Chapter 2: Holding back the tide: the Carrero Blanco years 1969–73

"Carrero Blanco was forced to deal with problems that had been no more than vague intimations three or four years earlier. The scale of the difficulties that he faced could be deduced from the fact that the regime would soon be seen to resort to ultra-rightist terrorism against its opponents"

"Between 1969 and 1975, anticipation of Franco’s eventual demise affected different sectors of the regime forces in different ways. The younger functionaries, the politicians with directorships and consultancies in dynamic enterprises, the liberally inclined and the plain far-sighted began to toy with democratic notions"

"the Vatican continued to edge unmistakably into the ranks of the regime’s enemies...Enrique y Tarancón was to be the instrument whereby Pope Paul VI was to express his distaste for the Franco regime. 1 "

"The state of exception declared in January 1969 was a reflex reaction to the early symptoms of beleaguerment. A resort to brutality was a tacit admission of helplessness before the growing clamour of workers, students and Basque activists. In fact, the declaration of the suspension of constitutional guarantees had provoked some opposition from Opus Dei ministers who wanted it confined to Madrid and Barcelona. Significantly, on 25 March, Fraga pressed successfully for an early end to the state of exception, claiming that it would damage the tourist trade. The Caudillo remained unconvinced, preferring public order to international goodwill. It was an ironic illustration of the contradictions between the new social and economic realities of Spain and the traditional political methods of the dictatorship. 3 "

"Despite the self- congratulations of the technocrats, growth started before their plans came into being and often continued despite them. Once the economic impetus consequent upon the opening-up of Spain to world trade got under way, long-term planning was shelved in favour of stop-go policies which aimed no higher than the control of inflation and balance of payments deficits. Accordingly, when the boom of the 1960s began to slow down, the technocrats could respond only with austerity measures. Inevitably then, the social pressures against the regime were intensified Growth had created a new working class whose militancy against poor working conditions and political repression could only be kept in check by rising living standards, 4"

"The so-called Estatuto Solís was a meaningless varnish for the Movimiento. Associations would have no electoral life, would have to have a minimum membership of 25,000 and could only be legalized by the Consejo Nacional del Movimiento. Totally rejected by the democratic opposition, the associations were limited to Francoist factions. The most ultra-reactionary was Bias Piñar’s Fuerza Nueva. More liberal were Acción Política under Pío Cabanillas Gallas and Reforma Social Española under the progressive Falangist Manuel Cantarero del Castillo. 8 Franco had never been averse to efforts to provide a cosmetic veneer of liberalism if only to impress foreigners. "

"Falangists who had long resented the growing dominance of the technocrats, particularly Fraga and Solís, thought that they could use the situation (MATESA) to benefit their own brand of apertura. The Ministry of Information permitted the press to unleash a violent campaign against the Opus. It was a serious miscalculation."

" The blatant attempt to reverse the Opus Dei scenario for a Francoist monarchy deeply offended Franco. It was thus relatively easy for Carrero Blanco and López Rodó to turn the potentially damaging Matesa crisis to their advantage. A report by Carrero Blanco, handed to the Caudillo on 16 October 1969, passed lightly over the lamentable negligence’ of the ministers responsible for Matesa’s activities, but stressed that the subsequent press campaign had severely damaged Spain’s international credibility. Pointing a finger directly at the Minister of Information, Carrero’s report helped to sink Fraga."

"The new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gregorio López Bravo, began a frenetic programme of refurbishing the regime’s external relations. However, he constantly ran into the barrier that entry into Europe required political liberalization which the regime could not contemplate. The problem had been underlined when 131 members of the moderate opposition, Socialists, Christian Democrats and Liberals, had sent an open letter to Franco on 23 December 1969. Widely publicized throughout Europe, the letter underlined the distance between Spain and the EEC."

