978 – after it was legalised – there was a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm, enabling the Party to grow rapidly from 15,000 to 240,000 members. Its long history of struggle had given it an enormous reserve of respect and prestige that extended far beyond the limits of its actual membership. The PCE had enormous support within the strongest wing of the trade union movement, the CCOO, which experienced a similar growth. The Party raised an impressive sum of money for the publication of a daily paper, the Mundo Obrero.
In the autumn of 1979, the Communist Party was still a formidable organised force, with a large and active membership, far more than any other party in Spain. In elections, it had won close to 2 million votes, the highest level ever recorded by the PCE in its history. While it had only a fraction of the vote of the UCD, the PCE had a considerably larger membership. In the first two general elections it had less than a third of the UCD’s vote (nine per cent to thirty-five per cent), but the proportions are reversed when we look at membership figures: over 240,000 for the PCE compared to 75,000 for the UCD.
The strength of the Party was clear to everyone in that impressive festival that was held annually in the Casa del Campo in Madrid. Thousands of communist activists came from all over Spain to erect and man numerous stalls. Huge numbers of people participated in the Fiesta del PCE (PCE Festival). I vividly remember the Fiesta del PCE in Madrid in 1980. It was a wonderful sight. The Casa del Campo was filled with hundreds of thousands of people with stalls from practically every region, selling barbecued chorizo, paella, pulpo (octopus) and local produce and wine of every description. The Fiesta del PCE was a vibrant affair that attracted huge numbers of people from all over Spain.
But in the next few years most of these new members were to leave as the euphoria of the early days swiftly gave way to bitter feelings of disillusionment and betrayal. By 1979, sales of the CP paper had fallen from 30,000 copies in its initial launching to 12,000, a number lower than the Party membership in Madrid alone. This figure is in itself sufficient to indicate the declining influence and support for the PCE.
The PCE, which started out as the most powerful organisation at the beginning of the Transition, ended up practically destroyed at the beginning of the 1980s. It had to sell its buildings to pay its debts, the very successful Fiesta del PCE declined continuously, becoming a mere shadow of what it had been. Many dropped out of the Party and there was a series of splits. How many sacrifices were made to publish the newspaper Mundo Obrero. But it collapsed together with the whole party. Within a few years, all this amazing power had been frittered away and destroyed.
Deadlock
By 1981, thanks principally to the magnificent struggles of the Spanish working class, the dictatorship had been brought to its knees. The new regime was very shaky and full of contradictions. Spain was gripped by a deep economic and social crisis and that was reflected in a political crisis, which was nearing explosion point. That point was reached on the evening of 23 February 1981.
The road was open to further advance. But the leaders of the Socialist and Communist Parties betrayed the movement and arrived at a rotten compromise with a faction of the old regime led by Adolfo Suárez. The Spanish labour leaders were striving with might and main to prove to the bankers and capitalists that, in the event of being entrusted with power, they would not touch their wealth and privileges.
But to their immense disappointment and chagrin, all their diplomacy and cleverness was met by a solid wall of abuse, mistrust and attacks from the opposition camp. The employers continued to portray even the most moderate trade union leaders as revolutionary agitators bent on destroying the system of private enterprise. The capitalist politicians persisted in describing the PSOE and PCE leaders as Marxist demagogues, whose mask of reasonableness concealed a secret plot to carry out the dictatorship of the proletariat by underhand means.
All the efforts of the labour leaders to prove the contrary only served to increase the hysteria of the capitalists. Every step backwards taken by Carrillo and González resulted in an immediate demand that they must take ten more. The Socialist and Communist Party leaders were surprised and indignant at the unreasonableness of the employers and their government.
They attributed to ignorance and personal caprice what was really the logical consequence of a situation in which the capitalists, with the best will in the world, were unable to respond with concessions and compromises. The economic situation demanded an attack on living standards. That is the only thing the bankers and industrialists required the workers’ leaders to accept and carry out unquestioningly.
But what happened when the workers’ leaders entered the government of a country where unemployment was inexorably advancing towards 2 million? Such a government, from the very first moment, would find itself under enormous pressure from the workers, the small farmers and the unemployed.
Despite all the assurances to the contrary, what guarantee did the capitalists have that the Socialist Party leaders in the government would not be obliged, by the pressure of the rank and file, to go much further than what they themselves had originally intended? And yet what alternative did they have? At every step, the Suárez government seemed more unsound, more divided and more impotent. At the first serious test, this motley crew of political invalids would break in pieces.
This situation had reached deadlock. The workers’ struggles had failed to reach a definitive outcome and were semi-paralysed, while the bourgeoisie was unable to establish order in society. The weakness of the government was shown by its constant attempts to lean on the support of the workers’ parties. A situation of disorder and instability was created, which intensified during 1980 and especially at the start of 1981.
This situation was most clearly expressed by the caste of commanding officers of the army, Civil Guard and police. These were mostly composed of clearly reactionary and fascist elements, who hated the working class and its organisations to death. The army, and through it the officer caste, represents the armed wing of the ruling class. But when the bourgeoisie shows signs of inability to secure the stability of the system, the officers feel called upon “to bring order and save the country, given the inability of politicians”.
