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

"It would be wrong to see the assassination of Carrero Blanco as itself provoking the final crisis of the Franco regime. After all, the problems which were to be central to that crisis—labour militancy, Basque terrorism and divisions among the Francoist families— had been present when Franco first promoted Carrero from Under-Secretary to the Presidency to Vice-President of the Council of Ministers in September 1967...During the period of Carrero Blanco’s pre-eminence, it was almost inevitable that existing rivalries within the Francoist camp would sharpen as domestic and international pressures caused various groups to reconsider their political options. Carrero’s mission had been to stop this happening by clamping down on the opposition and by permitting the most minimal apertura. It was in this sense that Carrero Blanco was to have acted as a bridge between hard-liners and progressives within the regime. "

"Arias Navarro had been picked by Franco, and was favoured by the ultras, as a man capable of continuing Carrero Blanco’s holding operation. There was little about his new cabinet to disconcert either the Caudillo or his old guard. The inclusion of three vice- presidents—the Ministers of the Interior, Finance and Labour—indicated that the government’s main preoccupations would be the closely linked issues of public order, inflation and working-class unrest...The combination of uncontrolled inflation and a wage freeze had explosive political implications. 1 Spain’s almost total energy dependence made her especially vulnerable to the sharp contemporary rises in crude oil prices. 2 Moreover, two of her main sources of foreign currency, tourism and remittances from emigrant workers, were about to be dramatically diminished by the impact of the energy crisis on northern Europe."

"Antonio Carro’s influence lay behind the fact that Arias introduced into the secondary level of his government members of the Tácito group as under-secretaries. Within the Francoist civil service, many of the best-educated and talented functionaries belonged to Tácito. They were conservative Christian Democrats committed to peaceful reform of the system from within. Closely linked to the Catholic pressure group, the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas, they derived their collective identity from newspaper articles signed by ‘Tácito’. Written sometimes by individuals and other times by a team, these influential articles advocating legal reform were published from 1972 in the Catholic daily, Ya. Their most prominent representatives within the new government were Marcelino Oreja Aguirre, Under-Secretary of Information, and Landelino Lavilla, Under-Secretary of Industry. With immensely powerful ramifications in the banking and industrial world, and as faithful interpreters of the policies of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the ACNP and the Tácitos constituted a pressure group that Arias would find hard to ignore. 7

Throughout 1974, Arias walked a tight-rope between the wishes of the reformists and those of the bunker while all the time the problems of opposition pressure, labour militancy and terrorism grew unchecked. The leading Tácito, Alfonso Osorio García, made it clear to Arias that the backing of his group would be available for a cabinet committed to change. That this was not an offer to be disdained was shown by an extension of Tácitos public activities to include political dinners and public lectures which encompassed a remarkably wide and influential section of the economic, social and political establishments. On the other hand, there was the bunker, with its ready access to Franco and with whom Arias Navarro sympathized. On balance, however, the Prime Minister decided to go against his own inclinations and with the Christian Democrat reformists. Thus, Carro Martínez and the Tácitos helped Arias produce his first, surprisingly liberal, declarations of intent. 8

The celebrated speech of 12 February 1974 put forward a programme for a controlled opening-up of the system, an apertura. The so-called ‘spirit of 12 February’ proposed wider political participation albeit within the limits of the strictest Francoist order. A restricted reform provided for the election, as opposed to the government appointment, of mayors and local officials. There was to be an increase from 17 per cent to 35 per cent of the total in the number of the deputies in the Cortes not simply appointed (nombrados a dedo) but elected through the strictly limited suffrage of the Sindicatos or of ‘heads of families’. The vertical syndicates were promised greater bargaining power. Political associations, but not political parties, were promised. Praise for Franco was followed by the astonishing statement that the responsibility for political innovation could no longer lie only on the Caudillo’s shoulders. 9 However, the rigid commitment to Francoist thinking and the loudly expressed determination to stamp out ‘subversion’ ensured that reform as conceived by Arias amounted to little of real substance. Moreover, in the following two years, even that was to be whittled down to nothing by the bunker. Yet, it still remained the most liberal declaration ever made by a minister of Franco. The opposition remained unimpressed, believing that reformist speeches or the promotion of individuals from Tácito was merely a façade.

At first, however, some credibility was given to the ‘spirit of 12 February’ by the less repressive approach to the press and publishers adopted by Pío Cabanillas at the Ministry of Information. That, together with a widening of toleration for the most moderate sections of the opposition, gave rise to some optimism. In fact, Arias’s rule was to oscillate between these tantalizing promises of liberalization and the most violent repression. The Tácitos may have brought Arias to open his eyes to the growing power of the opposition and to acknowledge that, if they were to survive, reform had to be attempted. Nevertheless, he continued to react to social unrest with unflinching harshness. In part instinctive, this was also a reflection of the success that the bunker had in triggering the reflex reactions of the dying dictator. As long as the Caudillo lived, the old guard was still powerful and could mobilize him against reform. This was done by the simple device of assembling dossiers about the descent into pornography and disorder allegedly brought about by liberal weakness."

