Juan Carlos's revolution
Hugh Thomas
The first thing to say about the new Spanish Constitution is that it is astonishing, at first Sight, that it has been achieved at all. To see Posters from the old Carlist Party and the Communist Party both arguing for a positive Vote 'Yes' in the referendum of 6 December is, to anyone with any sense or knowledge of history, extraordinary: The second thing about this Constitution is that it has been now formally approved by the majority of Spaniards. The vote in favour may not have been so great as the government expected or desired; the government's television programme in favour of a `Yes' may have been too heavy-handed; and probably, the Spaniards are now tired Of voting having now done so for the third time in three years (a previous referendum in December 1976 about the general process of the reform; the general election of June 1967; and now this referendum). Still, those who actually voted `No' are a small negative alliance of people who otherwise Would have little in common: right wing catholics, falangistas, revolutionary socialists and revolutionary Basques: the ordinary Basque nationalist party, unable to extricate itself from a position as godfather to the revolutionaries, recommended abstention. And 50 per cent of the people in the Basque country followed that advice out of a clear fear of the physical consequences of being seen to vote. The Constitution appears at first sight to be similar to the English one, if any written constitution can be, in the sense that Spain nh'zivi has a constitutional monarch, two -Mises of parliament and the Prime Minis ter is to be chosen by the King on the vote of the majority in the lower house. Since the f_draft of the Constitution was originally writ', n by ministers friendly to, and chosen by, tne 6 _ who has been, in the word, last Year, of Cambio 16 'the motor' of the democratic change it is reasonable to 1113Pose that King Juan Carlos is the main i.nspiration behind this document. Details of how governments are elected or how provinces may choose to be autonomous have been filled in by others, after compromises tand COnCessions, but the outlines are surely h ose sketched by Juan Carlos. He in turn has probably been influenced by his family's for to England and his admiration mr Queen Elizabeth II. During those years When Juan Carlos was standing patiently behind Franco, content to receive the obloquy .of the world's press and bide his time, this intelligent and resolute prince was presumably thinking out some of the ideas hich the Constitution contains. Certainly, tr.! order to achieve a constitutional monarchy, he would need to behave for a time as no constitutional monarch has usually done, as a rule. The Constitution which Franco left Juan Carlos gave him as a head of state considerable powers, even if they were powers less absolute than those of Franco himself before he became old.
Franco, I suspect, thought that the succession after his death would be different: in a much quoted phrase he told his ADC and cousin that everything was tied up and well tied up: atado y bien atado — atar being a word which the stewards of Iberia use for fastening a seat belt in the aeroplane. By that he meant that, after his death, the elaborate structure of favouritism, censorship, intimidation and control by different police forces would be maintained by his long-established lieutenant, Admiral Carrero Blanco, and the King would be asked to give it, by means of a campaign with popular papers such as Hola, a human face. What if he refused? Well, Carrero Blanco had a certain influence over Juan Carlos, Franco probably thought, and, if all else failed, there were other members of the house of Bourbon who might be prepared to accept the chance of a kingdom on Franco's conditions.
The decisive role in the transformation played by the King meant that one option for the future of Spain was ruled out. I mean not so much a Republic though the idea of restoring the Second Republic still haunts some in the Socialist Party and is also the main preconception of certain charming old men who have returned since 1975, after a lifetime in exile, with the hope of reviving a republican conscience. (What after all does republicanism mean today?) I mean, rather, the possibility of a presidential system such as De Gaulle constructed in France and Eanes in Portugal and such as, I suspect, Manuel Fraga, the leader of the Popular Alliance Party, might have demanded and been able to demand had it not been for the King's presence. Whether this will really limit the effectiveness of government remains to be seen.