The entire Transition was a hotbed of conspiracies and putschist rumours. The leaders of the workers’ parties, particularly those of the PCE, did nothing but try continuously to frighten the masses with “the danger of regression and a coup” if the workers went too far in their struggles. All this to justify their disastrous policy of class collaboration.
Already in 1978, two senior officers of the Civil Guard and the army were discovered while planning a military coup d’état. The plot was known as Operation Galaxia, after the Madrid café where the conspirators had met. The plot involved arresting President Suárez and his government in order to force the king to appoint a National Salvation Government.
The coup, led by Lt. Col. of the Civil Guard Antonio Tejero Molina and Police Captain Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas Martínez, was intended to take place on 17 November 1978, when the king would be away in Mexico and before the celebration of the Constitution Referendum on 6 December, which they wished to prevent. The coup was foiled when some of the conspirators reported it to their superiors.
Only Tejero and Ynestrillas were put on trial, though the plot probably involved many other military officers to one degree or another. They were court-martialled and given the most lenient sentences possible: seven months and one day in jail for Tejero and six months and one day for Ynestrillas. They were not even expelled from the Armed Forces and were soon set free to resume their plotting. The most important aspect of this operation was the large number of officers who knew about the conspiracy, but said nothing to the authorities.
The King and Queen
History provides us with many examples of royal wives who have exercised considerable influence over the thinking and conduct of their husbands. Invariably, that influence is heavily weighted in the direction of reaction. It is sufficient to give the examples of the wives of the English King Charles I, Louis XVI of France and Tsar Nicholas of Russia to prove the point.
Of course, comparison between historical personalities should, as a rule, always be treated with caution. But, as a rule of thumb, one can safely assume that similar circumstances will tend to produce similar results. More than one historian has remarked on the possible links between Marie Antoinette and the last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna, to which I would add the wife of Charles I of England.
As a person, King Charles was outwardly pleasant and courteous. But he was two-faced. His enemies could never understand how he could be so charming to their faces and so vicious behind their backs. Similar doubts were entertained even by his friends. The Earl of Strafford was Charles’ most trusted friend, adviser and ally, but Charles nevertheless signed his death warrant in 1641. “Put not your trust in princes,” Strafford commented bitterly as he went to his death. Looking at the historical record, that seems to have been very sound advice.
King Charles married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France in 1623 when he was twenty-three and she was fourteen. It was not a happy choice. A fervent Catholic, the queen outraged the country’s Protestant majority by her scandalous public displays of piety, which included disrupting Anglican services by walking through them with a pack of dogs.
She did not speak English before she married Charles and always had difficulties with speaking and writing in that language. But she enjoyed meddling in affairs of state. Henrietta Maria was always behind her husband in his frequent clashes with parliament. She sought, without success, to instigate a military coup to overthrow the parliamentarians. Ultimately, these clashes led to civil war, the result of which was Charles’ downfall and execution.
Louis XVI, the Bourbon King of France, married the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette. France was in a revolutionary ferment, and Louis initially attempted to mollify the masses by making reforms. However, under pressure from the conservative nobility and his wife, he backtracked. The ‘Austrian woman’ (l’Autrichienne) was hated by the masses. By stubbornly upholding despotic government, she ensured that they lost everything, including their heads. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed for treason.
Nicholas II of Russia was yet another example of a weak monarch dominated by a strong-willed foreign wife. He once confessed to a close friend, “I am not prepared to be a tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling.” It was his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, who introduced the monk Rasputin into the court, where, claiming to be the Tsarina’s advisor, he led a life of outrageous debauchery, which caused a scandal that helped to undermine the monarchy and ultimately destroy it.
In every one of the cases cited, the queen was a person of extraordinarily strong character, whereas their husbands were largely weak, cowardly and indecisive. It is easy to imagine the kind of conversation that might have taken place in the privacy of the royal bedchamber: “Are you a man, or a mouse? Why do you allow these parliamentarians/republicans/liberals to humiliate you? You are the king! You must act like one. Show these scoundrels who is master of the house!” Such painful conversations, such shameful rebukes, represent a powerful stimulus to action. They are a challenge, designed to induce a sense of shame, particularly strong when the recipient of the insults and rebukes is supposed to be the supreme monarch, appointed by God himself and armed – at least in theory – with absolute powers.
This dialogue is, of course, pure fiction. We cannot know the precise words that passed between those royal personages, who have long vanished into the annals of history. But an elementary knowledge of human psychology may give us an approximate idea of what happened. And personal relations play a role in history, just as they do in everyday life; not a decisive role, of course, but not an altogether negligible one either.
For decades there has been a campaign to build up the image of Juan Carlos as the motor of democratic change, but not much is said about the role of his wife. She is kept carefully in the background, creating an image of a woman with no particular political views, a pleasant face waving at adoring crowds from a balcony, alongside her husband and the royal children.
But there is not the slightest reason to suppose that Queen Sofia never discussed politics with her husband. Nor have we any reason to doubt that she had some influence over his actions. The only question is: what kind of influence was it? To form a plausible answer to that question, we must refer to her family background and personal experience.
