Spain's military manoeuvres
Stephen Aris
Madrid
In the vast square of the Plaza Oriente, some 150,000 blue-shirted right-wingers assembled, as they have every year for the past six years, to honour the memory of a dead dictator. 'Franco, Franco', they shouted — an attempt to raise the ghost of Spain's departed but largely unlamented father figure who lies 25 miles away in his rock tomb in the Valley of the Fallen. Later horn-blowing, flag-waving motorcades paraded through the streets, blocking the traffic and disturbing a peaceful Sunday afternoon. Much to the fury of ordinary madrilenos the hubbub continued until well into the night. In response to popular protest the authorities who sanctioned the demonstration in the first place have now promised to investigate the disturbances.
Too much significance should not be at tached to this demonstration which was, as always, an exercise in nostalgia. Nonetheless the fascist rally served to increase the present mood of nervousness and uncertainty, made worse by Spain's cooking oil scandal and the drought which has lasted for six months. 'If only it would rain', one Spanish journalist said to me, 'perhaps our problems would go away'.
The immediate cause of all this apprehen sion has been the very public disintegration of the government party, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) which has ruled Spain throughout the post-Franco era. The Prime Minister, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, has emerged from a bruising battle intact but the party has lost both its founder, the former prime minister Adolfo Suarez, and its raison d'être. 'Sadly, I am no longer at ease within the UCD', Suarez told the Madrid daily, El Pais; 'I have no option but to leave.' Suarez is not the only defector; other ministers on the liberal wing of the party have also left. And so with the departure of what in British terms would be called the `wets' the UCD has lost its mild reformist image and now looks set to move towards the right and a possible alliance with the maverick conservative, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, leader of the Popular Alliance Party.
With the UCD in disarray and the Com munist Party in the throes of an even more drastic purge, the face of Spanish politics has been fundamentally altered in little more than a month. The consensus politics which have guided Spanish democracy since the first free general election of 1977 no longer apply. The 'wets' of the UCD have split off to form a new Social Democratic party, the young Communist intellectuals (including six members of the central committee) are discussing their options and Fraga, still basking in his triumph in the recent regional elections in his native Galicia, is riding high. With the possibility of an early general election next spring (it must be held by 1983) new alliances will have to be formed quickly.
In any other country the politicians would take these convulsions in their stride. But the question being asked here is not so much, What are the politicians up to? as, What will the army think? It is a question that has always been relevant in Spanish politics but the events of last February, when elements of the army staged an abortive coup, have given it added force. They also help to explain why Spaniards are at this moment so nervous.
As the struggle between the warring factions of the UCD reached its climax there were strong rumours in Madrid that the army was on the move — so strong that the Ministry of Information felt obliged to rush out an extraordinary late-night statement denying the rumours and saying that the situation throughout the country was entirely normal. This, as El Pais pointed out, only gave further currency to the rumours.
In the ensuing search for a scapegoat the finger was pointed at General Jesos Gonzales del Yerro, the captain-general of the Canary Islands and one of the army's most senior commanders, who reportedly called on the King suggesting that he (del Yerro) should be appointed head of a provisional military government. General del Yerro also had conversations, it is said, with a leading member of the UCD's moderate faction, Oscar Alzaga. Later the general put out a formal statement denying that he had done any such thing and reaffirming his loyalty to the King. Whatever the truth, it is perhaps significant that on a recent visit to Aragon the King went out of his way to warn the politicians to stop quarrelling and get on with the business of running the country. 'Politics should not decline into inefficiency, into clinging to position and into internal struggles,' he said. The army itself could not have out it better.
Just how close the army is to staging another coup is impossible to say. What is clear, however, is that the army was deeply concerned about the crisis inside the UCD and had gone so far as to offer an alternative if the civilian politicians failed to resolve their differences. 'The problem with the army', says an ex-officer, 'is that they cannot understand ordinary, democratic political processes. They think that a political party, especially when it is the government, should be as disciplined as a regiment. And when they see politicians fighting among themselves they get very alarmed.' There are only a handful of generals, among them the army chief of staff and the captains-general of Madrid and Barcelona, who have any real political sense; the remainder are unreconstructed Francoists.
Far from pulling back since last February it seems that the army now has a greater influence on the country's political life than at any time since Franco's death. Furthermore the government, by its reluctance to confront the army directly over sensitive issues, appears to be encouraging this process. There are persistent reports that the chiefs of staff on a number of occasions banned the Minister of Defence from important meetings; the army still fiercely resists government influence over army appointments; and on one notable occasion recently one of the alleged architects of the February coup, General Jaime Milans del Bosch, currently under house arrest, was awarded a medal for 'sacrifices to the fatherland'. It was, in fact, compensation for injury to his backside sustained in a helicopter accident. The hapless Ministry of Defence official who authorised the award was quickly dismissed but the government emerged from this episode perhaps more injured than the general.
What poisons the atmosphere more than anything is the government's evident reluctance to bring the protagonists of February's coup to trial. The 32 principals have now been under arrest for more than nine months, the legal preliminaries are, by all accounts, complete, and yet no date has been set. In Madrid there is speculation that the government plans to give only Colonel Tejero, the Civil Guard front man, a heavy sentence and to let the more senior conspirators off more lightly. If this forecast is correct there will be no immediate weakening of the army's role in the political life of Spain.
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