Spanish Anniversary

When on April 1, 1939 the beleagured remnants of the Spanish Republican Army gave up their arms, the Iberian peninsula saw the end of the only constitutionally elected government in its history. The two and a half year war that had brought down the Republic cost over a million Spanish lives. This month, all over Spain, church bells are ringing at regular intervals to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the war's end. Somber and funereal, the bells suggest the ambivalence that lingers in many Spanish minds on the subject of the war.

For the quarter of a century since the war Spain's ruler has been the stocky, mustached Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Caudillo, Jefe del Estado, Prime Minister, Generalissimo of the Armed Forces, Regent of the Kingdom, and President of the Falange. Franco inaugurated a year of memorial celebrations--"Twenty-Five Years of Peace"--earlier this month with a service at the Holy Cross Basilica, a multi-million dollar monument to the war dead. The service will be followed by a year-long continuum of fairs, parades, dances, and patriotic exhibitions. "As tragic as were the dead," commented the government's Director-General of Information at the ceremony, "at least today we have unity."

Spanish unity today is entirely Franco's creation, for he rules the nation alone. The national assembly, the Cortes, is a consultative body at best, meeting infrequently with little public debate. Much legislation, in fact, never goes before it. The Generalissimo can make law by publishing any order in the government gazette, the Boletin Oficial del Estado. The cabinet plays a more important role in the business of state but it, too, is subject to Franco's whim. At its bi-weekly meetings Franco presides benevolently. "The Caudillo patiently listens," writes a junior minister, "while government members argue at length with one another. He talks little himself but makes all the big decisions--alone." Similarly, ministers are awarded portfolios or replaced altogether by a simple letter from Franco. The government of the nation is his own.

Spain has long been the economic backwater of Europe, and Franco has done little to change this in his quarter century of rule. Living conditions remain extremely poor by western standards. Labor organizations, like political organizations, continue to be illegal. Industrial growth has been slow, and antique farming methods remain the practice in most parts of the nation.

Tourism, however, promises a more comfortable economic future for Spain. Making the best of the sun and the country's picturesque landscape, Spaniards collected $500 million from tourists last summer. Then, too, the annual appearance of hundreds of thousands of bikini-clad, car-owning, politically conscious Europeans from north of the Pyrenees cannot help but jostle Spanish conservatism and apathy.

Succession Question

The question of Franco's succession remains cloudy if much discussed. At a rally several weeks ago, the Generalissimo announced without fanfare that he would continue to rule "as long as the Lord gives me strength. Many of the powers which are now mine are, because of their very nature, non-transferable." But twenty-five years after his victory the Caudillo is a weathered seventy-one. A hunting accident suffered several years ago brought the succession question to the front of everybody's mind. Since a 1947 plebescite--the only one during his reign--Franco has had the right to name an heir at any time. Yet, to date he has done nothing to insure continuity after his death.

Nominally Spain is a kingdom with Franco serving as regent. The pretender, Don Juan de Bourbon, lives in quiet exile in Portugal. His son, Juan Carlos de Bourbon, has been educated in Spain. The twenty-five year old prince, now an officer in the Spanish Army, Navy, and Air Force, lives with his wife, Greece's Princess Sophia, in a villa outside Madrid. But, while Franco seems fond of the young prince, he has made no official moves in his direction.

From time to time the Generalissimo has shown interest in the establishment of some variety of authoritarian, presidential regime. He is a professed admirer of the Gaullist state and has moved regularly to better his relations with France. Clearly he appreciates the mystique and the personal power that the French general-president enjoys. Shortly after the hunting accident, Franco created the position of Vice Premier and filled it with his long time friend and fellow general, Augustin Munoz Grandes. A veteran of Madrid politics, Munoz Grandes is popular in the country but a scant four years younger than Franco and ailing at the moment. He will not provide any permanent solution to the problems of succession.

Seattered Opposition

Resistance to Franco and his order is generally scattered. Within Spain occasional bombs are thrown, dramatizing that opposition sentiment continues to exist, but government repression and political apathy combine to keep underground groups small and ineffective. In recent years only the illegal miners' unions have succeeded to any degree in defying the regime. Outside of Spain opposition is more active. The political parties and trade unions that existed under the Republic continue to thrive in exile. A Spanish government in exile with representatives in a number of countries, as well as smaller Basque and Catalan groups, maintain head-quarters in Paris. The Mecca of Spanish exiles in Latin America is Mexico, which has never recognized Franco's government. In addition, Czechoslovakian Radio Pirane beams programs into Spain on a regular basis and El Mundo Obrero, the organ of the Spanish Communist Party, appears mysteriously in Madrid from time to time.

Franco's "Twenty-Five years of Peace" is a fitting celebration, for peace rather than any particular material or governmental advance have marked his reign. The docility of the Spanish nation during this period, however, has not been the product of Franco or his system of government. The memory of the war--the memory of thirty-three months of civil agony and a million deaths--still haunts the country. The Spaniard, recalling what partisanship brought him in the past, has not been eager to rush back into politics. He has been an easy target for Franco's peace and unity campaign. Yet the issues of war stand unresolved. Twenty-five years after its conclusion, the Spanish citizen remains without political or economic voice in his society. The Catholic Church and the Candillo rule his life with unchecked authority.

As part of the "Twenty-Five Years of Peace" celebration, Franco has declared amnesty for all Republicans whose "crimes" antedate the end of the civil war. The Generalissimo evidently hopes that the war and its pains can now be forgotten. With forgetfulness, though, will come a change in Spanish politics. The generation reaching maturity now was born after the war. They will be armed with a new set of expectations not tempered by the memory of violence. Their politics, their response to the passing of Franco, is not likely to be quiet. To them and to history, the Generalissimo's "Twenty-Five Years of Peace" will stand as a mere twenty-five year respite in Spain's long and ugly struggle to climb into the twentieth century.