"Since the police could not be seen to attack the clergy, there began to emerge parallel terror squads. Extremists of Fuerza Nueva, using names like the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (the Warriors of Christ the King), entered churches and perpetrated vicious attacks on priests. Such activities merely drove the Church even further away from the regime. Frequent trials of priests for propaganda offences involving support for working-class or regionalist aspirations also drove wedges between Catholics and the Francoist state apparatus. 17"

"After a short respite during the summer, the regime was faced in the autumn by a renewed strike wave. The Madrid metro workers refused to do overtime. In Seville, railway workers downed tools. In Asturias, a mining accident which killed three workers was the occasion of a strike of 3500 miners. The nationalized coal company, Hunosa, replied with a lock-out affecting 15,000 workers. Ultimately, these were economic strikes. Prices were rocketing—meat by 40 per cent since 1968, fruit by 30 per cent. Transport, heating, clothing and most food products were rising to a point at which the average two-child family needed a monthly income of 12,000 pesetas in order to survive. The legal minimum wage was 120 pesetas per day and many workers received less. The most precarious situation was to be found among unskilled and casual labour. Accordingly, one of the largest and most bitter strikes of the autumn took place in the Madrid construction industry. 20,000 workers were involved, although the Communist Party claimed that there were five times that many.

For the Communists, the strikes were proof that large numbers of people supported their strategy of a broad alliance of anti-regime forces, known as the ‘Pact for Liberty’. They were now encouraged to believe that they could soon put the ‘Pact’ into practice through a great national strike action. 18 The Comisiones Obreras called a day of struggle on 3 November to demand amnesty for political prisoners. Because of police repression and the lack of an immediate economic motivation, the popular response was patchy. The greatest impact was among Madrid and Barcelona metallurgical workers, shipyard workers in the Basque Country and El Ferrol and building workers in Seville. Even the exaggeratedly low official estimate acknowledged 25,000 strikers across the country. The public support given openly for the first time by many intellectuals, artists, students and housewives was evidence of the widening solidarity of opposition forces.19

In contrast, there were deepening cracks within the coalition of Francoist forces as, under pressure, the government of Carrero Blanco reverted to its most basic instincts. Thus, the intensification of repression seemed merely to provoke greater defiance from the opposition. The number of people tried for political offences in the first nine months of September 1970 was 1101. A disproportionate number of those charged were Basques. To draw attention to this fact, Joseba Elósegi, a Basque nationalist, set fire to himself while Franco presided over the world jai-alai championships in San Sebastián on 18 September. Elósegi had been in command of the only Basque military unit present in Guernica on 26 April 1937 when it was destroyed by Franco’s German allies. By his action, Elósegi implicitly related the struggle to defend Euskadi against Francoist troops during the Civil War to the battle being fought by the young nationalists of ETA in the 1960s. 20

"The technocrats were not averse to harsh measures. Indeed, it was rumoured that they acquiesced in the existence of ultra- rightist squads because these thugs not only did the regime’s dirty work for it but also, by establishing an extreme pole even further to the right, allowed the government to present itself as belonging to the centre of the political spectrum. 22"

"While ultra-rightist squads assaulted liberal and leftist priests and lawyers, the government occupied itself throughout 1970 with silencing even the moderate opposition as well as locking the door definitively on reform. In March, the monarchist José María de Areilza wrote an article on ‘the Spanish road to democracy’ in ABC. He pointed out that the regime’s objective of integration into Europe was unlikely to be fulfilled until Spain had real democracy complete with political parties. On 1 April, the Catholic daily Ya called for the democratization of Spanish life. Carrero Blanco himself replied, under his pseudonym of Ginés de Buitrago, in the crudest terms. ABC was obliged to print his article. In it, he likened efforts to democratize Spain to attempts to get a reformed alcoholic to take a drink. Not only did he reiterate adamantly that the principles of the Movimiento were unchangeable but he also declared that rather than Spain having to adapt to Europe, Europe would do well to imitate Francoism. 23 That liberalization was less likely under this cabinet than its predecessor was confirmed when the new project for political associations was unveiled by Torcuato Fernández Miranda in late May. Associations would not be allowed to press causes ‘outside or against the principles of the Movimiento’.24"