The King will remain for his lifetime, anyway, representing an institution of great influence and authority by the recognition of his achievements and realism since 1975, even though his actual powers are as modest as the Queen of England's. Indeed the King does not seem to have that final sting-left to him, as it is left to a bee, for use in an emergency, which the English monarch has. For example, Article 62 of the Constitution obliges the King to approve laws, to convoke and to dissolve parliament only on the Government's initiative. He has to approve laws within fifteen days of their passage of the Cortes (art. 91). Referenda can be called [only] on the proposal of the Prime Minister when authorised by the Cortes although some further legislation seems to be needed to explain exactly when referenda can and must be introduced (art. 92 section 3). Alongside that, the right to give honours etc. must seem relatively minor as does the right 'to be informed' of state affairs or to preside at meetings of the cabinet when the Prime Minister judges it right. What precisely does the supreme command of the armed forces mean? A lot, I daresay, in the early days of this Constitution, but once the Army accepts the Constitution for good and all, not perhaps more than the Queen's headship of the British armed forces. There is perhaps room for discussion over the King's powers in naming a head of government (art. 99), since he will do that after discussion with leaders of parties and this particular monarch may make his own views carry the day sometimes. But the formal powers are modest. Equally, governments will fall only, so far as I can see, when they have lost an election and have lost control over their majority in the Cortes (art. 161). The King has no role there. Only the Prime Minister can dissolve the Cortes and call an election.
The present Constitution in Spain fairly and squarely gives power to a prime minister, therefore, whose rights derive from the lower house of the Cortes (parliament). That lower house is elected, as the Cortes at present in existence was last year, by direct adult suffrage at eighteen years. Both chambers of the Cortes have a geographical basis, in the old provinces of Spain. The Congress, or lower house, is to be elected by voting according to the size of the population within the provinces and will return 300 to 400 members. Both Ceuta and Melilla, Spain's (and Europe's) last possessions in Africa, are full constituencies (art. 68, section 2). The Congress has four years though it can (as in England) be ended before at, apparently, the Prime Minister's wish. The upper house consists of four senators each from each of Spain's forty seven mainland provinces, with various subsidiary arrangements for the Canary and Balearic Islands and Ceuta and Melilla. The senators, like the deputies, are elected for four years, and can impose a delaying veto which can only be reversed by an absolute majority vote of both houses (art. 90). Referenda are also provided for in special circumstances (art. 91). All these carefully worked out rules make the new Spanish Constitution seem a brushed up version of the unwritten English one. Patronage by prime minister of monarch however, plays no part in selecting the upper house. Nor does a hereditary peerage. Another qualification is that as a result of the emphasis on the old provinces, the rural voters will be represented more generously than the urban ones in both chambers.
A great deal of the rest of the Constitution consists of generalisations which Spaniards have always felt the need to include in documents of this sort relating to the right to work or to be educated which many would say should probably belong to economic or social legislation. The long list of fundamental rights and liberties (arts. 15 to 38) might, however, perhaps be scanned with advantage by those who believe that a bill of rights would be beneficial elsewhere, though the fact that similar rights are formally 'guaranteed' in some other constitutions (for example, that of Russia) of course does not always mean that they have any real meaning. Rights of privacy are included among fundamental rights. Other friends of liberty will be encouraged to see that Article 28 not only guarantees the right of Spaniards to form unions but also guarantees that nobody can be obliged to join a union. Let us hope that this provision is maintained in an increasingly corporate Europe.
The items of the Constitution which deal with the autonomy of the regions are the sections which have already caused the greatest difficulty and which may give rise in the end to the greatest possible trouble.
