Dionisio Ridruejo Spain's Resistor

When the Spanish government takes time out to speak to the Opposition it calls on Dionisio Ridruejo. Yet, Ridruejo's speech at Harvard last week in Boylston Hall was his first public address in over three years. He remains one of the few men barred from speaking publicly in Franco's Spain, and since 1955 his name has not appeared in print in that country.

The government fears not Ridruejo's extremist politics (he is not an extremist) but his liberal, intellectual appeal and his unique history.

Until 1942, Ridruejo was a member of the Spanish fascist party, the Falange. That year he left the party and entered a period of introspection from which he was to emerge a democrat and a socialist, in complete opposition to Franco. His conversion is a source of his pre-eminent position within the opposition, for he criticizes the fascists after having been "one of them."

His liberal political stance, however, is also a factor in the government's decision to separate him from public Spain. Traditionally, Ridruejo explained, the government "has not tried to crush the communists, but only the liberals. This is because the government is interested in maintaining the appearance that the only opposition that exists is the extreme left, and the only alternative to the present regime is civil war. Therefore, most acts of opposition are attributed to the extreme left."

While such a policy undoubtedly has strengthened the Communist Party, basically it has succeeded in its objective. Today the mass of the Spanish people, fearing renewed civil conflict, have become indifferent to politics. The traditional Spanish passion does not exist and Spain is a peaceful country whose revolutionary energy has been largely dissipated.

Amidst this Spain, however, some true Spaniards remain, and Dionisio Ridruejo is perhaps an archetypical example. He is a professor at the University of Madrid, when it is open, and he is a genuine teacher. He is also a writer, a humanist and human, with brilliant eyes and fine hands with which he speaks. And he loves Spain and knows her as almost no other individual does. But this knowledge only makes him more acutely aware of the tensions and contradictions that exist within present-day Spain to be resolved only upon Franco's death.

This being an imminent possibility, Spain's economic and political problems are rapidly coming to a head. Spain today is a police state in which such problems are not being dealt with at all. No one runs anything, and no one is responsible for anything. "Spain is closer to anarchy than any other country," Ridruejo has said, and something is bound to give.

The succession question, he believes, will most probably result in a restoration of the monarchy. Two pretenders to the throne exist, however--Don Carlos and his son Juan Carlos. The viability of the government that emerges, Ridruejo feels, will depend heavily on who is chosen.

Juan Carlos, who is considerably more conservative than his father, would not last more than three months, Ridruejo contends. Don Carlos, however, a potentially constitutional monarch, would be able to deal with the Left, Ridruejo believes, and thereby retain power long enough to bring Spain into the modern European community.

Paradoxically, Ridruejo's Falangist past works for him rather than against him. Whatever feelings of personal guilt he may have, he is not subject to ridicule by his compatriots. He is afforded only the greatest respect being an especially venerated figure among the young.

Perhaps this is because the contradiction of Dionisio Ridruejo's life are the contradictions of twentieth century Spain. And if Dionisio Ridruejo is not yet Spain, there is hope that Spain may come to be Dionisio Ridruejo, and in so doing resolve its own contradictions much as he has resolved his. Dionisio Ridruejo is today, in his own words, "a free man."