"Madrid soon roused the hostility of Fraga, although Calvo Serer’s connections with the regime protected him for some time. A four-month suspension was the regime’s reply to a celebrated article by Calvo, ostensibly calling for De Gaulle to retire but widely understood to be a hint to the Caudillo. The paper thereafter survived various court cases but its days were numbered. Its pro-Don Juan line was anathema to Carrero Blanco and the technocrats who were committed to building a Francoist monarchy around Juan Carlos. From February 1970 it was made clear that the regime was out to get the paper. During the orchestrated build-up to the Burgos trials, Madrid failed to adopt the required tone of patriotic hysteria. Within a year, the paper was closed on flimsy charges of ‘administrative irregularities’ and Calvo Serer went into exile. He was to be greeted as a great prize by the opposition, especially the Communists who welcomed him for his contacts with Don Juan and because, as a conservative, a Catholic and a monarchist, he could add credibility to their claim to be building the widest front of anti-regime forces. 2"

"In the meanwhile, the task of the opposition had been rendered considerably easier by the waves of revulsion provoked by the Burgos trials held from 3 to 28 December 1970."

"The attitude of the Church gave a tremendous moral boost to the anti-Franco opposition. The clandestine unions and the left parties were already mounting a massive propaganda operation against the regime. Nineteen prominent opposition leaders, including the socialist Enrique Tierno Galván and the Comisiones Obreras lawyer Nicolás Sartorius, were arrested while preparing a public letter of protest against the trials. One hundred lawyers responded to the arrests with a sit-in at the Madrid Palacio de Justicia. Three thousand students and workers clashed with the armed police in Barcelona. The Universities of Madrid and Barcelona were on strike. The regime was unable to comprehend that the Basque cause had enormous sympathy throughout Spain. When the trial opened, it was against a background of street demonstrations organized by ETA and the rest of the left. Barricades went up in many Basque towns and massed battles were fought with the police and Civil Guard. Even official sources admitted that there were 180,000 on strike in Euskadi. 2"

"To draw attention to the plight of the accused, for six of whom the prosecution was demanding death sentences, on 1 December 1970 a section of ETA kidnapped the West German Honorary Consul, Eugen Beihl, in San Sebastián. Before the trials had started a conflict had arisen within ETA between those who thought that the organization should be part of a wide working-class struggle against the dictatorship and those who were more committed to violent ‘military’ or terrorist means and narrowly nationalist ends. Such divisions were to be a constant feature of the history of ETA. Invariably, the more socialist fraction would be expelled and the line of ‘legitimacy’ would be that pursued by the more violent, nationalist section. With age and experience, ETA militants would come to despair of the endless cycle of violence, seeing progress in political methods and links with other leftist groups. A new generation of young and unsophisticated activists would replace them and put their hopes in violence. Accordingly, the Burgos prisoners who belonged to the more socialist ETA-Sexta Asamblea (Sixth Assembly) would move into more conventional politic"

"In the event, Herr Beihl was freed on Christmas Day 1970 before the sentences were announced. This gesture, with its implication that ETA was not frightened of Francoist ‘justice’, infuriated the more reactionary elements within the regime. Curiously, the Beihl kidnapping demonstrated the extraordinary identification between ETA and the Basque people. While being held in a Basque village, almost certainly on the French side of the border, Herr Beihl took advantage of his captors’ carelessness to escape. He was recaptured by villagers and turned over once more to ETA-V. 31"

"The trials began on 3 December. Both the behaviour of the army officers in charge and of the accused made it clear that this was meant to be a judgement on and a punishment of the entire Basque people. By making a collective prosecution, the military lawyers focused world attention on the nationalist aspirations shared, and the Francoist brutality suffered, by all sixteen defendants and many other Basques. The alleged terrorist crimes of some of the defendants received considerably less attention."