The Greek royal family was inseparably linked to reactionary and fascist tendencies, not just in the past but in recent history. Sofia had been brought up in an environment steeped in the most reactionary anti-communism. In fact, she was born with anti-communism in her veins. Her brother, King Constantine of Greece, had actively collaborated with the Greek army chiefs when they seized power in the coup of 1967. When Constantine was asked to mobilise the state against the coup, he refused. Instead, he swore in the military junta as the legitimate government of Greece. It is true that he later clashed with the Junta, not out of any love for democracy, but purely because the leaders of the Junta were not prepared to share power with him. He ended up in exile.
When the Greek Junta was overthrown in 1974 by a popular uprising, which started with the revolt of the students in the Athens Polytechnic, a referendum was held on whether Greece should be a monarchy. The overwhelming majority (69.2 per cent) voted for a republic. In parts of Athens and Salonika, it was nearly eighty per cent, and in Crete, ninety per cent. Constantine was stripped of his title, citizenship and property in Greece.
These facts, of course, were carefully concealed from the Spanish public, which was presented with the demure and serene image of Sofia as a royal personage far removed from the grubby world of politics. However, the rose-tinted veil sometimes slipped, as when the foreign press reported the queen’s hostile comments concerning communism made in an interview with the Vienna daily paper Die Presse in early 1978:
Communism no longer has any real chance. It has gone out of style. There is not a single country that has been able to put into practice the theories which sound so wonderful. The differences between classes are more pronounced in Communist countries than they are in democracies. What is the point then? Most people just want to work in dignity and accomplish something and that is only possible in a democracy.
In an article in The Times, dated 6 February 1978, the author comments:
The editors of several Spanish newspapers deleted the monarch’s political remarks from reports filed from Vienna by their correspondents.
Other newspapers published condensed versions of her political opinions, tucked away in the inside pages. Spanish radio and television news broadcasts completely ignored the comments.
A spokesman for the Zarzuela Palace denied that palace officials had pressured editors to play down the story. The director of one Madrid daily newspaper confirmed this. He told me that he had decided not to give prominence to this remark because “Spain has no replacement for Juan Carlos”.
On the occasion of her seventieth birthday, Sofia made a number of conservative ideological statements on issues then being debated in Spanish society. These statements were published by the journalist Pilar Urbano. They included rejection of same-sex marriage, rejection of gay pride celebration, opposition to abortion and defence of religious education in schools. Some brave souls made mild criticisms of her for getting involved in partisan opinions “against her constitutional mandate”. It would have been better to have congratulated her on her frankness in revealing the kind of reactionary views that undoubtedly predominated in the household of Spain’s unelected leading family.
The exact role of the queen in the attempted coup of 23 February 1981 is shrouded in mystery. But there was one incident that lifted the thick curtain of secrecy to reveal something more significant than a thousand statistics. On that fateful night, the king’s personal secretary, Sabino Fernández Campo, caught the royal couple in an unguarded moment drinking a toast with champagne.
What was the objective of this toast? Whatever it was, it could hardly have been a toast for the success of democracy in Spain. This fact was not lost on the loyal Sabino, who, astonished and shocked by this unexpected spectacle, warned Juan Carlos that his conduct could put the future of the monarchy in danger and begged him to take action to halt the coup. At which point, Sabino writes: “The queen got up and without saying anything left the office.”
The King’s Speech
A speech delivered by the king on 6 January 1979 represented a fundamental departure from the kind of royal messages that were customary each year at that time. King Juan Carlos, and those who advised him and wrote the speech, made a withering criticism of the political class. In his speech he explicitly expressed a warning to the civilians so that they would realise that there was a point beyond which His Majesty, as head of the armed forces, was not prepared to go:
For the political evolution that was necessary in Spain, the role of the Armed Forces contained, and contains, a fundamental transcendence. Because armies are not only useful when they act but also when they can contemplate serenely the actions of others.
Now we come to the point:
Carry out all the innovations that are essential to adapt to the new times… But without haste, without excesses or precipitations, with the intention of avoiding as much damage as possible. And without tackling more reforms than is appropriate.1
We leave aside any comments concerning the bizarre contortions to which the king habitually subjected the Spanish language, both grammatically and stylistically. But if we eventually manage to slash our way through the jungle of mangled syntax, we eventually arrive at some kind of understanding of whatever meaning is concealed behind the dense foliage. Here is an approximate translation:
You politicians may think you are clever, but don’t push your luck too far. You can talk as much as you like about democracy and change, but don’t forget who is really running the show: the same generals who crushed people like you in the Civil War, and can crush you again if you step out of line. Remember that we are watching you closely, and you had better watch your step!
The script was not written by the king (he was not smart enough), but by Armada and the general staff. The message could not be clearer: thus far and no further! By his action the king appeared publicly as the spokesman for the discomfort of the high commanders of the Armed Forces. The speech was meant to send two messages: one to the generals – “Hey guys, I’m on your side! I’m fed up with these politicians too.” The other was to Suárez and the politicians: “You think you are in charge, but you are very much mistaken. I am in charge. I speak for the generals, and I am the only one who can guarantee order in this country. You had better get this message, or you will soon find out who is boss!” That this was no idle threat was shown by the events of 23 February 1981.
The fact that this message was transmitted by the king was clear proof of his complicity with the reactionary generals. This was not a mistake but a calculated warning, which the government chose not to notice. Although it was a clear breach of democratic protocol (the monarch was not supposed to interfere personally in politics), there was no public outcry, no protests either from the government nor the opposition.