"Within two weeks of the 12 February speech, Arias felt himself obliged to prove that the new spirit would not prevent his defending fundamental Francoist values. After the death of Carrero Blanco, the conciliatory gestures of Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón paved the way for a short-lived truce between the regime and the Church.10 After a visit from the Primate in mid-January, Arias had spoken of a new understanding between Church and State. A delegation had been dispatched to the Vatican in an attempt to improve relations. Difficulties hinged above all on the continued imprisonment in Zamora of clergy associated with the regionalist and working-class organizations. The 'betrayal’ of the regime by left-wing priests drove the ultras to paroxysms of fury and El Alcázar had even urged its readers to use violence to make the Church hierarchy mend its ways. 11 The rage of the ultras derived in part from the high number of Basques among the offending clergy. Indeed, the traditionally close relationship between the Basque clergy and their flock ensured that they could not stay aloof from the problems arising from ETA’s war against the regime. Thus, the bishopric of Bilbao found itself in the front line of the conflict between Church and State.12

Tension came to a head on 24 February 1974. Monsignor Antonio Añoveros Ataún, the Bishop of Bilbao, authorized the issue of four homilies drawn up by the Pastoral Commission of his diocese which quoted the words of Pope John XXIII, ‘everything that is done to repress the vitality of ethnic minorities seriously violates the requisites of justice’. The texts, which were photocopied and widely distributed, ended with an appeal for the Basque people, and other national minorities in Spain, to be allowed to conserve their separate identities ‘within a socio-political structure which would recognize their right to do so’. Although not a Basque, Añoveros was a convinced social Catholic, as his activities as Bishop of Cadiz had shown. Now he believed himself to be acting within the ‘spirit of 12 February’ and was in fact its first test. However, in the aftermath of the assassination of Carrero Blanco by ETA, this moderate defence of Basque aspirations was more than the extreme right would tolerate. The ultra press denounced the pastoral as a subversive attack on national unity and Arias, always something of an anti-clerical,13 bowed to the pressure. The Minister of the Interior, José García Hernández, placed both Añoveros and his Vicar-General, Monsignor José Angel Ubieta López, under house arrest. Any remaining hopes of reconciliation were dashed when a clumsy effort was made to expel Añoveros to Lisbon or Rome.

The Bishop refused to leave, saying that he could do so only on direct orders from the Pope. He pointed out that forcible expulsion would be a violation of the Concordat and would involve the excommunication of any Catholic who laid hands on him. The Bishops’ Conference, meeting in Madrid under the presidency of Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón, confirmed this and gave whole-hearted support to Añoveros. Pope Paul VI, who had long regarded the Franco regime with distaste, also backed the Bishop. The affair attracted immense publicity both inside and outside Spain and became a source of profound embarrassment to the Spanish government. Newspaper editors who printed extracts from the homily were called before the Tribunal de Orden Público. There was a heated confrontation in the cabinet between Pío Cabanillas, Antonio Barrera de Irimo and Antonio Carro on the one hand, and Arias and his dour entourage on the other. Eventually, Franco himself took a hand. Desperate not to see the destruction of the Concordat, which was one of his greatest early triumphs, the Caudillo obliged Arias to back down. While the ultra press raged because Monsignor Añoveros arrived in Madrid for consultations with Tarancón wearing a Basque beret and Blas Piñar harangued crowds of his followers with denunciations of the clerical corrupters of the regime, the Prime Minister was making a humiliating retreat. By that time, relations with the Vatican had been brought to the brink of total breakdown and Arias had succeeded in accelerating the Church’s withdrawal from the orbit of the regime’s forces. 14

This blow to the credibility of the ‘spirit of 12 February’ was compounded almost immediately by further proof that Franco and the bunker were in no mood to make any more concessions that might be interpreted as weakness."

"The fact that forty-five years of authoritarianism could disappear overnight in Portugal came as a profound shock to the Spanish bunker and as a great morale booster to the opposition. The fact that the poor relation could manage democracy could only intensify demands for change in Spain. Aware that the progressive elements within the regime would be impelled to hasten their plans for reform and that waverers would go over to the reformist camp, the ultras reacted swiftly. José Antonio Girón de Velasco, in cahoots with Antonio Izquierdo Feriguela, editor of the Movimiento’s official newspaper, Arriba, launched a bitter attack on the liberals within the government. The so- called Gironazo of 28 April reflected the ultras’ fear of the impact of external events on ordinary Spaniards through the partially liberalized media. ‘We live in difficult times’, wrote Girón, ‘but we will not be defeated by the confusion orchestrated within Spain and from abroad.’ The Tácitos and the reformist ministers were denounced as ‘false liberals infiltrated into the administration and the high offices of State’. A few weeks later, at a pre-publication promotion of a book of Carrero Blanco’s speeches, Blas Piñar took up the theme. Condemning the ‘abject freedom of the press’, he described Spanish political life as being under the sway of ‘dwarves, cowards and the spoilt brats of the regime’. Declaring war on Arias’s apertura as ‘an opening to subversion’, Piñar announced that ‘the hour of caudillos and warriors has struck’. 17

Implicit in the words of both Girón and Bias Piñar was the threat that, in the last resort, whatever the growing impetus of reformism, the bunker could always appeal to the armed forces. That was broadly true although the military was perhaps not quite as monolithically ultra-rightist as Girón might have supposed from his friendships with reactionary Generals like Iniesta Cano or García Rebull. On the same day as the Gironazo, General García Rebull stated in Nuevo Diario that he viewed ‘parties as the opium of the people’ and politicians as ‘vampires’. Behind the scenes, however, ultra generals were not entirely confident that they could control events. Fearing that the liberals in the cabinet were paralleled by open-minded Generals like Díez Alegría, they began to conspire to consolidate their power. Iniesta Cano had been smarting ever since his rebuff by Arias over the belligerent telegram that he had sent to Civil Guard units during the aftermath of the Carrero assassination. In collusion with a number of retired Generals, including García Rebull, and the Captains-General of Valladolid, Pedro Merry Gordón, and of Madrid, Angel Campano López, Iniesta planned to avoid his own imminent retirement and instead to replace Díez Alegría in the key post of Chief of the General Staff. Campano was to take over from Iniesta as head of the Civil Guard and there was to be a purge of officers suspected of liberalism."

