10. The Socialists: The PSOE¶
Core Argument¶
At the 1972 Toulouse Congress, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) underwent a decisive internal coup. The old émigré leadership under Rodolfo Llopis was displaced by an interior faction led by Felipe González, which secured eighty per cent of delegate support. The new leadership adopted left-wing, Marxist rhetoric to attract workers and youth repelled by the Stalinist PCE, but remained organisationally weak. This weakness provided an opening for the German SPD, which through figures like Hans Matthögen secretly intervened to gain control of the PSOE, recognising González’s faction in 1974 and providing financial backing. This was part of a broader imperialist strategy, co-ordinated with the German foreign office, to ensure Spain’s transition from Francoism produced a reliable, non-communist political elite that would integrate Spain into NATO and the EC. The SPD and its Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FEF) aimed to wean the PSOE from Marxism and prevent any co-operation with the PCE. The Greek insurrection of 1973 and Portuguese Revolution of 1974 heightened Western alarm, accelerating these efforts.
The FEF’s Madrid representative, Dieter Koniecki, liaised with Interior Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, arguing that a PSOE-style socialism was preferable to the radical model of Tierno Galván’s PSP. The Francoist government welcomed these links, viewing the PSOE as a moderate force that could prevent left- or right-wing extremism. Funds were used to establish party offices, a press and campaign office, and training programmes, with monthly costs estimated at DM 120,000. The operation was kept secret from the PSOE rank and file to avoid accusations of foreign control. The SPD’s aim was to prevent a popular front with the Communists and to eliminate radical tendencies within the PSOE and its youth wing, the JJSS. At the JJSS’s sixth congress in Lisbon in July 1975, delegates adopted a revolutionary, Marxist programme denouncing social-democratic class collaboration. This clashed with the PSOE leadership’s rightward shift, funded by the SPD, and foreshadowed a purge of the left.
The PSOE refused to join the PCE-led Democratic Council in 1974 because it was too weak to avoid a subordinate role, instead creating its own Platform of Democratic Convergence in June 1975. The real aim of the merged Platajunta was to negotiate with Suárez on government reform. This opportunist policy of collaborating with bourgeois liberals met stiff resistance from the Young Socialists, whose elected leadership had a clear left-wing majority. Party leader Alfonso Guerra forced the Young Socialist leadership to resign in late 1975, replacing it with an undemocratic steering committee. A national debate was organised; when votes went against the bureaucracy, it dissolved federations. The Young Socialists were destroyed in Navarre, Seville, Madrid, and elsewhere, with hundreds expelled. The purge was directed by the German SPD via the FEF. Koniecki used seminars to indoctrinate cadres in class collaboration, keeping the full extent of involvement secret from all but González and Guerra. In March 1979, González publicly declared he was no longer a Marxist and proposed dropping the word from the programme. The rank and file fiercely resisted, inundating headquarters with resolutions reaffirming the party’s Marxist and revolutionary character.
At the Twenty-Eighth Congress in May 1979, the PSOE leadership suffered a shock defeat when delegates rejected the official position and reaffirmed the party as Marxist. Felipe González responded by theatrically resigning, a cynical act of blackmail designed to pressure the rank and file. The left opposition, led by figures like Gómez Llorente, lost its nerve and refused to take power, instead calling for a unity-preserving Management Committee. At an extraordinary congress in September 1979, González was re-elected after the apparatus rigged delegate selection rules, shifting representation from local groups to provincial federations. The Marxist appellation was removed from the party statutes for the first time in a century. The party was hollowed out, with careerists replacing active members, all opposition crushed, and absolute powers handed to the general secretary. The PSOE became organisationally indistinguishable from Stalinist bureaucratic centralism, complete with a leadership cult around González. Marxism was abandoned, and the party embraced capitalism, the market