It is well known that little children when frightened hide their heads under the blankets in the hope that the bogeyman will disappear. But the attempt to ignore the obvious threat posed by the king and his military advisers was foolhardy in the extreme. In short, they all acted like well-trained ostriches with their heads buried deep in the sand.
Most scandalous was the subsequent leaked interview, held days before the coup, between Armada and Enrique Múgica (one of the most right-wing leaders of the PSOE). Apparently, this ‘socialist’ did not object to the need for a strong government with the participation of the military and of members of the UCD and PSOE in order to ‘save the country’.
On 22 October 1980, a meeting had been held in Lerida at the house of its mayor, where representatives of several parties attended. Among them, in addition to General Armada himself, was Enrique Múgica, who at the time was the president of the Congress Defence Committee. They met to discuss plans for a ‘soft coup’ against Suárez, which would consist of a motion of censure against the president, moved by the PSOE, which would be supported by dissident deputies of the UCD.
A government of national concentration with an ‘independent’ (Armada) as president, backed by the king – in other words, a coup! This operation was conceived as a plan B, to be put into practice in the event that Suárez refused to resign, as the king intended. This showed how far the degeneration had gone for certain members of the party leadership. Their loss of political perspectives and their identification with the bourgeois state state went so far that they were prepared to give in to this kind of scandal, which could have had serious consequences for the working class and its organisations.
A Nest of Reaction
The Zarzuela Palace at this time was a hotbed of counter-revolutionary conspiracies. The king’s closest confidante, intimate friend and adviser was Alfonso Armada Comyn, artillery general and the Marquis de Santa Cruz de Rivadulla. General Armada was a staunch monarchist and mentor of Juan Carlos in his youth. This hardened reactionary and dyed-in-the-wool Francoist was opposed to Suárez’s reforms and was determined to oust the president.
Juan Carlos was well aware of Armada’s views, for which he evidently had a great deal of sympathy, although publicly he never revealed any of this. At the end of November, the king received Fraga, who wrote in his diary, dated Monday, 22 December: “I have received very reliable information that General Armada has said he would be willing to preside over a concentration government.”2
In private, however, Juan Carlos led the general to believe (correctly) that he shared his negative views of the president and his dangerous reforms. The interests of the monarchy and that of the army high command were in complete agreement on these questions. This solidarity was glaringly exposed by the events of 23 February 1981.
Seeking to find a point of support in the higher excellence of the armed forces, Adolfo Suárez appointed General Gutiérrez Mellado as first vice president. But the army chiefs, who were in permanent contact with the Zarzuela Palace, detested him almost as much as they hated the president – indeed, even more so, since they regarded him as a traitor to the cause of the army and the state.
Behind the superficial façade of democracy, the counter-revolutionary forces were mobilising. For the time being they reluctantly accepted the leadership of Suárez and the UCD. But this was only a temporary truce behind which the manipulations and intrigues of the reactionaries in the leadership of the army and big business were preparing a counter-offensive.
The Offensive Against Suárez
The relationship between the ruling class and Suárez resembled that between Aladdin and the old man of the sea. In exchange for conducting Aladdin away from a dangerous path, the Old Man of the Sea put his legs around his neck and refused to dismount. In the same way, having utilised the services of Suárez to avoid a dangerous confrontation with the masses, the ruling class now began to curse the evil dwarf who, having seized the reins of state power, stubbornly refused to relinquish them.
Although the openly fascist forces were small in number, they still had a base in sections of the army and especially the Civil Guard. They were of course bitterly opposed to the reforms. On the other hand, the position of the King Juan Carlos, despite all the attempts to boost his ‘democratic’ credentials, was suspiciously ambiguous.
The bankers and wealthy industrialists were already tired of Suárez. When the president of the Bank of Santander, Don Emilio Botín-Sanz de Sautuola López, was in the Moncloa Palace for a discussion with Suárez, he put his feet on the table. Outside the room the president could be heard shouting: “Who the hell do you think you are! Get your feet off the table immediately!” This was followed by a torrent of expletives directed at Don Emilio, who was clearly not accustomed to being addressed in such terms. He apologised profusely: “I’m sorry… I did not mean to… but I suffer from gout”.3
Apologies notwithstanding, the only important thing about this meeting were the shoes of the president of Santander resting on the president’s polished table. This little incident shows better than anything else the level of contempt in which the banks and big business held the elected president of Spain.
The offensive against Adolfo Suárez was now acquiring a feverish character. The critical faction of the UCD was gathering around Landelino Lavilla as an alternative to the president. And behind this opposition stood the generals, who did not conceal their hatred for democracy or their desire for a return to the old regime. For them, democracy, the Constitution and the president stood for everything they hated.
Carlos Ferrer Salat
A prominent figure in the public campaign against Adolfo Suárez was Carlos Ferrer Salat, the head of the newly-formed employers’ organisation (the CEOE, Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales). This son of the Catalan high bourgeoisie had the most impeccable qualifications to be the leader of the Spanish right wing. He had studied at the best schools and graduated from renowned universities. Unlike the narrow and ignorant political representatives of the Franco regime, he was polished, well-educated and spoke foreign languages fluently.