"The fortress of Francoism was shakier than it had been for nearly thirty years. When Franco fell ill with phlebitis and was taken to hospital on 9 July, hopes of real change flared...The main consequence of Franco’s illness was its boost to the morale of the opposition. At last there was evidence that Franco would die soon. Coming so soon after the Portuguese revolution, it accelerated the movement towards unity on the left. The Communist Party’s policy of the ‘Pact for Liberty’ had had its first major success with the foundation in November 1971 of the Assemblea de Catalunya. The Assembly movement included a wide range of left-wing parties, of which the most important was the Catalan Communist Party PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya); a number of working-class organizations of which the Comisiones Obreras was the most dominant; and a broad span of legal associations.

...When Franco’s illness was announced, Santiago Carrillo had tried to force the pace by launching, in Paris on 30 July 1974, the Junta Democrática...The rest of the Junta’s programme called for a take-over of power by a provisional government; a total political amnesty; the legalization of all political parties; trade union freedom and the return to the unions of the property seized from them after the Civil War; the freedom to strike, to meet and to demonstrate pacifically; freedom of speech, of the press and the media; independence of the judiciary; the political neutrality of the armed forces; regional autonomy; the separation of Church and State; free elections within eighteen months of the establishment of the provisional government; and membership of the EEC. Despite the ultimate non-participation of crucial individuals and groups such as the Christian Democrat fractions or the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the Junta and its programme of ruptura democrática remained a very considerable publicity coup for the Communists. Opposition circles in Madrid and Barcelona buzzed with excitement and the bunker’s sense of being beleaguered reached panic proportions. 26"

"Meanwhile, after years of lethargy, the PSOE was undergoing a process of revitalization. The weary exiled leadership of Rodolfo Llopis had for years been locked in a tense rivalry with Enrique Tierno Galván’s tiny Socialist Party of the Interior (later to become the Partido Socialista Popular) and with a Madrid-based section of the PSOE led by Pablo Castellano and Luis Gómez Llorente. All three were now being elbowed aside by a dynamic alliance of Enrique Múgica and Nicolás Redondo from Bilbao and Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra from Seville. The leadership of Felipe González was confirmed at the XIII Congress-in-exile of the PSOE held at Suresnes near Paris in mid- October 1974. At this stage, the PSOE leadership had a more realistic sense than did the PCE of the possibilities for a ruptura with the past. Aware that violent overthrow of Francoism was impossible, González and his companions were coming to the reluctant conclusion that some kind of negotiation with regime reformists would probably be necessary. This was one of the reasons for the PSOE’s not joining the Junta Democrática. For such negotiations to have a chance of success, the PSOE would need to have avoided taking up a position on the dynastic issue of Juan Carlos versus Don Juan. Accordingly, by steering clear of Carrillo, Calvo Serer and the Junta, Felipe González was ensuring that he would be neither used by the Communists nor embroiled in conspiracy with Estoril. 27

Also in the autumn of 1974, as a challenge to Arias’s law of associations, a new timidly left-of-centre political party was announced. Known as the USDE (Unión Social- Demócrata Española), it was the brain-child of the one-time Falangist but widely respected opponent of the regime, Dionisio Ridruejo, and of the economist, Antonio García López. 28 The USDE, like the PSOE, did not become part of the Junta Democrática, despite the efforts of García Trevijano and the Communists to persuade Ridruejo to join them. None the less, the Junta’s success as a publicity coup galvanized the PSOE, along with the USDE and Ruiz Giménez’s Christian Democrats, into greater efforts to organize their own anti-Francoist front.

The Communists entertained hopes that a Junta-inspired nationwide strike would bring down Francoism and lead to the establishment of a provisional government, rather along the lines of the transition from the Primo de Rivera dictatorship to the Second Republic in 1931. Their optimism was misplaced, albeit understandable in the absence of other historical models. None the less, the resurgence of leftist confidence confirmed the bunker in its belief in the necessity of last-ditch defensive tactics."

"The political backlash of the Rolando bomb followed quickly. It began with an assault on Arias by Bias Piñar in the pages of Fuerza Nueva. The entire cover of the issue of 26 September was taken up with the words ‘Everything has a limit’. Bias Piñar’s editorial dissociated his movement from Arias on the grounds that his reforms were sowing ‘fields of corpses’. Then, the ultras at El Pardo, led by the Marqués de Villaverde, went into action. Two Movimiento newspaper editors, Antonio Izquierdo of Arriba and Emilio Romero of Pueblo, prepared a dossier for Franco allegedly revealing the scale of ‘pornography’ permitted by the Ministry of Information. Advertisements for camping furniture featuring women in bikinis were inter-collated with clippings from Playboy, which remained illegal in Spain, in such a way as to scandalize the puritanical dictator. He was easily convinced that the Minister of Information was opening up Spain to a deadly combination of Marxist and erotic subversion.