"On 6 December, the first of the accused, Jesús Abrisqueta Corta, made his statement. To the astonishment of both public and press, the President of the Tribunal, Colonel Manuel Ordovas, permitted him to give a detailed account of the torture to which he had been subjected by the police. The next three defendants did the same, as well as discussing the oppression of the Basque people by the Francoist state. It is possible that Ordovas’s forbearance reflected a distaste for the repressive function being attributed to the army as well as a readiness to embarrass the police"

"This victory for the ultras heralded the start of a massive counter-offensive by the regime. Since such an operation could be mounted convincingly only by unleashing the ultra masses, it inevitably deepened the cracks within the cabinet. Those members of the regime’s service classes, from police torturers to the lowliest pen-pushers of the syndica bureaucracy, who saw their privileges challenged by the opposition blamed the Opus Dei as much as they did the ‘reds’ and ‘separatists’ who were their direct enemies. On 16 and 17 December, there were enormous pro-Franco demonstrations organized in Burgos and Madrid. Demonstrators were bussed into the capital from rural Castile, given a day’s pay and a packed lunch. Government employees were given the day off to attend. The organization of the day of ‘national affirmation’ was carried out by a hastily assembled committee of regime hard-liners, senior army officers and ex-ministers who had been supplanted by technocrats."

"Carrero Blanco was quick to demonstrate that he was untainted by Opus Dei ‘liberalism’. He was due to speak to the Cortes on 21 December. Flushed with the success of the fascist rally five days earlier, the ultras were prepared to give him a rough ride. Their resentment of his links with the Opus technocrats was shown when they stamped their feet and booed his arrival. However, a virtuoso display of 1940s anti-Communist rhetoric soon brought the procuradores over to Carrero’s side. He presented ETA, the international campaign during the trials and domestic opposition as interlocking parts of a great Communist conspiracy against the regime. He denounced calls for political liberalization as nostalgia for ‘the rancid manifesto of Marx and Engels’. With the Burgos trial judges still deliberating, Carrero took for granted the guilt of the defendants, which delighted his listeners even if it stressed once more the extent to which the entire process was an operation to teach the Basques a lesson. He drew applause by announcing the decision taken seven days earlier to suspend for six months Article 18, habeas corpus, of the Francoist Constitution, El Fuero de los Españoles. 37"

"General Joaquín Fernández de Córdoba. General García Rebull, who, as Captain-General of the Sixth Military Region (Burgos), would be responsible for signing any death sentences, was under great pressure from brother officers to ensure a tough line. In consequence, the six death sentences asked for by the prosecution were confirmed. Three of the accused were found guilty of two capital charges each and were thus sentenced to death twice. It now lay with Franco to implement or commute the sentences. While the ultras howled for blood, the Caudillo was aware that the international and national agitation provoked by the trials would be magnified tenfold by executions. It is likely that West German pressure had determined clemency some weeks before. In addition, the bulk of the cabinet was in favour of pardons. The trial of strength with the Basques at Burgos had been lost. World opinion and the courage of the rest of the Spanish opposition had ensured that. However, the week of fascist demonstrations and what Franco, in his end- of-year message, called the ‘plebiscite’ on 17 December helped save the regime’s face. More crucially, it permitted him to be shrewdly magnanimous and grant pardons from a position of apparent strength. 38 In contrast, his failure to do the same five years later was to be symbolic of the total degeneration of his rule."

"Before the Burgos trials, the tide had been turning against the regime. Worker and student opposition, and even the violent resistance of the Basques, found ecclesiastical support. The fact that, despite economic modernization, the government was forced to rely ever more on repression drove increasing numbers of Francoists into the opposition. The attitude of the Church accelerated this process. After the Burgos trials, the trickle of defectors became steady, although it was not to become a flood until 1974."

"In the short term, the trials had starkly underlined the rivalry between Opus Dei and the ultras. The fact that, when under pressure, Carrero’s reflexes led him to rely on the ultras indicated the way in which the regime’s options were running out. "

"However, the army remained a bastion of reactionary political attitudes. Rodrigo Cifuentes had committed the sin of bringing regime conflicts out into the open. More discreet hard-liners continued to find preferment. Tomás García Rebull was rewarded for his firmness during the trials with promotion to the First Military Region, Madrid. One of the most unwavering military ultras, General Carlos Iniesta Cano, was made Director-General of the Civil Guard. These promotions reflected the extent to which the resurgence of opposition placed the onus for the defence of the regime on to the army. One of the central tasks would be the control of Madrid. The military governor of the capital was General Angel Campano López. He had endeared himself to the ultra camp during the Burgos trial agitation with a much-quoted remark about the need ‘to impose martial law for a week and shoot a hundred thousand’. "

