Franco's legacy

Simon Courtauld

The Transformation of Spain David Gilmour (Quartet Books £12.95)

Enrique Lister, Communist general in the Spanish Civil War, said recently that King Juan Carlos was 'rims liberal que Azatia', president of the Republic during the war. It was a revealing comment on What has happened in Spain during the past ten years. After the abortive military coup of 23 February 1981, and the victory of the Socialists in the general election the follow- ing year, there were few republicans who did not now call themselves monarchists. The transformation from a dictatorship of 36 years to democratic socialism under a constitutional monarch had been success- fully and peacefully achieved.

In fact, it was only 19 months after the death of Franco that democratic elections were held, the first since 1936. David Gilmour shows, in this absorbing and thoroughly researched book, how skilful Was the strategy which brought this about and gained general acceptance for reform. It was largely done by a mixture of bluff

and pragmatism on the part of the King, Who had sworn and was expected to follow Franco's example, and his appointee as Prime minister, Adolfo Suarez, who was a franquista and trusted by the old guard.

With these credentials they were able gradually to implement political reforms. The imposition of democracy by the men and through the institutigns of the old regime was a brilliant manoeuvre which deterred both Right and Left from attemp- ting to sabotage the process. It worked so Well that by the middle of 1977 Suarez was able to win power for his coalition of Parties (Union de Centro Democratico) in a general election in which the parties of the Right and the Communists each re- ceived less than ten per cent of the vote.

It was a remarkable outcome; however, as Mr Gilmour explains, Spain was ready for transformation. The autarky of the

1940s and 1950s gave way, in the 1960s, to a more liberal economy, supported by the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. During this de- cade Spain had the fastest growth rate of any country in Europe. A middle class was established, millions of people moved away from the countryside, urbanizacion took place (the results of which disfigure so Many Spanish cities today).

But the political system hardly changed at all. Franco had brought stability to Spain, and he knew how to retain control of the country. He knew how to keep the liberal opposition at bay, by talking of the

threat of communism, which constituted no threat at all, of regionalists who would divide the country, of anticlericals, and of 'the Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy'. This obsession of Franco is difficult to under- stand: he believed that Freemasonry was closely allied to communism, also• that Peron and the Gibraltar government were infected with it. (Mr Gilmour does not seek to explain Franco's alleged anti- semitism. Nor does he mention that in 1944 Franco, who was said to have Jewish blood, interceded with Hitler to save 1,200 Sephardic Jews from Belsen, and perhaps thousands more from death by allowing them to take Spanish nationality.) By the 1970s the social and economic changes were such that political change was bound to follow. The Franco regime was rather like a colonial power that had brought Spain to the point where it was ripe for independence. 'Had Franco's suc- cessors tried to perpetuate franquismo,'

Mr Gilmour comments, 'they would have found the political position untenable.'

One of Franco's ministers in the Sixties who was able to introduce a small measure of political reform was Manuel Fraga. Having succeeded in relaxing the press laws he was sacked in 1969 for undermin- ing the country's morals. After a spell as ambassador in London, and later as Minis- ter of the Interior in the Arias government after Franco's death, Fraga soon lost his reputation as a reforming liberal; he re- fused to serve with Suarez, and in 1976 formed a franquista coalition, Alianza Popular, of which he remains leader. Mr Gilmour gives a convincing judgment of Fraga: arrogant, intolerant, unreliable, and out of step with the mood of the people.

Unlike Fraga, Suarez knew how to become a democrat, and how to appease the franquistas at the same time. He also knew how to outsmart his opponents, and

how to make use of television. He was sensitive to many of the needs of his country in a way that Fraga was not, yet curiously insensitive to the Basques and to the armed forces. According to Mr Gil- mour, he failed to make concessions to the Basque people at the right time, though it is hard to believe that it would have made much difference to the activities of ETA.

Perhaps his greatest error was to assure the army that he would not legalise the Communist Party, and then to do so six months later and without notice. This act was at least partly responsible for the attempt to overthrow the government on 23 February 1981, though Suarez, by now exhausted, withdrawn and without a prop- er party behind him, had announced his intention to resign a month earlier. After the discovery of another, disorganised army plot shortly before the general elec- tion in October 1982 (won by the Socialists and Felipe Gonzalez), the danger of any further military flings against the elected government seemed to have passed. With Gonzalez the armed forces know where they are.

Gonzalez had become secretary-general of the Partido Socialista Obrero Espatiol before Franco died. When the new con- stitution was drafted (after the 1977 elec- tions, in which the PSOE secured almost 30 per cent of the vote) Suarez met more opposition — on matters of education, the role of the Church and the monarchy — from the Socialists than from the Commun- ists. However, Gonzalez later moderated his position and, after a temporary resigna- tion from the leadership of his party, was able to stamp his personality on the press, and consequently on the people, at a time when Suarez was becoming more reclusive. Gonzalez was considered to be simpatico — Mr Gilmour makes the impor- tant point that he was the only politician whom the press called by his Christian name, Felipe — and after the PSOE's success in the Andalusian election of May 1982, victory in the general election was inevitable.

While giving a perceptive and lucid account of the transformation of Spain, Mr Gilmour does not pay detailed attention to 'the motor of change', as the King has been described. And he leaves one question unanswered, also unasked. Would Franco have been so surprised at what has hap- pened to Spain? Did the protégé, Juan Carlos, betray his tutor of two decades? There are many Spaniards — old and young franquistas, and the grandee fami- lies — who think that he did.

Yet Franco used to tell Juan Carlos that things would be different after his death.

The wily old gallego would surely have acknowledged that, after him, democratic

government could not be resisted for much longer. The speed awl extent of the trans- formation would have shocked him; but he judged correctly that the man he had trained represented the best hope to hold the balance between the authoritarian and liberal instincts of his people.