Franco was even more irritated by evidence in the dossier to the effect that Pío Cabanillas was permitting the press to air the ‘oil of Redondela’ scandal in which his brother, Nicolás, was implicated. A company specializing in the refining and warehousing of vegetable oils, REACE, in which Nicolás Franco had substantial interests, had apparently for some years been speculating with its clients’ oil. In 1972, over four million kilos of olive oil were discovered to be missing. In the course of the police investigation, numerous witnesses ‘lost their memories’ and six died in mysterious circumstances. Nicolás Franco’s name had been assiduously kept out of the proceedings. The case finally came to trial in Pontevedra on 21 October 1974 and was avidly covered by the press. José María Gil Robles, acting as lawyer for one of the accused, skilfully brought out the links with the Caudillo’s brother. When Arias next spoke to Franco, he was told that Pío Cabanillas must be dismissed. The departure of the Minister of Information on 29 October seemed to be the beginning of a series of triumphs for the bunker. On the same day, the anniversary of the foundation of the Falange, the Consejo Nacional del Movimiento had been addressed by Francisco Labadié Otermín in the presence of the Caudillo himself. His declaration that the Nationalist victory in the Civil War would be ‘defended tooth and nail’ brought the ritual chants of ‘¡Franco! ¡Franco! ¡Franco!’. In the meanwhile, police round-ups of leftists and striking workers continued at a steady pace. 30

In fact, the ultras’ triumph merely exposed as never before the internal crisis of the regime. With the stock market dropping, it confirmed the views of many reformists and brought many ditherers into their camp. The exposure of the regime’s bankruptcy led to a wave of significant resignations. One of the most important was that of the Minister of Finance, Antonio Barrera de Irimo, whose business links made him an excellent barometer of opinion within the Spanish and multinational industrial élite. Other resignations came from rising figures who would later be ministers under Juan Carlos. Francisco Fernández Ordóñez abandoned the presidency of the government holding corporation INI, the Instituto Nacional de Industria. Juan José Rosón resigned as Director-General of RTVE. Pío Cabanillas’s Under-Secretary, Marcelino Oreja, led a protest resignation by numerous highly placed functionaries belonging to the Tácito group. Their joint verdict on Arias’s 12 February reform project, ‘a political line died yesterday’, emphasized the Prime Minister’s isolation. 31

The crisis had left the bunker far from content and efforts to mobilize its forces more effectively had resulted in the establishment of a massive organization of nationalist Civil War veterans (Confederación Nacional de Ex-Combatientes) under the leadership of José Antonio Girón de Velasco. As if to emphasize the extent to which events were running away from Arias’s control, the police, apparently without his authorization, arrested the leaders of the moderate opposition at the end of November. They were meeting at the Madrid offices of Antonio García López of the USDE to discuss the establishment of a rival front to the Junta Democrática. The incident caused an international scandal akin to that provoked by the Añoveros case. Among those arrested were Felipe González, García López, Dionisio Ridruejo and several Christian Democrats. Joaquín Ruiz Giménez, who had left the meeting before the police arrived, presented himself for arrest at the Dirección General de Seguridad. After a few days, they were released. 32 By then, Arias Navarro’s position had deteriorated even further."

"In the course of 1974, there had been virtually open meetings between prominent industrialists and financiers on the one hand and members of the moderate opposition on the other. "

"The democratic ferment had reached even into the armed forces. In his new year message, the Minister for the Army, General Francisco Coloma Gallegos, spoke of the need to avoid dissension in the ranks. Behind his cryptic remarks was knowledge of the fact that, in the course of 1974, military intelligence services had discovered the existence of clandestine assemblies of young officers which seemed potentially comparable to those who had organized the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement. The officers concerned were politically unaligned. However, the reaction of the military authorities was to treat them as if they were part of the Communist Party’s efforts to infiltrate the forces with democratic juntas. The intelligence services stepped up their vigilance in order to expose the full ramifications of the dissident officers’ activities. Within days of Coloma Gallegos’s speech, they published their manifesto under the title of the Unión Militar Democrática. Never very large, the UMD caused panic because of the Portuguese example. The first arrests, of Major Julio Busquets Bragulat, Spain’s foremost military sociologist, and of Captain José Júlvez, occurred in February 1975. Not until the summer did the intelligence services accumulate sufficient information to permit sweeping arrests of UMD leaders. 36"

"While Herrero’s death put an end to progress with associations, it opened the way to the emergence of the man who was to preside over the transition period, Adolfo Suárez González. Having become Herrero Tejedor’s secretary in the mid-1950s, Suárez had risen on his coat-tails to become an archetypal Movimiento bureaucrat. Driven by a powerful ambition, Suárez joined the Opus Dei and made friends with important regime figures during the period of the early 1960s when Herrero was Vice-Secretary-General of the Movimiento under Solís. Thereafter, by carefully cultivating the then Minister of the Interior, General Camilo Alonso Vega, he became civil governor of Segovia in 1968. As he neared the top, Suárez used his friendship with Herrero Tejedor both to attract the attention of Franco and to become friendly with Prince Juan Carlos.

