Spain
Franco's last stand
John Organ
The shots which rang out at dawn on September 27 from firing squads at barracks in Madrid, Burgos and Barcelona will echo for a long time and already threaten the prospects for Spain's peaceful transition into what so many people hoped would be a more democratic post-Franco era. Over the next weeks and months, the Communists and the more unthinking sections of the left will make martyrs of the five urban guerrillas executed for their part in four murders of police officers, and will create a bandwagon myth that they died for the liberation of Spain from dictatorship. With equal vehemence, General Franco and the extreme right will be arguing that they took appropriate lawful action to stop terrorism and to prevent Spain from falling victim to subversion and conspiracy. Both sides are wrong..
A few hotheads mistakenly believed that shooting policemen in the back was a step towards liberation. General Franco over-reacted to the provocation without apparently pausing to consider his own responsibility in the matter or the very real risk of radicalising Spain in a delicate period of transition. After selfishly resuming power at the age of 82 following his illness last summer, and then dashing what had seemed well-founded hopes for gradual democratic reform, General Franco has taken up a last-ditch stand which must logically mean more work for the firing squads in coming months. More bombings and murders of policemen can be expected as an inevitable response. The powerful underground Spanish Communist party will try to exploit a tense situation and may overplay its hand, and this could involve the risk of an extreme right backlash along the lines which General Pinochet has made familiar in Chile.
The losers in this grotesque game can only be the forces of moderation and democracy, unless General Franco can be persuaded to step down completely before Christmas so that Prince Juan Carlos of Bourbon can become king under the arrangements made in 1969. The young king could break the vicious circle by declaring an amnesty for all political prisoners and quickly introducing authentic democracy. But if he has to wait another year or so in the dictator's shadow, he risks becoming discredited.
General Franco has been the Iron Surgeon of Spain whose self-appointed mission was to cure what he considered its natural turbulence. Most Spaniards today believe that the patient is indeed cured and ready to lead a normal life again, if only it is allowed to do so. But General Franco has refused to recognise that, as living conditions have improved, Spaniards have become politically aware and want change; the common accusation that they are only interested in acquiring television sets and washing machines is an insult to a noble, generous, intelligent and long-suffering people.
Their maturity was shown in the summer of 1974 when the Surgeon lay gravely ill in hospital. Spain could not have been more calm. Liberal figures in the Establishment and opposition leaders were holding meetings with their spirits raised by hopes that a young king would soon be presiding over a more democratic era; serious efforts were under way for the organisation of viable political parties; the police improved their manners; youngsters of the Basque Marxist guerrilla group ETA put aside their guns and bombs, and lunatic fringe leftists belonging to small groups like the FRAP contented themselves with the hot air of angry pamphlets. Only the dwindling but still powerful hardcore of ultra-rightists seemed jittery.
But General Franco recovered a year ago, and since then things have gone from bad to worse. He ignored the ideal opportunity to quit the scene without losing face and resumed power, pushing Prince Juan Carlos back into the waiting room of history after allowing him 45 days as acting Head of State. Ten days later a bomb exploded in a restaurant flanking Madrid police headquarters, killing 11 people and . maiming many more. Mystery still surrounds the incident, but the most widely accepted theory is that the bomb was left by ETA guerrillas who failed in their intention of planting it inside the headquarters. After the prince, it was the prime minister's turn to be humiliated. General Franco frustrated projected reforms drawn up by Senor Arias Navarro which could have eventually led to a multiparty system.
By this summer General Franco, to the dismay of his more intelligent supporters, was denouncing all his critics as "dogs who yap" and blustering that Spain faced bigger dangers than in 1936. The hitherto obscure FRAP organisation took a leaf from the book of the ETA guerrillas, and murdered three police officers in Madrid, including a particularly innocuous Civil Guard lieutenant who worked in the traffic control department. General Franco reacted at the end of August with a stringent anti-terrorism decree which gives sweeping powers to the police and has been used to muzzle the press. It made the death sentence obligatory for convicted terrorists, with foreseeable consequences: opprobrium for the military courts which have the task of trying security offences involving firearms and explosives, and horrid executions.
The shots of the firing squads had scarcely died away when left-wing demonstrators began sacking or setting fire to Spanish embassies, consulates and tourist offices across Europe. Such violent reactions can only heighten the siege mentality of General Franco and his Bunker. To judge from past experience, a similar effect may be produced by the action of Britain and other European countries in recalling their ambassadors from Madrid. It is an act of selective indignation that comes ill from governments who would hardly protest at similar executions in Moscow, Peking, Nigeria or almost anywhere else (although it is true that if Spain aspires to be part of Western Europe, it must expect to share higher standards of conduct).
The British Labour Party still has something of a phobia about Spain from the heady days of the 1936-39 civil war; it is time that it did something constructive to encourage the forces of moderation. First, it should help Spain's mainstream socialist party PSOE, which has so far resisted the blandishments of the Communists but will be under renewed pressure from them as the situation radicalises. Encouragement should not go to the Communist-led Junta Democratica but to the Platform of Democratic Convergence, the centre-left opposition alliance which groups the PSOE, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and the like. Words should be got to the moderate generals, the few liberal cabinet ministers, and the rapidly increasing number of disenchanted conservatives in Madrid that, as they themselves have been thinking for months, now is the time to engineer General Franco's retirement before things get even more out of hand. Prince Juan Carlos is relateg to our own Royal Family, but so far he has been rather cold-shouldered by Britain; perhaps the message can be got to him that if he becomes a democratic king, this can only speed the inevitable devolution of Gibraltar to its original owners. Instead of treating Spain like a parish, we should try to understand its problems and help to solve them, rather then encourage a fight for this great country between minorities of the extreme right and extreme left.
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