The Communists
' In the sense that they dislike and despise the regime, practically everybody in Spain is a mem- ber of the opposition, but this is only a critical opposition. The political opposition is much smaller. Enough has already been said to show that for the Communists the present situation is almost perfect. Indeed, the list of people who were doing well out of the regime should really have included the Communists. The economic system is designed to help them; its corruption, unfairness and inefficiency discredit capitalism, while the violence with which it is supported does nothing to discourage a belief in violent remedies. At present even Marx's theory of increasing wealth and increasing misery applies. The rich are getting much richer, and the decline in overtime and in secondary jobs—leaving aside those who are totally unemployed—means that, the standard of living of the poor will fall far below what it was in the Thirties. Even when, owing to the increase in the national income and to the extraordinary hours they worked, the standard of living of the poor was rising, the incomes of the rich were rising faster and the distribution of money was growing more not less unequal.
The suppression of freedom and of democratic parties gives an immense advantage to the Com- munists. Their leaders are dedicated men prepared to work twenty-four hours a day for the cause. They excel in underground activity and organisa- tion. Franco's habit of identifying almost all opposition as Communist gives them great prestige and popularity. Their closed and rigid system of ideas does not need open discussion for its propagation as do democratic ideas. In the uneasy atmosphere of Spain the certainties of Marxism give it an attraction that it would not otherwise possess; there has been a tremendous upsurge of Marxism in the universities, though of course a great many Marxists are not Communists. (The Frente Liberacion Popular, which is power- ful in the universities, is a Marxist body which contains many Catholics.) America has discredited democratic ideals and discouraged the democrats, and her liaison with Franco is breeding Com- munists like rabbits. The Russians are almost as helpful. They supply money and above all radio stations. Radio Paris is listened to a little, the BBC rather less, and the Voice of America not at all. Spaniards do not want to hear about the achieve- ments of America—they can see them—or about the achievements of Britain and France. They 'We have had in our hands orders given by the international freemasonry to organisa- tions like the BBC which, pretending to be unofficial organisations of the Government, have been, however, in the hands of the free- masonry for many years.'
General Franco, May 11, 1951.
want to hear about Spanish affairs and they want to hear abuse of the Caudillo. Naturally. therefore, they listen to one of the nine or ten Communist stations broadcasting in Spanish and in particular to Radio Esparta Independiente sent out from Prague. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the advantage conferred upon the Communists by the possession of their own radio stations or the cor- responding handicap conferred upon the Spanish democrats by the lack of one.
Spaniards have three channels of information. The first is the foreign press, which reaches only a tiny minority, and which, if it contains anything of interest about Spain, will be censored and sup- pressed. The second are the Spanish newspapers and radio stations which do not tell their readers anything truthful about internal affairs. And the third is foreign radio stations. When he was Ambassador in Madrid in 1940 Lord Templewood found that German propaganda had some effect even when he knew that it was untrue; Spaniards have no means of knowing what is true and what is not. While their radio stations give the Com- munists unlimited opportunities for propaganda and greatly facilitate organisation, the Spanish democrats are given no such encouragement or facilities. In this they are practically unique among all the Oppositions of the world. The Algerians have plenty of radio resources; all the various African nationalists have their programmes from Cairo; and the Eastern European countries are far from neglected. But the Spanish democrats have only Franco or Communist propaganda to choose from. (The Basques used to have a station but it was closed by Mendes-France and Mit- terrand. This action of the French Left was not dictated by a belated recognition of the virtues of the Caudillo but by French difficulties in North Africa and fear of Spain's traditional pro- Arabism. Begun by the Left, attempts to improve French relations with Spain have been intensified by the Right until today there is something not far from a secret alliance between the two countries.)
The Communists need the Caudillo as much as he needs them. Each is the other's open weapon. Under no other regime could the Communists flourish as they do now, whereas without their existence it is hard to believe that even the most virulent base-mania would induce the US Govern- ment to go on using the American taxpayers' money in order to preserve the Generalis- simo. Franco says to the Americans that either they must give him money or there will be a Communist Spain, and the Americans promptly pay up. What they fail to realise is that it is not Franco or the Communists that they are buying, it is Franco and the Communists. The two go together in a package deal.
The only debit item the Communists now have is their past; their brutality and ruthlessness to their own side during the Civil War have not been forgotten. It is impossible to gauge their exact strength now. The twenty-four-hour protest strike last July which was sponsored by them was a fiasco. But it would be unwise to infer from this that they are weak. Like everybody else they were affected by Spain's prostration after the Civil War and the appalling poverty of the Forties. Serious political opposition, Communist and non-Com- munist, began only a few years ago. Since then the Communists have been growing fast, they are already strong, and so long as Franco lasts their strength will rapidly increase.
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