Suárez was made Director-General of Spanish Television, RTVE, in 1969 at the suggestion of Carrero Blanco who had, in turn, been given his name by Juan Carlos. He used his control of the media to promote Juan Carlos who at that time was the subject of popular jokes portraying him as Franco’s puppet. He also worked to foster the image of ministers with whom he wanted to curry favour. In his period in television, he began to build a reputation as a man who enjoyed a special relationship with the army. He established a close friendship with Andrés Casinello Pérez, second-in-command of Carrero Blanco’s intelligence service, and ingratiated himself with senior generals by making television time available to them and by sending flowers to their wives. In consequence, when he became Vice-Secretary-General of the Movimiento himself in February 1975, the Minister Secretary-General, Herrero Tejedor, had asked him to prepare a report on the armed forces and their attitudes to political change. He made use of the undertaking to consolidate his links with senior officers and with the Prince, who was impressed by the report and its conclusion that the army would acquiesce in a mild political reform. 40

On the death of his protector, Suárez resigned as Vice-Secretary to take over Herrero’s political association, the Unión del Pueblo Español, his inexorable rise apparently cut short. In fact, the trend was such as to suggest that Herrero Tejedor himself would have been overtaken by events. Increasing numbers of once unshakeable Francoists were preparing their future by admitting to a conviction that some kind of change was inevitable. One right-wing commentator, Luis María Ansón, wrote maliciously: ‘the rats are leaving the regime’s ship…. The cowardice of the Spanish ruling class is truly suffocating…. Already it has reached the beginnings of the sauve qui peut, of the unconditional surrender.’ However, the same commentator named Suárez politician of the month in the magazine Blanco y Negro on 2 July. At that time, Ansón was one of the few political observers to see Suárez as a possible figure in a future aperturista reform. Yet, given that Juan Carlos had been obliged by Franco to swear fidelity to the principles of the Movimiento, it was clear that, to avoid bloodshed, attempts at real change would have to be carried out by someone who knew how to manipulate the structure of the regime. The most appropriate person, in terms of knowledge of the constitutional system, would be Torcuato Fernández Miranda. However, Suárez’s dynamic and youthful image, and his experience of all levels of the Movimiento, fitted him for the part too. 41 In any case, in early 1975, their plans went no further than remodelling the Francoist structure. It was to be the sheer weight of working-class, regionalist, student and opposition pressure over the next eighteen months which was to force them to contemplate democratic change.

Suárez was certainly still unaware that he might play any such role. On the contrary, he was involved with Solís and Emilio Romero in pushing the Unión del Pueblo Español as the continuista option within the arena of political associations. The UDPE would be able to mobilize the entire press and radio network of the Movimiento. There was every likelihood that such an enterprise would swamp the more reformist associations being planned by Fraga, Pío Cabanillas, Federico Silva Muñoz, José María de Areilza, Francisco Fernández Ordóñez and the Tácitos. When they realized that the UDPE was likely to be as all-embracing as the Movimiento itself, they pulled out of the associations project, forming instead private companies, FEDISA and GODSA, for the study of political options for the future. Without such representatives of ‘respectable’ Francoism, the whole associations project was left in ruins. However, one of the more senior and conservative Tácitos, Alfonso Osorio, continued with attempts to create a reformist association, the Union Democrática Española, with Federico Silva. The personnel that Osorio gathered together were later to play a significant part in the creation of Adolfo Suárez’s UCD. 42"

"The last spasm of Francoism so besmirched Spain’s international image that it seriously split Arias Navarro’s cabinet. The three Basques already under sentence of death were joined on 12 September by three members of FRAP, accused of terrorist murders. Then, on 18 September, a further five FRAP activists were given capital sentences. On 26 September Franco chaired a cabinet meeting to discuss the possible reprieve of the eleven people awaiting execution, two of them pregnant women. Almost simultaneously, the European Parliament, in emergency session, called for all to be reprieved. In the event, the two women and four of the men, including the badly handicapped Garmendía, had their sentences commuted. Those on ‘Txiki’ Paredes, Angel Otaegi and three FRAP members, José Humberto Baena, José Luis Sánchez Bravo and Ramón García Sanz, were upheld. The international outcry was deafening. Harsh criticism from the Pope brought Spain’s relations with the Vatican once more to breaking point. In defiance of the international and domestic revulsion that had been generated, the executions took place on 27 September. Thirteen countries withdrew their ambassadors from Spain. Four Spanish embassies were set on fire. The Mexican president called for Spain’s expulsion from the United Nations. The European Commission called for a suspension of trade with Spain on 6 October. 49"

"the announcement of the Caudillo’s heart attack on 21 October provoked a collective sigh of relief. In the month up to his death on 20 November, the value of shares on the Madrid stock exchange rose substantially...When Franco’s death was announced, people danced in the streets of Basque towns. Although there was considerable apprehension in the air, Madrid and Barcelona were quietly drunk dry of champagne. It was a dramatic rebuff to the hopes of those of the Caudillo’s immediate entourage who had dreamed of holding back the clock...No significant head of state, other than the Chilean dictator General Pinochet, attended the Caudillo’s funeral. In dramatic contrast, Giscard D’Estaing, the Duke of Edinburgh, the US Vice-President and the President of the Federal Republic of Germany attended Juan Carlos’s coronation. 54 "

"To a large extent, the resolution of the crisis without large-scale bloodshed depended on the skill of Juan Carlos, of the ministers that he chose and of the leaders of the opposition. The King faced a very considerable dilemma. There was much to be said for democratization. His advisers had kept him fully aware that important sectors of Spanish capitalism were anxious to ditch the political mechanisms of Francoism. He was equally conscious of the consequences of the Greek royal family’s failure to go with the tide of popular democratic sentiment. The declarations of his father must also have influenced him. By opting boldly for progress, he would be assured of mass support for the monarchy. However, he was equally aware of the strength, determination and ill will of the bunker. More importantly than was perhaps perceived at the time, he was also tightly bound by the same Francoist Constitution to which he owed his accession. Accordingly, in the early days of his reign, he stepped cautiously.