He had ample financial assets of his own, and his fortunes were further improved by contracting marriage with a wealthy Belgian lady, Blanca Serra di Migni. As if these achievements were not sufficient in themselves, he went on to become the Spanish tennis champion in 1953. But consumed with a burning ambition to advance, Ferrer Salat aspired to far higher things.
In his younger days he had flirted with the liberal bourgeois opposition to the old regime. But now he had matured sufficiently to come down on the appropriate side – in the camp of the right wing. His acute sense of smell convinced him that the government of President Suárez was in a state of advanced decay and not likely to last for long. His class, wealth and education invariably led him to regard Adolfo Suárez not so much with hate – an emotion that, after all, implies a degree of equality – but with a barely concealed contempt.
Under the leadership of Ferrer Salat, the CEOE set about the task of the demolition of President Adolfo Suárez with gusto. To this end, the organisation held a big rally in the Madrid Sports Palace with Ferrer Salat as the leading speaker. But behind the scenes lurked far more dangerous enemies: the army high command, angry and embittered at the concessions made by Suárez and the king himself, who lost no opportunity to undermine the president and the government and encourage the reactionary generals.
The autonomous statutes granted to Catalonia and the Basque Country were the last straw, representing for the reactionaries a dangerous threat to the unity of Spain. The reactionaries received invaluable help from an unexpected quarter. Throughout 1980, the violent actions carried out by ETA and the mysterious terrorist organisation GRAPO were intensified. By the end of the year the death total had spiralled.
Suárez was aware of the military conspiracy that led to the coup. Given his obsession with phone tapping and electronic surveillance, he could hardly be unaware that General Armada was conspiring not only with generals and bankers but with politicians from different parties, including not only socialists but Tarradellas in Catalonia. Nor could he be ignorant of the blatant complicity of the monarch in the whole murky business.
The newly-created CESID (secret service) acted as a kind of hothouse for the cultivation of conspirators. It kept prominent left-wing leaders and movements under close surveillance, and spied on the few army commanders known to have democratic leanings, feeding the information obtained to the conspirators.
The situation became increasingly tense in early 1981. The exhaustion and the unpopularity of the UCD was increasing every day. The isolation of Suárez within the UCD and the contempt which rose among the decisive sections of the bourgeoisie and the state apparatus led him to resign in early February. On Thursday 22 January, Adolfo Suárez suffered a decisive defeat. For some time, he had been performing a difficult balancing act, but now he was ready for a fall.
In a survey conducted by the magazine Cambio 16 at that time, fifty-nine per cent of respondents agreed with the resignation and twenty-six per cent thought he should have resigned earlier. No less than eighty-five per cent of the population was against the leader of the UCD at the time of his resignation. It is therefore a grotesque falsification of history to present Suárez as a superman who allegedly saved Spanish democracy, when in reality he left the scene of history hated and despised by millions.
The tipping point
The tipping point had been reached on 10 January 1981, when the king received Adolfo Suárez in the Zarzuela Palace and demanded that General Alfonso Armada must be transferred from Lérida to Madrid, where he would occupy the post of second in command of the general staff of the army. That demand sounded suspiciously like an ultimatum. Since the president had been behind the displacement of Armada from Madrid with the aim of separating him from the Zarzuela Palace and the monarch, he was hardly likely to agree.
Suárez refused a request that would mean in practice handing power on a plate to the chief of the conspirators. That would have been the equivalent of placing the hangman’s noose around his own neck. He had evidence of the conspiracy, and he knew very well that Armada was plotting to overthrow him. Charles T. Powell, the author of a book that paints a most flattering picture of Juan Carlos as “the engine of change”, writes that Suárez and the king had “a heated discussion about it that did nothing to improve a relationship that had begun to deteriorate some time ago”.4
On the very same day of that fateful meeting at the Zarzuela Palace, Alfonso Armada was travelling to Valencia to see Milans del Bosch and finalise the details of the coup. The two generals had lunch together in the official residence of the Captain General. Also present were two colonels: Diego Ibáñez Inglés and Pedro Mas Oliver, who played a key role in the events of the 23 February. According to Pilar Urbano, Armada said: “If the coup is carried out, it will be with the king behind, commanding, and not stripped of his powers as the Constitution has left him”.5 The central role of Juan Carlos is very clear from these words.
On Sunday 18 January, the general staff of the coup met in the home of Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Mas Oliver, in the north of Madrid. Nineteen men were in attendance, among them sixteen generals and one admiral. Also present was Antonio Tejero, who explained his plan to assault the Congress of Deputies with a group of Civil Guards. The immediate aim of the coup d’état was the dismissal of President Suárez.
As a final touch, General Milans del Bosch was named head of the coup. Pilar Urbano describes the meeting, quoting the words of some of the conspirators. Milans said: “Suárez’s days are numbered.” And he continued: “The king is inclined towards a government of civilians – which could be presided over by an independent or a military man, like Armada… But the queen is more militaristic…”
Events were now moving rapidly. Quite unexpectedly, the king invited Adolfo Suárez to join him for lunch. Around the table were gathered a number of important guests – generals Jaime Milans del Bosch, Jesús González del Yerro and Pedro Merry Gordon, the chiefs of the military regions of Valencia, the Canary Islands and Seville. All of them were involved in the conspiracy. The lunch began innocuously enough, until the king was called away to answer a phone call.
