The problems of the king Lohn Organ Juan Carlos must

dismantle the apparatus of General Franco's authoritarian state before he can build a new and democratic Spain. It is a bi g task, and it may take him a year. The young king bravely promised a free and nbdem society in his investiture speech, but already critics abroad, and the more impatient eleMents of the opposition in Spain itself, are de Manding that he should match words with ae.tions. For them, he is moving too slowly. problem is that King Juan Carlos has att alternative but to move slowly. His friends nacric supporters say that he has every intention 17 °ringing about democracy, but first of all he to disarm and neutralise General Franco s oldultra-right establishment. Those at home ar..anel abroad who wish the king well, and they 7,.„,ITlanY, should learn something about the "“Juleins which he faces. There have been such frehtt

disappointments that there are bound to be

ulaaPpointments in the first months, and "I almost certainly not be long before the "IllPatient, ill-intentioned or misinformed begin lt■ throw mud in his direction. 'Events in Spain are often not what they ,seellaFor example, only a day after his 'Ilvestiture, .King Juan Carlos gave a special a,udienee to the ultra-rightist leader Jose "1,11tonio Giron and a group of blue-shirted iralangist veterans. It was shown on television iate that night, and undoubtedly created a bad litession. But behind that meeting lies a tale. brc„,ne Falangists are a curious and divided e i „`"-' uf Spanish fascists who have little n n'rhIrlon except their blue shirts and a ti(l}stalgia for the 1930s. Franco never allowed a eta to become a mass political organisation,

fc'reIblY amalgamated them with all his

oree-r • r, suPPorters into an amorphous umbrella laulsation called the National Movement. in411Y F alangists are harmless and well-meanat g nationalists who got jobs in Franco's Spain rto.theprice of renouncing their political cY and, in many cases, they found this r.a7 a better life. But the sort of Falangists who round Giron, or the more venomous Blas • i'ar, are neither harmless nor well-meaning. They'

loathe the idea of monarchy, and

vately refer to the Bourbon dynasty as "the ju b°11IC Plague." Giron was furious that King th:n Carlos, in his investiture speech, shunned and obligat did otx y rhetoric of the Franco regime mention the civil war or "the

natri no

. uprising of July 18." As leader of the ist war veterans' association, he was teteel.111,1ned that his followers, in full view of the Carlo cameras, would greet King Juan pal .with the raised-arm fascist salute and theallf gii18t slogans when the monarch arrived the c°" day to preside at Franco's burial ullardarrama mountains. thisibrig Juan Carlos learned of these plans. If basii7aPPened, he said, he would not enter the should lea l. Furthermore, he insisted that there butkci be no raised-arm salutes, and no music the "le national anthem, as he walked across thates.Planade to the basilica. And he promised the„if Giron's cohorts behaved themselves, that-. ".e would receive a delegation in audience (up bl.ght and utter the words Arriba Espana 'with Spain), the patriotic slogan favoured

by the Franco regime and the Falangists (since his investiture,, the king uses only the more traditional and neutral Viva Espana). And that is the story behind a peculiar audience, but unfortunately, as so often happens in Spain, it did not become known until days afterwards. It shows that King Juan Carlos has mettle in him, and is a stronger character than many people realise. Not for nothing did he survive six difficult years waiting to become king while avoiding constant traps laid for him by the ultra-right. And now he intends to dismantle them.

Blue-shirted Falangists, although only a significant minority of them could be accura tely described as ultra-rightists, are entrenched in the crumbling framework of the Franco state from top to bottom. They are well represented by Senor Giron and others in the seventeen man Council of the Realm, the constitutional advisory body with which Franco has lumbered the king: if the king appoints a new prime minister, he has to select him from a short list of three candidates submitted by this body. It has the power to veto proposals for the major constitutional changes which will eventually be necessary if authentic democracy is to be installed in Spain; as the law stands to day, such proposals would have to be submitted to a national referendum, but they would have to be approved first by the Council of the Realm.