Extreme leftists continued to be rounded up and the bunker remained optimistic. After all, as they perceived things, for Juan Carlos to preside over the introduction of democracy into Spain would be to deny the purpose of his inheritance and his training. As Bias Piñar blustered hopefully, ‘this is no monarchical restoration but the installation of a new Francoist monarchy which has no other thought behind it than the Nationalist victory in the Civil War’. 55 By excluding the monarchy from Spain for forty years and by his arrogance in nominating his own royal successor, Franco seemed to have destroyed any political neutrality that Juan Carlos might have enjoyed, just as he had undermined the monarchy’s other two central attributes of continuity and legitimacy. 56 The bunker hoped that Franco’s influence would still be felt from his tomb in the Valle de los Caídos. It was hardly surprising that the left greeted the coronation with headlines in its clandestine press that proclaimed ‘No to an imposed King!’ and ‘No to the Francoist King’. 57 The fact that Juan Carlos’s first acts were aimed at consolidating his position within the army did little to endear him to the opposition. Already on 2 November, in a brilliant public relations coup vis-à-vis the army, he had made a lightning visit to Spanish garrisons in Morocco. Indeed, his sensitivity to military feelings was to form the basis of a relationship on which a future democratic Spain would lean heavily. On 22 November, he sent a message to the armed forces, renewing his oath of fidelity to the flag and acknowledging their position as defenders of Franco’s Funda mental Laws. A few days later, a royal decree made the late Caudillo senior officer in perpetuity of the army, navy and air force. 58

The obligatory placation of the bunker was matched by the most minimal concessions to the left. A limited pardon reached common criminals but released few political prisoners. Thus, at the very moment that the King and Queen drove down streets lined with cheering crowds, riot police were using baton charges, tear-gas and water-cannons to break up demonstrations outside the country’s prisons. Many organizations, including Colegios de Abogados (Bar Associations), Pax et Justitia, and the parties of the left protested at the limitations of the pardon and called for a full amnesty. Disappointment turned to anger when several released prisoners, including the Comisiones Obreras leader, Marcelino Camacho, were re-arrested. Huge amnesty demonstrations were held in Seville, Valladolid, Vigo, Barcelona and Madrid. Felipe González was harassed by police at Madrid’s civil cemetery where he attended a tribute on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the PSOE founder, Pablo Iglesias. 59

Juan Carlos’s long-term survival depended on his coming to terms with the overwhelming popular urge for democracy. However, Franco had rigged the constitutional cards in such a way as to make it extremely difficult for him to do so. The regime’s institutions, the Consejo del Reino, the Consejo Nacional del Movimiento and the Cortes were in the hands of committed Francoists and behind them stood the army and the Civil Guard. On the other hand, there was international support for a move towards democratization. Moreover, at the coronation mass, Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón had made the King aware of popular expectations when he appealed to him to become 'King of all Spaniards’. 60

His first government was, almost inevitably, disappointing to those who hoped for reform. Juan Carlos would have preferred to dispense with Arias and appoint some more
sympathetic figure. There was already some friction between them in part because of Arias’s tendency to treat the young King in the same patronizing and dismissive way as Franco had. Now, on 13 November, Juan Carlos had, without Arias’s knowledge, met various members of the military high command to discuss the future. Arias was furious when he found out. To assert his authority, he resigned, in the confident knowledge that, with Franco in his death agony, Juan Carlos would find it difficult to cope with an additional crisis. As he expected, the King was forced to ask him to stay on. "

"The most that could be hoped from Arias was that he might try to bestow upon Spain, in a paternalistic fashion, the mildest democratization which could defuse the crisis without provoking the bunker. This task was entrusted to a joint commission, or Comisión Mixta, of the senior cabinet minsters and members of the Consejo Nacional. At its first meeting, on 11 February 1976, Arias starkly reiterated his position when he declared that ‘what I want to do is continue Francoism. And as long as I’m here or still in political life, I’ll never be anything other than a strict perpetuator of Francoism in all its aspects and I will fight against the enemies of Spain who have begun to dare to raise their heads.’ Symbolically, the Prime Minister’s office was dominated by an easel supporting a large portrait of Franco in belligerent contrast to a diminutive photograph of the King. 6"

"Even if Arias was in part attempting to pacify the bunker, there was little here to dissuade the opposition from its commitment to the swift and complete demolition of the Francoist system, the so-called ruptura democrática. The left’s minimum demands of full political amnesty, legalization of all political parties, free trade unions, the dismantling of the Movimiento and the Sindicatos, and free elections were hardly negotiable with Arias. The first half of 1976 would see a trial of strength between the two options."

"For obvious reasons, the strikes with greatest political impact were in the public services. At the beginning of the year, Madrid was the scene of intense pressure on the government. Successive actions by metro workers and postmen brought threats that their theoretical military status would be activated rendering them liable, under military law, to charges of mutiny if they did not return to work. The army was brought in to run the underground trains. Stoppages in the metal and construction industries virtually paralysed the capital’s outer suburbs. The use of police charges to break up groups of strikers reflected the Francoist instincts of both Arias and his Minister of the Interior, Manuel Fraga. Later strikes by postmen and the workers of the national railway RENFE were met by militarization. 66

The industrial unrest served to convince the more liberal ministers of the urgency of dialogue with the opposition."