"Just as the continued repression of the working class exposed the emptiness of the syndical law, so too the cabinet’s swing to the right emphasized the meaninglessness of the project for political associations which was still being discussed. After the orgy of extremism unchained in late December 1970, the technocrats had been obliged to re- establish their credibility by being more Francoist than Franco. Carrero Blanco had once more slammed the door on political parties in his speech of 21 December. The cosmetic reform now floating around regime circles would permit a pluralism, within the Movimiento, not of parties but of ‘the legitimate contrasting of opinions’. As Joaquín Ruiz Giménez commented sadly, far from opening the windows of the system, the new project simply dug deeper the internal labyrinths of the Movimiento. José María de Areilza saw it as merely a mask for inmovilismo. Even within the regime, a number of distinguished Francoists began to make public their disappointment at the lack of progress towards political evolution."

"Intelligent Francoists could not help but be alarmed at the blindness of the government. Unable to stop the rising waves of opposition, Carrero simply introduced tougher measures, making more offences, hitherto under civil jurisdiction, subject to military law. Fines and suspensions were imposed upon the press with greater strictness. On 25 June 1971, the country’s most progressive magazine, Triunfo, was suspended for four months and fined 250,000 pesetas. On 25 November, Madrid was closed down. It was further evidence, if any were needed, that the government of neo-Francoist technocrats was incapable of sponsoring any kind of political evolution. 43 "

"In the meanwhile, working class protest was becoming more persistent than ever. Wage rises were well below the rate of inflation. Moreover, the much vaunted growth in GDP simply hid the reality of working-class social conditions...Strikes became more bitterly contested and solidarity actions in response to police brutality raised Communist hopes of a general strike."

"Many employers were increasingly disturbed by the way in which labour disputes were aggravated by government intervention. In the more advanced industrial regions, Madrid, Barcelona and the Basque Country, they were coming to see the regime’s repressive mechanisms as a positive obstacle to workable labour relations. Many of them were by-passing the official syndical structures and negotiating directly with representatives of the clandestine unions."

"The inflexibility of the regime was giving substance to the Communist Party strategy of the so-called Pact for Liberty, particularly in Catalonia. During 1971, a series of preparatory meetings had been held by delegates of all the principal Catalan opposition forces, the Communist Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, many socialist groups, the Comisiones Obreras, liberal monarchists, Catholics, professional organizations and women’s groups. On 7 November, about 300 delegates gathered secretly in Barcelona for the first Assemblea de Catalunya, inspired in part by the experience of the previous year in Montserrat. The most remarkable feature of the Assemblea and its programme for political amnesty and liberty was the width of the political spectrum that it spanned. The signatories included several prominent members of the Catalan industrial and banking bourgeoisie. It was rumoured that the Assemblea had received a telegram of solidarity from a Catalan bishop. 47 There could hardly have been stronger evidence of the fact that, in the face of the retrogression of the regime, influential sectors of Spain’s economic oligarchies were making alternative arrangements for their own survival. The example of the Assemblea was soon to be followed elsewhere, especially in Madrid and Seville."

"It does not seem to have occurred to the Carrero Blanco cabinet that its hard line was merely serving to widen the opposition. Moreover, it could devise no more creative response to dissent than to acquiesce in ever greater violence. Throughout 1971 and thereafter, numerous neo-fascist terrorist squads made their appearance and began to carry out violence against all those who could be considered the enemies of the regime. Gelling around the magazine Fuerza Nueva and its editor, Blas Piñar, who was a friend of Carrero, groups like the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey, the neo-Nazi Partido Español Nacional-Socialista, the Comandos de Lucha Antimarxista and many others carried out assaults on workers, priests and intellectuals."

"Some of the more unimaginative supporters of the regime who had lived well off it for so long now recognized that society was changing beyond the capacity of institutionalized Francoism to contain it. Accordingly, to protect their privileges, and those of their masters, they were trying to terrorize the clock back."