As King Juan Carlos obtained the throne under the constitutional arrangements made by Franco, and as he swore to respect them, he has no choice but to follow the law as it stands. But, given time, he can get the better of it. Ultra-rightists are still strong in the Cortes, General Franco's rubber-stamp parliament, and in the country at large at least 250,000 families are living off what Spaniards call "blue money," from jobs or sinecures in the Falangist-based Jefuturas (cadres) of the National Movement, its SecciOn Femenina, Delegation of Sports, and similar bodies. They will either have to be neutralised and reorganised on a non-political basis, or else be pensioned off. Another major problem will be the Sindicatos, General Franco's official labour unions which, at least at the top, are controlled by the state. The equivalent organisation created in Salazar's Portugal, the Inter-Sindical, was converted after the 1974 Lisbon coup from a corporative-style monolith into a Communist monolith. No trade unionists, except the Communists, want that to happen in Spain. It is against this background that the first measures of King Juan Carlos, which have disappointed some democrats, must be measured. He has found it safer to retain, at least for some months, the services of General Franco's last prime minister, Carlos Arias Navarro, a fairly moderate conservative who tried to bring in liberalisation over the last year but was stopped by Franco himself. The king has thus avoided a potential deadlock with the Council of the Realm over the appointment of a more liberal prime minister.

There is, at the moment, no obvious candidate for prime minister, either in the ranks of the establishment or of the opposition, who would be capable of rallying the nation. King Juan Carlos is said to have favoured the appointment as premier of the moderate and comparatively liberal-minded General Manuel Gutierrez Mellado, but to have dropped the idea atter being persuaded that it would have been bad for his image to put a military man at the head of his first government. Senor Arias is reshuffling his cabinet, and was expected to get rid of 'bunker' figures like the inflexible and unpopular Interior Minister, Senor Garcia Hernandez. Even more important, he is embarking on reforms of the administrative structure. One ministry which will almost certainly disappear is the General Secretariat of the National Movement: a major step in dismantling the old blue-shirted establishment.

The three military ministries are expected to be combined, and General Gutierrez Mellado is tipped to become defence minister once he has reached full lieutenant-general rank in a few months.

Meanwhile King Juan Carlos will go ahead to change the membership of the Council of the Realm, and he has already accepted the resignation of its old-guard president, Alejandro Valcarcel. The new man in charge of the Council of the Realm is one of the King's former tutors, Torcuato Fernandez Miranda, a conservative and former deputy prime minister.

Felipe Gonzalez, secretary-general of the still illegal mainstream Spanish socialist party PSOE, has dismissed this appointment as showing a "tendency towards continuation of Francoism," but he has probably forgotten, or is too young to remember, how Fernandez Miranda was used by the late Admiral Carrero Blanco to harry and tame the old ultra-rightist Falangists. King Juan Carlos intends to use Fernandez Miranda as a reliable hatchet man to neutralise and disarm the extreme right, and he is also simultaneously president of the Cortes. As both bodies are composed today, it would be of no avail to put a member of the democratic opposition in charge of them. Fernandez Miranda is an odd, dry man, given in the past to making gobbledygook speeches. A member of the Franco establishment but never popular inside it, he may serve better as a royal broom than many a more attractive candidate.

While King Juan Carlos is dismantling the old order, he has to keep in mind the long-term aim of constitutional reform, free elections and political parties, and somehow obtain the trust of a divided and impatient opposition which, in theory at least, is still illegal. This is already proving difficult, and the opposition, for example, was very disappointed with the limited and ambiguous royal pardon for political prisoners, which many naturally regarded as a touchstone of democratic sincerity. On the other hand, formidable Communists like Simon Sanchez Montero or Marcelino Camacho, and other militants, have been slowly dribbling out of prison amid hopes of a broader amnesty. Camacho, a demagogic Madrid lathe operator who is prominent in the underground Worker Commissions and has been built up by party propaganda into a sort of folk hero, was arrested again on Sunday night on charges of trying to organise a demonstration outside Carabanchel prison. One conclusion will be that the king erred, and fell into a trap, by not insisting on a sweeping amnesty to wipe the slate clean at the start of his reign, and his enemies will exploit this mistake. Another conclusion, less obvious but equally valid, is that Camacho and his friends are trying to discredit the king only two weeks after his accession; there were more hopes of obtaining a broader amnesty by the growing pressure of public opinion than by provoking the police.