"After the Madrid strikes of January, February was punctuated by 80,000-strong amnesty demonstrations on successive Sundays in Barcelona. 68 However, the greatest militancy was reached in the Basque Country. The pardon issued on coronation day had affected fewer than 10 per cent of the 750 Basque prisoners. Rather than defusing the tension bequeathed by Franco, the pardon’s inadequacy had provoked a feeling of popular rage. The bulk of the Basque population believed that ETA violence was a justifiable response to the institutional violence of Francoism and disappointment with the pardon was quickly converted into an intensive amnesty campaign. In scope and intensity, Basque amnesty actions exceeded similar movements in the rest of Spain. Frequent demonstrations were backed by labour disputes, sit-ins, hunger strikes and mass resignations by municipal officals. Demands for freedom for prisoners were combined with calls for the legalization of the Basque flag, the lkurriña.

The campaign was irremediably complicated by the fact that ETA had not laid down it arms on the death of the dictator. In the first three months of 1976, several Civil Guards were killed trying to take down booby-trapped lkurriñas, a number of alleged informers were shot and an industrialist was kidnapped and murdered. This not only enraged the bunker, but it also provoked the Minister of the Interior, Manuel Fraga, into declaring war on ETA on 8 April. 69 Relations between Fraga and the Basques had been stretched to the limit already at the beginning of March. A two-month-long strike in the town of Vitoria culminated in a massive demonstration on 3 March. As the workers left the Church of San Francisco, they were charged by riot police. Three were killed and over seventy badly hurt. Two more workers died as a result of their injuries some days later. In reply, a general strike was called throughout the Basque Country. Fraga had been abroad at the time but returned quickly. The subsequent atmosphere was illustrated during a visit made to the local hospital by Fraga and Rodolfo Martín Villa, the Minister for the Sindicatos. A relative of one of the wounded asked them if they had come to finish him off. The events of Vitoria destroyed any credibility that the government had had in the region, reinforced popular support for ETA and intensified the militancy of the Basque working class. Fraga’s declaration of war, which signified a stepping-up of police activity and was accompanied by the re-emergence of the ultra-rightist hit-squads, immeasurably worsened the situation. 70"

"While the opposition in the rest of Spain was committed totally to the struggle for democracy, popular aspirations in the Basque Country were becoming increasingly much more far-reaching. The area had been radicalized to such a degree that there was considerable mass backing for the revolutionary separatist aspirations of ETA. Whilst militancy elsewhere in Spain could be expected to diminish once democracy was established, Euskadi was at a point from which pacification and a return to normal were already near to impossible. ETA’s theorists were anxious to capitalize on the militancy which had been engendered by their struggle and its repression. The polemic about how best to combine military and political activities had raged in the movement ever since the assassination of Carrero Blanco had put political change on the agenda. For some hard- liners of the ETA Military Front, terrorist activism had become virtually an end in itself. More thoughtful members of the Political Front felt that preparations should be made for the post-Franco future lest the bourgeois Partido Nacionalista Vasco hog the political capital accumulated during ETA’s struggle. The increasingly bitter debate within ETA had come to a head after the Cafeteria Rolando bombing of 13 September 1974. That senseless act had emphasized the extent to which the Military Front was running out of control. Rejecting the efforts of cooler heads to tie terrorist actions to majority decisions, the ‘milis’ broke away to form ETA-Militar. The bulk of the organization became ETA- Político-Militar.

The differences between the two organizations had been slight at that stage although they were to widen rapidly over the next three years. ETA-M was the more exclusively nationalist and was committed to the rigid separation of political and military activities. In the wake of its formation, an extreme nationalist political party had been founded, LAIA (Langile Abertzale Iraultzaileen Alderdia or the Patriotic Workers’ Revolutionary Party). ETA-PM, in addition to nationalism, retained wider socialist objectives, and its leaders believed that political and military actions were compatible. ETA-PM’s activist units were known as the Comandos Bereziak. They were eventually to be at the heart of a further crisis arising out of the on-going contradictions between terrorism and more conventional political activities. It began with the kidnapping by ETA-PM Comandos Bereziak on 17 March 1976 of Angel Berazadi Urbe, an industrialist from San Sebastián and a sympathizer of the PNV. When his family refused to pay the full ransom demanded, he was murdered. This non-political crime provoked a firm condemnation of ETA-PM by the PNV-dominated Basque government-in-exile.

The murder of Berazadi dissipated some of the popular sympathy enjoyed by ETA and hastened the thinking of ETA-PM’s foremost theorist, Eduardo Moreno Bergareche ‘Pertur, on the problems arising from the continued use of violence in the changing political situation. ‘Pertur’ produced an influential report, the Ponencia Otsagabía, in which he advocated that ETA-PM abandon military activities in favour of political ones. The Ponencia Otsagabía was to form the basis of the philosophy behind the establishment of ETA-PM’s own political party EIA (Euskal Iraultzako Alderdia or the Party of the Basque Revolution). Led by ex-Etarras, both LAIA and EIA, and other small parties of the so-called patriotic or abertzale left, were to become the dynamic leadership of a popular movement whose aims were beyond solution by any Madrid government. It was perhaps for this reason that ‘Pertur’ was kidnapped and murdered at the end of April. At the time, his death was attributed to right-wing terror squads but later investigations pointed to ETA-PM’s own Comandos Bereziak and particularly to their leader Miguel Angel Apalátegui ‘Apala’. He was apparently determined to prevent at any cost the drift towards orthodox politics advocated by ‘Pertur’.71"

"To a very large extent, the remainder of the Spanish left was slow to appreciate what was happening in Euskadi. However, the Communist Party gradually came to terms with the fact that possibilities for its strategy of ‘national democratic action’ to overthrow the Francoist establishment were effectively limited to Madrid and Barcelona. The PCE leadership was forced to accept that the situation in the Basque Country was beyond its control. In consequence, behind his continuing triumphalist rhetoric, Santiago Carrillo came to perceive the potential weakness of the PCE’s position. The strategy based on the conviction that a nationwide strike would bring about the ruptura democrática was quietly acknowledged to be erroneous. If working-class militancy was to be incapable of defeating the Francoist establishment then the ruptura could only come from some process of negotiation between government and opposition.