"The lesson of Burgos and the great popular mobilizations which it had provoked was that ETA must unite the nationalist and labour struggles"

"In those days before its murderous post-1975 degeneration, ETA was admired by some sections of the left both in Spain and abroad as an efficacious instrument of opposition against the dictatorship. Now, in addition to its regular activities of stealing money, explosives and printing equipment and attacking the security forces, ETA began to assault the local headquarters of the vertical syndicates"

"the real significance of the kidnapping of Huarte lay in its long-term impact on ETA itself. Huarte was one of Spain’s more progressive industrialists. Like others of his kind, he had begun to by-pass the official Sindicatos and to negotiate directly with the Comisiones Obreras. For this reason, the chorus of protest at the kidnapping was broken by a discordant voice from within the Movimiento. In a demagogic attack on Huarte, Emilio Romero wrote in the daily linked to the Sindicatos, Pueblo, that if the company would pay up under threat of violence it should have done so in normal negotiations through the syndical mechanism. Romero’s article reflected the anguish of Falangists that economic and social changes were rendering the Movimiento and the Sindicatos increasingly irrelevant. However, the polemic which ensued with the more establishment-orientated evening newspaper Informaciones alerted the theorists of ETA to the possibilities of divisions within the Francoist clans.

Hitherto, the strategy of ETA, postulated on the assumption that Francoism was a monolithic block, tended to see armed struggle in relatively crude terms. The traditional ETA view, like that of the nineteenth-century Russian terrorist, Nechayev, favoured a dynamic of action-repression-action whereby violence against servants of the state would provoke a level of repression which would mobilize popular militancy against the regime. In the 1970s, however, a determination to link up with the labour movement had led to armed struggle being seen as something which would come into operation after strikes had reached deadlock. This had been the case with the kidnapping of Lorenzo Zabala. In 1973, the repercussions to the Huarte case led ETA’s theorists to see the contradictions between the interests of the Francoists of the syndical and repressive apparatuses and those of the advanced sectors of the economic oligarchy. This point had been perceived fifteen years earlier by the Communist theorist, Fernando Claudín, an insight which had led to his expulsion from the PCE. In fact, neither then nor subsequently was ETA, with its rapid turnover of militants, notable for theoretical sophistication. None the less, it was decided to concentrate on actions which would accentuate the divisions within Francoism. To this end, plans began for the kidnapping of the Vice-President, Carrero Blanco. 50"

"Perhaps inevitably, ETA activities were not received with universal acclaim by the left in the rest of Spain. Both the Comisiones Obreras and the Socialist UGT preferred to build up working-class strength by gradual development of mass solidarity rather than by violence. Central to the action-repression-action cycle of ETA’s plans were the blanket reprisals which hit the left and the working class in general...The most effective blow struck against ETA was the killing in Algorta on 19 April 1973 of Eustakio Mendizabal, ‘Txikia’, perhaps the one leader capable of holding together its military and labour fronts. His death allowed the tensions within the movement to come to the surface. Within eighteen months, the workers’ front would split off, leaving ETA more committed than ever to armed violence. 51"

"The Carrero Blanco-López Rodó scheme of neo-Francoist continuismo had found no solution, other than a hardening of official oppressive violence and a furtive reliance on ultra-rightist terrorism, to the profound social and political unrest that it had inherited. The consequences of this failure were, broadly speaking, twofold: the intensification of divisions within the regime forces and the clarification of options within the opposition. The steady build-up of strikes and their extension as repression provoked solidarity actions were confirming the Communist Party in its view that the transition from dictatorship to democracy would be carried out by a combination of the Pact for Liberty and a national general strike. With the regime brought to its knees by the strike, the forces united by the Pact would establish a provisional government and then call constituent elections. 55 The Partido Socialista Obrero Español was less specific, and certainly less triunfalista, about how it proposed to conquer democracy. After years of impotence, the PSOE was experiencing a process of revival. Its XII Congress in exile, held in Toulouse from 13 to 15 August 1972, had seen the emergence of an influential group of militants, led by Felipe González from Seville and Nicolás Redondo from Bilbao, who supplanted the obsolete exiled leadership. Their main concerns were with rebuilding the PSOE. Their project for overthrowing Franco was vague but not unsimilar to that of the PCE, which after all resembled the scenario by which the PSOE had come to power in 1931. The Socialists too were sure that the working class would be in the forefront of the battle and that the PSOE’s political task was to seek unity with other opposition forces. 56 Groups to the left of the PCE, most of them relatively small, had roughly similar programmes for the replacement of the dictatorship"