The highly fortuitous nature of this alleged telephonic interruption leads one to suspect that it was not entirely an accident. As if by a prearranged signal, the conspirators took advantage of the king’s absence to launch a savage attack against Suárez, demanding his immediate resignation. A clique of unelected generals took upon themselves the right to demand the resignation of an unelected president! This little incident contains in itself the essence of the whole business of 23 February.
The re-entry of the king brought the unseemly brawl to an end. But it had served its purpose. Now Adolfo Suárez had to decide whether to confront the monarch and the entire military establishment, or to surrender. There was never any doubt as to which road he would take. The king showed him an open window and invited him to jump. And he jumped.
Later on, Suárez tried to deny that this incident had ever taken place. But a book by Abel Hernández recounts the lunch of La Zarzuela in great detail. It is, of course, impossible to prove conclusively that this meeting ever took place, but Morán concludes that: “if that was not exactly what happened, then there must have been something very similar.”6
These denials form part of a general attempt to conceal, by all means possible, the role of the king in the coup. As time goes on the evidence piles up to the extent that, at this moment in time, it is impossible to deny what is self-evident. And there’s no reason whatever to doubt that such a meeting actually took place, and that it played a key role in forcing Suárez, much against his will, to resign.
The Church Declares War
The Law of Divorce produced a bitter clash between the government and the Church, which was represented in the UCD by the Christian Democrats. The leader of that tendency was none other than Landelino Lavilla, the president of the Cortes and the chief rival of Suárez.
The Church hastened to add its voice to this diabolical chorus. The Jesuit José María Martín Patino, who was close to Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón during the Transition, was interviewed by El País on Monday 19 February 2001. The article carried the interesting headline: ‘The Bishops Supported the 1981 Coup’. In it, Patino claimed that, on the night of 23-F, “he did not find a single bishop willing to condemn the coup attempt.”
He continued:
The Spanish bishops are faithful to the Second Vatican Council, or at least they want to be so, but, on the other hand, they are subject to much less creative circumstances. The Church has entered into a routine, into a certain passivity. And then there are the difficulties that the arrival of democracy has caused for the Church; it is not that the bishops find themselves uncomfortable in the democratic system, but it has forced them to face concrete problems; they have problems with some of the laws passed by a parliament, which represents all the Spanish people. Parliament legislates for the common good and does not legislate, as Franco did, drawing their inspiration from Catholic doctrine. The Church has done everything possible to accommodate itself to democracy, but it does not always succeed because, for example, it has to be faithful to the doctrine of this Pope, who has questioned abortion, divorce…
Q: Speaking of silences: now it is twenty years of that other deafening silence, that of the Church on the night of the attempted coup. What a lot of calculation there was in that ‘wait and see’ right?
A: That night we were all in a state of bewilderment. I’m a bit embarrassed to talk about that night, because it was the worst night I’ve spent as a Vicar of the Church of Madrid. Of course, as soon as we saw what was happening, the media asked for a note, a statement from the Episcopate. I went looking for that note and I could not find the bishops, none of the people I was looking for…
In the end, I found one who said to me: “It is better for you to send the note on your own.” And I was a coward, and I did not send the note, because I did not have the permission of my superiors to do it. In addition, there was a bishop in charge of doing it, who was the conference spokesman, Montero. He did not do it because he waited for the next day… I urged my cardinal, already in the morning (because at night I was not able to find him, since that night Tarancón did not sleep in the palace), to do something.
I spoke with him and he told me that the bishops would do it the next day… But they did it when they [Tejero and co.] had all left congress. We were all afraid, and when the bishops spoke, they arrived late, it was useless because they no longer defended the Constitution: The Constitution had already been defended by the people and by the media above all.
I still have remorse and guilt, but the truth is that I spent that night looking for people to help me get those who had authority in the Church to write that note. What happened was that when the bishops heard on the radio that Tejero had taken the congress, they continued their usual meeting until 8.30 pm. Then the meeting was dissolved, and some did not sleep in their usual homes. I did not get to speak except with Cardinal Jubany, who was the one who told me: “Why do you not just issue the note in your own name?” But it was not me, it was the Episcopate that should have said something. And I did not.
Q: And… would you say that the hierarchy of the Church was complicit that night by their silence?
A: I do not think they were aware that they were accomplices. They simply took refuge in the idea that this was a politician’s thing and that they did not know what could happen… That gave them a certain complicity, because not knowing what could happen implied calculating that if one group came [to power] they would persecute the Church, or if others came, they would be closer [to us] …
What is true, and we cannot deceive ourselves at this point, is that the Constitution was not to the liking of most bishops… But at the time of the referendum, the Permanent Commission recommended a positive vote and only eight bishops recommended voting against. But neither can it be said that if the coup had triumphed the bishops would have been very comfortable. I think they were accomplices, in fact, to the extent that they did not find the right moment to speak, to break that silence. But speaking of silences… even Tarancón himself had moments of confusion, in which he did not dare to pronounce himself.