These sections of the Constitution give the impression of having been cobbled together in a series of compromises without pro found consideration of the real problems of co-ordinating devolution with a centralised state. Compromises between politicians are important in their way but, over the prob lem of the relation of Spain and its regions which has already helped to cause three civil wars in the last 150 years, long-term strategy is essential and this has not yet been forthcoming. The arrangements worked out are that any of the historic regions – that is, the old kingdoms legally abolished in the early nineteenth century, but which con tinue to have a meaning in Spain– can seek, by a somewhat complicated mathematical formula, self-government. That would mean, in the first instance, an autonomy something like a modified version of the old Stormont system in Northern Ireland. The autonomous regions themselves will continue to send deputies to Madrid, even if they have their own institutions. The statutes of autonomy give the local governments some develved power over a limited number of undertakings: the alteration of municipal boundaries, tourism, and health. By a strange and unsatisfactory compromise, the autonomous government can also organise a police force to guard its own edifices and installations but the coordination between that and the other national police forces is to be worked out later. The autonomous regions can also work out schemes 'for their own cultural life,' including teaching of their own language – a clause which seems to enable the Basques, say, to insist on compulsory teaching of Basque in schools. Not a very good plan, particularly for the 50 per cent of the Basque provinces who are Castillian born and Spanish speaking. However, these rules are not enough for the Basque Nationalist Party who wish specific mention of their own old rights (fueros) as something separate from those of other regions. Those would presumably include the ancient power, abolished by Franco in 1937, to collect their own taxes and hand them over to Spain. The Basque nationalists also, of course, desire complete control over the police in the region. The Catalans earlier wanted to be able to establish a confederation of Catalan-speaking provinces – that is, Valencia, the Balearics as well as Catalonia – to revive a greater Catalonia such as once more or less existed in the thirteenth century. But they have for the moment given up this demand and, in the end, positively supported the Constitution, since they are realistic and hardheaded people, and know, as Camb6 put it in 1916, that an independent Catalonia would become, in effect, a department of France.
The Basque Nationalist Party might, in the end, also have compromised by now had it not been for the revolutionaries of the ETA who, with apparent impunity, now shoot police daily, rob banks and businesses, extort protection money and in general set about the business of establishing a revolutionary state by terror and intimidation. Of course, the legislation for the autonomy is denounced as insufficient Spectator 16 December 1978 by the ETA but in truth any degree of autonomy would be insufficient for them because they are revolutionary separatists and they have lived so long from violence that it is difficult to believe that they an ever draw back. They are the provisional IRA of the Spanish scene. Franco's rer ression of the Basque country after 1937' including the persecution of the use of the Basque language, enable the ETA to Pig beguilingly on the emotions of a larle number of people who are, in ecormiu" affairs, very conservative and at heart are ja no way separatists. Those whose emotions they cannot play upon they can threaten or shoot. Meantime the government in Madrid has been too occupied with the issue of die Constitution, and perhaps too anxious tu avoid accusations of authoritarianisna, devote much attention to the Basque Prdb: lem. Many members of the governinert" after all, are reformed falangistas anxioust° prove their democratic credibility. Tr,. Minister of the Interior, Martin Villa, ,13example, has barely had a moment in hisn'e when he has been without an official Puts" ition (and an official car, as some sotillY point out), either under Franco or the King' ever since he ran the official students' unicl,d twenty years ago. At all events, far the important task of the government now Os be the Basque question. his In the past, Adolfo Suarez has solved problems, firstly, by concentrating all efforts on a single matter to the exclusion all other issues and, secondly, by 111,,kaire ipulating and cajoling his opponents. 1"c, concentration will now be needed, but s may be a greater willingness to risk tore porary unpopularity and to take a strullbge line. For, at the moment, the ETA have the upper hand in at least two Basque p',"„.; vincas, those of Vizcaya and Guipi0,,d: though not in Navarra, nor, I think, Those la--ose first two beautiful and once Pr°'; ; perous provinces have been ruined in , last few years. Businesses are declint prices of property in San Sebastian ,19,he dropped; madrilerlos no longer spenu.; is summer along the coast at Zarauz; caPj4",e being systematically removed and t" police have admitted implicitly that theYi cannot protect the lives of businessmen' know of at least one case of someone bellitigi advised by the police to leave Bilbao till,. after the referendum. Some have therefor, suggested that the Basque country sliMn su, be abandoned by Spain to its own dev„ti, That would be foolish and wrong. Fir because a majority do not want it seepftin because such an act would mean a retreafisii the face of violence which could ssarcelY.use to have effects elsewhere; third, bee".sh the internal political effects on the Spaulbe army and the Right in general would incalculable; and fourth, because the esta,,e. ishment of a small, economically unviaud extreme revolutionary Basque state vg ) for cause formidable strategic problems of Spain, for France and for the wIlde western Europe.
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