"For Carrero Blanco, evolution meant at most political associations. Franco’s 1972 end- of-year message spoke of the ‘legitimacy of the disparity of ideas and tendencies’. On 1 March 1973, Carrero addressed the Movimiento’s consultative assembly, the Consejo Nacional, and proposed measures which were to increase the participation of the Spanish people in political life. However, what he was proposing amounted to little more than a three-group associationism, as always within the Movimiento, to consist of a Falangist right, a technocratic centre and a conservative Christian Democrat ‘left’. A political spectrum consisting of Girón, López Rodó and Federico Silva Muñoz, who had been Minister of Public Works until 1970, was hardly a revolutionary prospect. However, for hard-liners like Bias Piñar or General Carlos Iniesta Cano, such liberalizing talk was responsible for the break-up of the country’s social and political stability. In early April Holding back the tide: the Carrero Blanco years 35

there were solidarity strikes all over Catalonia after a striker was killed by the police in San Adrián de Besós. 58 The ultra-right was determined that the rot must be stopped. Their opportunity came on 1 May. During the traditional working-class demonstrations in Madrid, a secret police inspector, Juan Antonio Fernández Gutiérrez, was stabbed to death by a member of the ultra-leftist FRAP. Two other secret policemen were also wounded. It was rumoured that the stabbing had been an act of revenge for the death of the striker. Years later, it was revealed that FRAP was riddled with police agents provocateurs. At the time, the incident provided the perfect excuse for a massive offensive by the hard-liners of the regime. There were mass arrests and leftists were tortured. However, the most significant events began with the funeral of Fernández Gutiérrez. The cortège was led by General Iniesta. Members of the police demonstrated in demand of repressive measures while 3000 Falangist war veterans screamed for vengeance. Their placards praised the neo-Nazi ultras and called for the shooting of red archbishops’. Effectively, a police mutiny in the presence of Carrero Blanco was being tolerated, a clear indication that the tide was running in favour of the ultras. The entourage at El Pardo easily managed to convince Franco that the government had failed in its task of keeping order"

"On 8 June, Carrero was promoted to President of the Council of Ministers and on the 11th announced the formation of a cabinet which finally brought down the curtain on liberalization....The Falange was back with a vengeance...There were significant concessions to the ultras in the appointments of Carlos Arias Navarro...If the ‘monocolor’ cabinet had been grey, its successor sported the blue of the Falange. 59 Everything about the new government suggested the preparation of a holding operation to cover the succession. Madrid wags called it ‘the funeral cabinet’. It was a team fitted to stifle reform and crush opposition. On the sinking ship of Francoism, the crew could think of no better tactic than to put on diving suits."

"Franco’s much quoted remark that everything was ‘well tied down’ (atado y bien atado) could hardly have been more misplaced. After a short respite during the summer, the working class was as militant as ever. In November, the government introduced a series of stabilizing measures in response to rampant inflation. Almost immediately there were major strikes in Catalonia, the Asturian mines and the Basque steel industry as well as in less traditionally conflictive areas. Since workers needed two jobs or long overtime in order to give their families a reasonable standard of living, social conflict was the greatest problem faced by the Carrero government. The energy crisis was on the horizon and, for a country as dependent on imported energy as Spain was, recession was inevitable and with it further labour problems. The only response of which the cabinet was capable was renewed repression. That much was made clear by the preparation of the proceso 1.001, a show trial of ten members of the Comisiones Obreras charged with illegal association. It was to be a public demonstration of the cabinet’s determination to crush the underground unions, a kind of Burgos trial of the workers. 60