Our Jesuit treads warily, like a man treading on eggshells. But his diplomatic evasiveness cannot conceal the facts. In effect, the Church had already pronounced itself. The Episcopal Conference issued a furious communiqué against divorce, which the government was about to legalise:
We believe that if the Bill were to be promulgated… the future of the family in Spain would be seriously compromised and the common good of our society severely damaged… Divorce, by granting the legal possibility of contracting a new civil marriage, can incite marriages without insoluble problems, but in transitory crisis, to resort to this legal recourse… Divorce opens the door to the generation of Evil.
The Church was playing an active part in the preparations for the coup. The background music was blaring. The stage was set for action. All that was needed was the entry of the principal actors, who were waiting impatiently in the wings.
The death of Arregi
Political repression and reactionary and fascist plots, far from decreasing during these last months of agony, were accentuated even more. The campaign against the government was being mercilessly ramped up in the barracks and in the press. The Francoist general Fernando de Santiago y Diez de Mendívil wrote an article published on the front page of El Alcázar on 8 February 1981, entitled ‘Situación Límite’ (The tipping point), where we read: Hay que salvar España (We must save Spain).
The government had passed a new anti-terrorist law, which seemed almost calculated to galvanise the members of ETA just when it had suffered a split and had been thrown on the defensive by popular reaction against it in the north. Shortly before the attempted coup in February 1981, the Spanish press published shocking details about the death in prison of a member of ETA.
The victim, Joxe Arregi Izagirre, a thirty-year-old truck driver, was captured in a gun battle on 4 February. He was accused by the police of several assassinations and held incommunicado for ten days under the new anti-terrorist law. I remember the press was full of sensational reports of the case. The previous December, the Law of the Suspension of Fundamental Rights was adopted, supposedly to help the police fight terrorism.
The statute allowed a terrorist suspect to be held by the police for ten days before being allowed to see a lawyer. Amnesty International, in a report in December, criticised such Spanish legislation and said it contributed to patterns of police mistreatment of prisoners. Torture was specifically banned under the Constitution, but the Arregi case showed just how much that scrap of paper was worth. In prison there were witnesses of the state in which Joxe Arregi arrived. Prisoners who saw Arregi confirmed seeing his eyelids badly bruised and a large bloody bruise on his right eye, as well as swollen hands:
We asked him what kind of torture he had suffered and he answered: “Oso latza izan da (it was very hard). They hung me up on a bar several times, beating me on the feet, and then burnt them with something, I do not know what; they jumped on my chest; and the blows, punches and kicks kept raining down on me everywhere”.
He was admitted to the Penitentiary Hospital, where he died the following afternoon. According to official reports, his eyes were badly bruised, one lung was full of liquid, his body was covered with haematomas, or swollen areas full of blood, and the soles of his feet had been burned.
An autopsy report mentioned bronchial pneumonia and fluid in the lungs among the causes of death. It also listed the many bruises without saying how they had been caused. “The thing is very clear,” said Enrique Galavis, director general of prisons, who left no doubt that Mr. Arregi had been tortured to death.
The head of the Court of Instruction number thirteen published the coroner’s report on the autopsy, in which “physical violence” was ratified. However, the cause of death was said to have been “a respiratory failure originated by a bronchopneumonial process”. But everybody knew what had really happened. Even before an autopsy was performed, Interior Minister Juan José Rosón dismissed the head of the police medical department and the Madrid plainclothes officer who supervised Arregi’s detention.
Arregi’s death provoked a wave of revulsion, which served to generate renewed support for ETA. The bourgeois Basque Nationalist Party described it as a “brutal murder”, which it undoubtedly was. “We who condemned the death of Ryan,” declared Xabier Arzallus, president of the Basque Nationalists, “have the right to condemn, too, this death.” A general strike was declared in the Basque Country.
I asked Joxemi, the ex-etarra, what he knew about the Arregi case. He replied:
Joseba Arregi was active in the Madrid Commando. They killed a general and some other military men. They had carried out some pretty tough actions. Later, when I was in jail, I coincided with one of the comrades in Arregi’s commando. He was with me in Nanclares prison. Was his name Isidro? He [told me how Arregi] was detained for sixteen days and held incommunicado, and he was beaten to death. He was wounded in the leg and they took him to the hospital. They tortured him and he was beaten to a pulp… He arrived at the hospital in Carabanchel and he died shortly afterwards. I remember that kicked off a hell of a storm.
The murder provoked massive demonstrations in the Basque region, as Joxemi recalls:
I remember the Arregi case, because it was the first demonstration that I took my son to. It was the first that the organisation had held in San Sebastián. There were loads of people. I was already a member of the organisation [ETA] and I was not supposed to go on demonstrations. Firstly, because the organisation forbade it, second, because there was a danger that they would see me. But on that day, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I went with my son to San Sebastián.
The fact is that ETA had lost a lot of ground since Madrid had approved a significant level of autonomy for the Basque Country. The murder of a thirty-nine-year-old kidnapped nuclear engineer, José María Ryan, provoked demonstrations and a general strike in the Basque region. Sharp differences in the ranks of ETA led to an unprecedented split, in which the so-called political-military wing accused the military wing of committing “constant errors” and even of resorting “every day more and more to fascist methods.” The murder of Joxe Arregi actually got ETA out of difficulties and acted as a most effective recruiting agent for it.
