FRANCO'S SPAIN
By IAN GILMOUR
GENERALISSIMO FRANCO must be given his due. Having started one civil war, he has pre- vented anyone else starting another. Not of course that anybody has been likely to AO so. The last one was such a dreadful experience that the great majority of Spaniards have up till now been ready to accept anything ,rather than risk a repetition. Still, if the danger has been slight, General Franco has made it slighter by consis- tently managing to keep the memory of the war as alive as possible—it is, of course, apart from the force at his command, his most important political asset—and thus avoiding the risk of a national reconciliation. The achievement of inter- nal peace, therefore, must not be denied him.
In essentials the Generalissimo's police State is much like any other police State. Spaniards have no political or civil-rights. There is no freedom of speech—newspapers and radio are rigidly cen- sored. There is no proper freedom of religion. Recently in Madrid a Protestant pastor was put on trial for attempting to enter his own church, and in 1956 the Bibles of the Foreign Bible Society were seized as they were in the time of Borrow. There is no freedom of association : political parties are illegal, and so are'political propaganda and strikes—even the Boy Scouts are banned.
I went to the trial in Madrid of Luis Alberto Solana Madariaga, the twenty-three-year-old nephew of Salvador de Madariaga, the well- known Spanish writer and liberal. The trial was before a military court, since Madariaga was accused or plotting armed rebellion against the State. What he had actually done, or was alleged to have done, was to distribute leaflets calling for a twenty-four-hour strike. Before five stolid-look- ing officers and a large crucifix, the prosecutor, another officer, solemnly argued that Madariaga must be nearly a Communist, since the Com- munists were heavily involved in the proposed strike, and the defending officer said that this could not be so as Madariaga was a good Roman Catholic. He was sent to prison for three years.
There are probably only three or four political prisoners who have been in prison since the end of the Civil War. (This sounds better than it is since an enormous number were shot. Only last month a man was garrotted for crimes alleged to have been committed during the Civil War.) Rut early this year News From Spain, the organ of the Spanish Socialist Party published in Toulouse, named six women political prisoners who have been incarcerated since 1941. There are, of course, many others who have been in prison for ten years or more.
Finally, there is torture. People who are taken to police stations accused of illegal politi- cal activity are liable to be subjected to its less refined forms, unless they happen to belong to a social stratum high enough to make the police consider such treatment disrespectful. If they are workers they are likely to receive the additional insult of having their 'crime' entered as theft. This keeps the number of political prisoners down.
What is less usual about Franco's police State is that it is European and is supported and heavily subsidised by the Eukopean democracies and by the United States, which are alleged to believe in freedom. The regime has no apparent ideal or purpose other than the maintenance of Franco in power. It is true that the Generalissimo still talks about a crusade, but even if there ever was a crusade it has long since become a career- Franco's career. Utterly without principle, he could become a Marxist tomorrow if his interests demanded it, or even a democrat, if he thought that anybody would vote for him.
In fact he probably does have a wild under- estimate of his unpopularity. His courtiers are un- likely to give him an inkling of the true position, and sometimes when he goes on a progress, Falan- gists dress up as peasants to cheer him. Then when he is having lunch, the stage army goes on a few miles to cheer him again. Recently when he opened a power station in Catalonia his proces- sion went through an avenue of workers holding torches, which he must have thought a moving display of affection and loyalty, provided he did
'Everybody knows that I haven't started the Movement for any political end. I have never been interested in politics and I have never thought of representing the supreme power of the nation.'
General Franco, December, 1938.
not see that in the darkness behind there were policemen with tommy-guns covering the workers. The Caudillo's belief that he has been sent by God must further insulate him from reality. There are many who doubt the completeness in the early days of his faith in Catholicism, but it is impos- sible to doubt his sincerity today. Since God sent him, plainly He must exist.
The contest for political power in the country is only an elaborate and rather unsavoury charade, in which the Generalissimo arranges the syllables or factions in such a way that they do not make a full word or consistent programme. He does this in order to prevent any one faction becoming too powerful and in order to prevent the regime having any other, raison d'être than him- self.'And he is able to do it because the politicians dc not possess real power. Real power, because of the support he is given by the forces that matter —the army, the Church and the old and the new rich—is exercised by the Caudillo himself. The politicians are merely the various suits of clothes that he chooses to wear *am time to time and then discards. Some fit him better than others, and the various parts of his ensemble are not made of the same stuff; but, he doubtless reflects, there is unity (for himself) in diversity, and if his suits matched they might come to think that the clothes really do make the man.
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