In the event, the trial was held in an atmosphere of terror with the accused and the lawyers being threatened with lynching by hysterical rightist mobs surrounding the Palace of Justice. 61 This was the first consequence of the fact that, fifteen minutes before the proceedings were due to open, Carrero Blanco was assassinated by an ETA comando. A bomb placed under the street blew his car right over the Church that he had just attended. The earlier scheme to kidnap Carrero had been dropped when he became Prime Minister and subject to more thorough security measures than before. 62 The assassination had been timed to coincide with the beginning of the 1.001 trial in order to boost the morale of the workers by demonstrating the vulnerability of their enemies. However, in line with the theoretical discussions which had followed the kidnapping of Huarte, it was also hoped that the murder of Carrero Blanco would affect the internal politics of the regime. The calculation was that the regime would either swing to the right and therefore be even further isolated from the people or else begin a process of apertura which would provoke the rage of the ultras. It was a blow calculated to smash Franco’s plans for the continuation of his regime."

"One crumb of comfort for the continuistas was the relatively smooth way in which the regime’s constitutional mechanisms functioned in overcoming the problems of administrative continuity and general confidence...There was posturing and threatening behaviour by ultra- rightists sufficient to convince many on the left, wrongly as it happened, that a night of the long knives was imminent."

"The most disturbing incident came about as a result of the emotional reaction to the assassination shown by General Carlos Iniesta Cano, the Director-General of the Civil Guard. Iniesta, a close friend of José Antonio Girón de Velasco and one of the more extreme military ultras, issued an order to his local commanders to shoot subversives and demonstrators. However, the most senior military minister Admiral Gabriel Pita da Veiga, the interim Prime Minister, Torcuato Fernández Miranda and the Minister of the Interior, Carlos Arias Navarro, backed up by the head of Carrero’s private intelligence service, Lieutenant-Colonel José Ignacio San Martín, acted together to prevent a bloodbath. Iniesta was forced to rescind his telegram and placed briefly under house arrest. The leader of Fuerza Nueva, Bias Piñar López, was ordered to keep his men under control When he tried to harangue a crowd at the scene of the crime, a police helicopter hovered above drowning his speech. The American Ambassador and leaders of the moderate opposition were informed that the situation was under control. Two of Carrero’s ministers, Julio Rodríguez (Education) and José Utrera Molina (Housing) presented themselves in an emotional state at the office of the chief of the Madrid police, Colonel Federico Quintero Morente, and offered to join a revenge squad to seek out and kill the assassins. 66"

"The clash between prudent and irresponsibly reactionary elements over the Iniesta incident was repeated in the scramble to find a successor to Carrero. The logical choice seemed to be the interim Prime Minister, Torcuato Fernández Miranda,"

"Franco made a decision which, perhaps for the first time in his dictatorship, was not his own and appointed Carlos Arias Navarro. 67 This was further indication that the disintegration of the regime anticipated by ETA had already begun"

"As well as being a close friend of the Franco family, there was ample reason for Arias to be an acceptable candidate as far as the bunker was concerned. He had been nominated by the Barcelona daily La Vanguardia as the hardest man in Carrero’s cabinet. An expert in questions of internal security, he had been a long-serving Director-General of Security under the hard-line General Camilo Alonso Vega. During his six months as Minister of the Interior, there had been major offensives against ETA, with nine militants shot, against the PCE, with several regional networks broken up, and against the Comisiones Obreras. 68 However, lingering doubts about Carrero’s death remained. After all, Arias was the minister ultimately responsible for the astonishing security failures at the time."

"In any case, his previous track record as a prosecutor during the Civil War, as a provincial governor active in the repression of the 1940s guerrilla and as a policeman was enough to reassure the Francoist élite that there would be an iron fist to deal with any threats to the established order. He kept on eight of Carrero’s ministers in his new cabinet and added, or reintroduced, a number of tough Falangist bureaucrats. The team announced on 3 January 1974 could not have been more backward-looking. 70 To outside observers, it seemed that Arias constituted the swing to the right anticipated by ETA. However, all was not entirely as it seemed."

Chapter 3: A necessary evil: the Arias Navarro experience 1974–6