Five police officers, who were implicated in the murder, were placed at the disposition of an investigating magistrate, Judge De la Campa. The five men (Juan Luís Méndez Moreno, Juan Antonio Gil Rubiales, Julián Marín Ríos, Ricardo Sánchez and Juan Antonio González) were arrested and interrogated. But only two of them were finally tried and none of them were ever sent to jail, as we shall see later.
The Fall of Suárez
Adolfo Suárez was very well acquainted with the deceitfulness, cunning and disloyalty of the Bourbons. He opposed the appointment of General Armada as second-in-command of the general staff and he also knew that, by opposing this step, he was signing his political death warrant. And, as we have seen, he offered his resignation on 29 January. The idea was to hold a congress of the UCD in Palma to announce the resignation. But the air traffic controllers in Barajas airport went on strike, backed by their colleagues in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. The strike was unofficial, illegal in effect. But it made impossible the holding of a congress in Palma. Instead, Suárez made his declaration to the nation directly on television – an idea that suited him very well.
Suárez, in his definitive intervention in RTVE, made a distant and obvious reference to the Crown, but left in the air the assumptions about “the current circumstances”. Before Suárez delivered his resignation speech, the king’s secretary, Sabino Fernández Campo had gone to Moncloa Palace to examine the text. After reading it, he noticed one unfortunate omission. He therefore politely suggested to Suárez that he might name the king, expressing his gratitude to His Majesty.
That is a little like a man who is about to be hanged expressing his gratitude to the man putting a noose around his neck. In the event, he did mention the king, but only once, and with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. After Sabino’s visit, the ‘significant’ phrase appears: “I leave without anyone [His Majesty] asking me to do so”. Suárez referred twice, to “the current circumstances” as a reason for stepping down. “In the current circumstances, my departure is more beneficial for Spain than my permanence…” And then he added: “We have to remain hopeful, convinced that the current circumstances will remain difficult for some time…”
In 1995, after Sabino Fernández Campo had been dismissed from the king’s service, we discover that the phrase “I’m leaving without anyone asking me” was not in the text that Suárez was going to read. And Sabino added: “It was very significant.” Of what? We might well ask. That the Homeric Nobody had thrown him out? Or to avert any suspicion of an unconstitutional act on the part of His Majesty? In any case, we know that this statement was untrue. The king told him that he should leave, because they threatened a coup d’état and he believed that the only solution was a government of management and unity – a government presided over by General Alfonso Armada.
These statements of Suárez are as opaque and mysterious as the utterances of the Delphic oracle. What were these “current circumstances”? Was he referring to the splits within the UCD, or the economic crisis? Or maybe the activities of ETA? Nobody knew. The face of Adolfo Suárez remained impassive, sphynx-like, impenetrable. He was the face of the Democratic Transition: a deceitful façade that concealed something rotten.
In retrospect, the nature of these “current circumstances” is perfectly clear. The removal of the president was neither more nor less than a coup d’état, organised by a clique of generals in cahoots with the king that aimed to overthrow the reforms and restore the status quo. But this coup d’état was only the first step in preparation for a far more radical action.
Calvo-Sotelo: The Final Agony of the UCD
Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, a grey and undistinguished character, was hastily put forward as a replacement for Suárez. This did nothing to save the UCD; the new leader was to lose credibility even faster than Suárez. The failure of the UCD later in the year in the Galician elections of October 1981 nudged it still nearer to the edge of the abyss. These contradictions in the government and its party reflected the deep divisions within the ruling class on strategic and tactical issues. The most representative sector (the bankers and monopolies) had by this time come to the conclusion of the inevitable split of the centre and it had opted in favour of a right-wing government formed around Fraga’s Popular Alliance.
Inflation stood at fifteen per cent and continued to rise. In a period of eighteen months, real wages were continuously reduced. For the first time, unemployment rose above 2 million. The signing of a new agreement with the trade unions, (the National Employment Agreement, or ANE), near the end of 1981 pushed down living standards still further. But even that seemed insufficient to a restless business community, increasingly impatient with Calvo-Sotelo, whose politics did not diverge very far from Suárez’s policy of patching things up.
The government of Calvo-Sotelo was, despite its brevity, completely reactionary in regards to democratic rights. In the beginning of 1982, a law was adopted, which limited the powers of the autonomous regions, the LOAPA (the Organic Law on the Harmonisation of the Autonomy Process). Calvo-Sotelo’s last political decision before the end of 1981 was to push through Spain’s entry into NATO, turning a deaf ear to the protests of the majority of the population.
But let us return to the tense days of February 1981. On 5 February, while the Suárez government was still in office, the defence minister, Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún, appointed General Armada as second-in-command of the general staff, which placed him in a strategic position to preside over a government of national concentration. Armada received the immediate congratulations of the king, who called him from the airport of Barajas, where he was waiting for a plane to take him on his first official visit to the Basque Country.
On Friday, 20 February, Calvo-Sotelo presented himself as the new presidential candidate to a disgruntled and fractious Cortes, but he did not reach the necessary quorum to be inaugurated as president. A second vote was necessary. The day was set for Monday, 23 February. It proved to be a fateful day.