Carrillo was quick to see that the immediate danger facing the PCE was marginalization from such a process. Despite the greater militancy and discipline of the PCE’s rank and file and its numerical superiority, in terms of activists, over the rest of the opposition, negotiations would favour the more obviously ‘respectable’ Socialists and Christian Democrats. Accordingly, the PCE Secretary-General recognized the urgent need for closer unity between the Junta Democrática and the Plataforma de Convergencia Democrática. By dropping the PCE’s insistence on the ruptura democrática, the total break with the Francoist system and the departure of Juan Carlos, Carrillo facilitated the fusion of the two organizations. At the end of March, they became Coordinación Democrática, popularly known as the ‘Platajunta’. Although the unwieldy width of the coalition was to soften the opposition’s capacity for decisive action, its formation paved the way for negotiation with the reformists within the system and thus exposed divisions inside the cabinet. 73 The extent to which meaningful political debate was being limited to that between the opposition and the regime reformists was illustrated by a curious side- effect of the creation of the Platajunta."

"As Minister of the Interior, Fraga had been originally considered as one of the more reformist members of the cabinet. However, the events in Vitoria, which severely damaged the credibility of the government as a whole, particularly undermined that of Fraga. In fact, Fraga had already begun a concerted policy of currying favour with the old Francoist élite, especially within the army...At a dinner held at the home of Miguel Boyer, who was later to be Minister of the Economy in Felipe González’s first cabinet, Fraga was outlining his plans for the future, unaware that he would not be playing the central role therein. In a threatening manner, he told Felipe González that the Socialists might be legalized in eight years and the Communists never. ‘Remember’, he said with typical Fraga bluster, ‘I represent power and you’re nothing’ (recuerde que yo soy el Poder y Vd. no es nada). The dropping of the liberal veneer was a miscalculation from whose effects Fraga was not to recover until the elections of October 1982. In the spring of 1976, the re-adoption of an impetuously authoritarian style effectively eliminated him as a possible successor to Arias. 76"

"From March, if not earlier, he became increasingly dissatisfied with Arias’s inability to react other than with repressive violence to the growing strength of the opposition. The royal intentions were signalled when he allowed himself to be quoted in Newsweek to the effect that his Prime Minister was ‘an unmitigated disaster’. On 9 June 1976, after Suárez’s charismatic speech, the Cortes passed the new law of political associations but refused to make the necessary amendments to the penal code to permit the legalization of political parties as envisaged by the law. Arias was exposed as being as unable or unwilling to deal with the bunker as he was incapable of controlling the opposition. Juan Carlos was already convinced that the transition to democracy necessary for his own survival had to be placed in the hands of someone able to handle both bunker and opposition. Aware that dissatisfaction with Arias was also rife among senior army officers, the King felt that he must act before the military asked him to do so. In such an event, the preservation of his own authority would oblige him to keep on Arias. 82 The situation was thus urgent. Accordingly, after he had received assurances of American support during his triumphal visit to the USA in early June, Juan Carlos asked for Arias’s resignation. Suggestions of American influence were played down. However, Areilza believed that the replacement of Arias by Suárez had been planned since Easter and perhaps even since Henry Kissinger’s visit to Madrid in January. 83

At the time, the King’s delay in replacing Arias Navarro raised doubts about his commitment to democratization. Convinced that the adjustment of Spain’s political
structure to the changed economic and social realities of the 1970s was inevitable, many observers tended to interpret hesitation as bad faith. However, such a view underestimated the residual power of the bunker in general and of the armed forces in particular. The subsequent emergence of what became known as golpismo puts Juan Carlos’s slowness in a different perspective. The delicacy of his dealings with the military establishment was an invaluable contribution to the coming of democracy. Similarly, the entire Arias experience was of crucial importance in a number of ways. His timid and restricted reforms had the merit of drawing the fire of the bunker and thereby allowed the ultra-right to discredit itself in the eyes of the remainder of the Francoist élite. The corollary of that process was that the very inadequacy of Arias’s schemes impelled a large number of Francoist bureaucrats and businessmen into the reformist camp. Joaquín Garrigues Walker, Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, the Tácitos and others were thus to find themselves in the position of intermediaries between the right and the opposition.

This was perhaps the central factor in ensuring a bloodless transition to democracy. Equally, the flimsiness of Arias’s reforms and the heavy-handed repression which accompanied them drove the left towards unity. That unity, and the popular militancy behind it, was the key to the democratization process. Without it, even the most flexible and reformist functionaries would never have been obliged to think about the future. The fact that Arias was unable to control the bloodlust of the bunker, notably in the Basque Country, immeasurably boosted the strength of the popular forces. "

Chapter 4: Reconciling the irreconcilable: the political reform of Adolfo Suárez 1976–7