Spain in Decay

By SALVADOR DE MADARIAGA

A NUMBER of features single out the Spanish ...dictatorship from other similar regimes. It is utterly devoid of any ideology whatsoever. Every time the Falange tried to impose its nostrum (badly translated from the Nazi-Ger- 'man or the Fascist-Italian) it was brushed aside by the dictator. At most, he would wear his ideology on a don-and-doff basis, as he would the shirt that symbolises it. Franco was Nazi With Hitler, Fascist with Mussolini, democratic (if with a difference) with Dulles; and would tomorrow be Marxist with Khrushchev if the need arose. At bottom, Franco is just a Francoist.

The regime is not military. Franco did not

trouble to build up an effective defence force until the US pushed him to it; and even now, the army is a show for victory parades and a standby against a possible popular rising rather than a modern military establishment. He keeps Colonels and generals contented by means of fat directorships while the humbler ranks go under- Paid. Franco does not care for the army as such: for him it is a mere bodyguard.

The regime is not religious nor even clerical.

'rue, the Church has received exorbitant privi- leges, mainly in the field of education; but the dictator, despite much show of devotion, is s° indifferent in matters of religion that, last May, when so many priests sided with the ;Strikers, he forbade the broadcasting of the Mass. In a case known to me, one of his ardent followers was heard to say that the strikes could be easily settled by shooting a few demagogic Priests. This does not by any means represent the °Pinion of the dictator, but it is an opinion Wholly compatible with his regime.

The regime is not anti-working-class. For a

long time it tried to win over the workers by d ,emagogic and uneconomic measures such as .torbidding the dismissal of redundant workers, Rut this meant the ruin of firms or not. nut it is

not the workers' friend either, for the

8:"ealled liberalisation of the economy which _,a's imposed on the regime to refloat it from the ruin has been carried out at the expense of the wage-earners; and in a country suffering 07 Worst housing shortage in Europe, thousands tai,Millions of pesetas have been spent in osten- tatious buildings. It has organised the workers .4nder the thumb of the Falange, i.e., the State, the dictator. achieved

The regime is indifferent to efficiency. It has

clemeved remarkably efficient works, such as the it v, elopment of the once sterile Badajoz region; a..n.45 planned and carried out utter absurdities le g° is now contemplating the wasteful and use- ec:: deviation of the Tuna River in order to vaier LIP its own responsibility in the disastrous issueneia floods. It is equally indifferent to the for e. of private enterprise versus State economy, d_u has

Industri pushed the IN! (Instituto Nacional

ex- trees a) to inordinate and inefficient ex- while granting a free run to big business Which goes elementary at times even beyond the limits of x_entary honesty. leanY more examples of the regime's in- rence could be given, but these are enough for our purpose, which is to explain their cause and to diagnose their faults. The cause is plain: the regime is purely personal. Un regimen de mando personal, the dictator's own definition. Who dictates the laws? Franco. Who applies or breaks them as he wishes? Franco. Spain has no law but the dictator's pleasure. He was pleased to grant the people a Charter (Fuero) guaranteeing a number of 'rights,' but he takes away those rights whenever he pleases.

Now for the consequences. The chief political characteristic of the people of Spain is a ten- dency to anarchy. Franco is a kind of super- anarchist : his behaviour is utterly personal and capricious. It follows therefore that the regime is disastrous for the health and stability of in- stitutions. The three strongest institutions in Spain were the army, the Church and organised labour. The regime has corrupted the first, com- promised the second and utterly disorganised the third. It is just this kind of super-anarchical behaviour that is one of the factors driving the country to Communism.

One of the commonest errors in the West is to think that Franco is a dam against Com- munism. There was no danger of Communism in Spain when the army rebelled in 1936. The danger began well after the civil war had begun, and since the end of the war the actual position has been exactly the reverse of what it is usually claimed to be.

The downright criminal behaviour of the Communists in Spain during the civil war wiped out the chances of the Communist Party. Even when the Spanish people saw Franco gradually admitted to the Western system, anti-Communist feeling remained strong. At this point, however, the regime began to oblige Moscow. It took to the habit of describing as 'Communist' every adversary it laid hands on. As by then the regime was universally detested, the Communist Party was able to gather the harvest of prestige the authorities were good enough to present it with. Moreover, since all parties and opinions are forbidden, the only party which prospers is the one which is used to working clandestinely, and which need not worry about its funds— the Communist Party.

The heyday for Communism in Spain began when the US came to an agreement on bases with Franco. This agreement was fatal for three reasons: it reversed the war-time alliance; for during the Second World War the Spanish people cordially sided with the Anglo-Saxons, and Franco with Hitler, so that for a Spaniard to show pro-British or pro-American leanings in those days might mean loss of limb or of life. When the people of Spain saw their friends in the West side with their detested leader, a revulsion of feeling took place, the ultimate consequences of which we may still have to see.

The second reason was that from about 1800 Spain had been the most isolationist country in the world, until Franco plunged her into a military alliance with the US. A good or a bad decision? That is not the point. The point is that the decision was taken by a single Spaniard, shorn of any authority, mandate or responsibility to do this, and that the US accepted a decision from such unqualified hands. This has been fatal to the influence of the friends of the West in Spain. Similar observations and conclusions apply to the grave cession of sovereignty implied in the agreement on the bases.

The spur which all this meant for Communism can hardly be exaggerated. All faith in the West has vanished. Visits to the dictator such as those of Dulles, Eisenhower, Home, Butler and Dean Rusk have been as many hammer blows on the hopes of a rebirth of liberal democracy in Spain. The people of Spain hear no anti- Franco voices other than those of Belgrade, Prague and Moscow. In twenty-four years of exile in this country I have never been allowed to speak to Spain by the BBC. For 450 weeks, together with a superb broadcaster, Father Olaso, I spoke to Spain through the French radio and we have reasons for thinking that we then kept Spanish public opinion attached to the West. All this disappeared when France needed Franco's help at the UN, and since then, Moscow, Prague and Belgrade have held the field.

Ground to dust between the nether stone of Communism and the upper stone of the regime, the liberal democratic sector of Spain en- deavoured to organise an assembly in order to be heard by the world. It came about unex- pectedly, when the European Movement held its own assembly in Munich (June 7-8 this year). The Spanish section of the movement organised a round table during the two preceding days for the Spanish delegation to prepare a resolution on Spain. We had expected about a score of exiles and a score of delegates from Spain. In fact there were thirty-eight exiles and eighty delegates from Spain. We unanimously agreed on a resolution advocating Spain's adhesion to the Common Market, but not before the country had adopted European institutions; this, we declared, should be done by a wise evolution free from violence. The text was almost exactly that brought from Spain by Gil Robles, the leader of the Catholic monarchists.

This resolution, acclaimed by the whole assembly, was described to Spanish public opinion by the dictator himself as 'Communist- inspired'; and the delegates who returned were exiled or imprisoned or fined or sent to the most inhospitable of the Canary Islands.

What can be done? The essential issue is one of faith. Can faith in the Western democracies be restored to the minds of the Spaniards, in particular of the workers and the intellectuals? Can the Western democracies cease to side with Franco against us as they do in fact in the US, Britain, France, Germany, though less in Italy and hardly at all in Benelux or Scandinavia? Can they be made to realise, not only that Franco must go for the sake of Europe even more than for the sake of Spain, but that he must go: (a) by a non-violent change; (b) by a change known to the Spaniards to be inspired and aided, if not altogether led, by the Western democracies?

If these tasks are not undertaken soon and achieved successfully, the chances are that by 1970 the European Federation may have to face a Soviet-lberian republic south of the Pyrenees.