An
Historical Essay on Modern Spain
Richard
Herr
EPILOGUE
[289] The
frail general who watched Prince Juan Carlos take his oath before the
Cortes
in July 1969 lived on for six more years, suffering from debilitating
ailments
and dying after a prolonged agony on November 20, 1975. Two
days later Juan Carlos, again on the podium of the Cortes, took a new
oath
to uphold the order as king. Death struck the aged head of state at 83;
the young king who now took his place was 37. The
contrast was to be symbolic. The transfer of leadership from one
generation
to another marked the beginning of one of the most exciting passages in
Spain’s history.
During
the last years of Franco’s rule, Spain seemed on hold, awaiting his
disappearance,
a tension masked by jokes about his apparent immortality. What
would happen when he went? Faced by waves of strikes
and continuing assassinations by the Basque ETA, the regime’s
hardliners
were determined to maintain Spain’s authoritarian unity. In
June 1971 Franco, failing in strength, gave up the office of president
of the government, that is, prime minister, and arranged for his
closest
associate, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, to take his place. Franco
remained the head of state. In December 1973 as the car of Admiral
Carrero
Blanco was driving him from his morning mass to his office, an ETA
commando
carried out a spectacular explosion that blew the car sky-high, killing
the occupants. Franco and those around him were distraught
and shaken. International events, though not so momentous
as those of the 30s, added to the general tension of the nation. For
those who looked forward to an end to dictatorship, General Augusto
Pinochet’s
bloody overthrow in Chile of the liberal government of Salvador Allende
in September 1973 seemed an ominous precedent. Then
Spain’s right and left observed with vastly different emotions how in
April
1974 Portuguese army officers, embittered by a long colonial war,
overthrew
the neighboring authoritarian regime and within a year seemed on the
verge
of turning their new democratic state over to the Communists. Meanwhile
the economic downturn of the industrialized world caused by the embargo
imposed by the oil producing countries hit Spain especially hard,
bringing
to an end the “Spanish miracle” of the 1960s. The
momentous changes of the next decade would take place against an
ever-present
background of economic hardship.
Franco’s
death bore the aura of poetic justice. Ignoring public
demonstrations across Europe and appeals from heads of state and the
pope,
Franco approved the execution on September 27, 1975 of five young men
convicted
of terrorism. In the next days across Europe mobs
attacked Spanish embassies and consulates, and eight west-European
governments
recalled their ambassadors from Spain, including Great Britain and West
Germany (the French ambassador had already left Spain “on holiday”). To
rally his people, on October 1, a cold, raw day, despite his feeble
state
Franco addressed a preassembled crowd from the palace balcony. In
other parts of Madrid four policemen were assassinated to avenge the
executions. As
if cursed by his victims from their graves, Franco fell ill after his
effort
and never recovered. When life support was removed,
he died on November 20, anniversary of the execution in 1936 of
José
Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange. For
Spaniards on the right it became the prime day to commemorate.
[290]
In
a solemn telecast ceremony, Franco’s body was laid beside that of
José
Antonio in the cavernous “Valley of the Fallen” he had carved out of
the
mountains above Madrid with the labor of Republican prisoners.
Spaniards
held their breath about their future.Would Spain
open up in the direction of democratic Europe or would the defenders of
the established order, led by the army, resist democracy, possibly
touching
off a new civil war?
Spain’s
pent-up tension exploded in the next two years. No sooner was the news
of Franco’s death broadcast than the scent of long-awaited change was
in
the air. That Spain would no longer be the same became
evident almost at once, as kiosks in the next months offered new
newspapers
dedicated to reform, El País, Cambio 16, and in Catalan
Avui. Beside them the titillating covers of new journals displayed
naked girls, convincing evidence that press censorship had vanished.
Demonstrators
took to the streets and university campuses calling for reform, and
illegal
labor unions (only the official Sindicatos were legal) called strikes
in
response to soaring inflation
and
increasing unemployment. Riot police met them with
force. The ferocity reached a momentary peak in March
1976 when police fired upon thousands of strikers in Vitoria, killing
four
persons. Other organizations contributed to the violence. The
ETA kept up a campaign of assassinations; in October 1976 a commando
killed
the head of the provincial government of Guipuzcoa at noon in mid San
Sebastián.
Meanwhile, on the right Fuerza Nueva, loyal to Franco’s memory,
mobilized
youths to beat up liberal students and bomb bookstores accused of
Marxist
sympathies.
Tension
was at its height a year after Franco’s death, in the winter 1976-77.
On
December 11 a mysterious leftist group called GRAPO kidnapped Antonio
María
de Oriol, a notorious minister of justice under Franco. (The
acronym stood for the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group,
named
to commemorate the assassination of policemen on the day Franco last
spoke.) Weeks
of searching failed to find Oriol. At Christmas
time fighting broke out in Madrid between the police and demonstrators
protesting the arrest of Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the illegal
Communist
party, who had challenged the government by reentering Spain without
permission. On
Sunday January 23, 1977 right wing gunmen who stood beside the police
facing
thousands of demonstrators in Madrid shot and killed
a student demonstrator. Next day GRAPO reappeared,
kidnapping Emilio Villaescusa, head of the Supreme Council of Military
Justice, responsible for trying terrorists. That night two
masked men entered the Madrid office of a Communist law firm that
represented
the striking unions and machine-gunned those present, killing five
persons,
four of them lawyers, and wounding four others. Before the week was
out,
terrorist attacks in Madrid killed three police and wounded others,
with
GRAPO taking credit. As the police searched futilely
for Oriol and Villaescusa, rumors circulated that GRAPO was really a
right-wing
group hoping to incite a military take over. Behind
these gripping scenes caught by the TV news lay rapid inflation and
increasing
unemployment. Spain seemed a ship without a rudder,
and many ordinary citizens quaked in the apprehension that the army
would
surely intervene to restore order. When police finally
rescued the kidnapped men in February some calm returned.
[291]
If
the specter of conspiring generals fed popular paranoia, a
countervailing
public mood for change became more and more a player in the drama. In
his homily at the religious ceremony proclaiming the new king on
November
27, 1975, which was broadcast and televised across Spain, the
archbishop
of Madrid Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón urged the need for human
rights,
just liberties, and justice, placing the Catholic Church on the side of
reform. Two days earlier Juan Carlos had issued
a limited amnesty cutting time off the sentences of common criminals
and
political prisoners who had not committed acts of violence. Leftist
sympathizers at once declared it insufficient, for it left many
political
prisoners in jail. In December a meeting of the
conference of Spanish bishops called for civil rights, the freedom of
political
prisoners, and the return of political exiles, as well as measures to
end
unemployment and redistribute the wealth. Soon
the demand for amnesty for political prisoners became an insistent
mantra
of public discourse. Many persons accused of terrorism had been
incarcerated
for lengthy periods without trial as result of Franco’s declaration of
a “state of exception” which suspended the limited individual rights
guaranteed
by the Fuero de los Españoles. “Amnesty” thus
became a surrogate word for the replacement of his authoritarian system
by a democracy and guarantee of civil rights. Since
most political prisoners belonged to Catalan and Basque movements, the
call for amnesty was associated with the demand for autonomy of their
regions.
In
the next months demonstrations in favor of amnesty brought out crowds
in
the major cities. The call came from many sides. On
the occasion of the king’s visit to Barcelona in February 1976, the
abbot
of Montserrat appealed to him for “amnesty, peace, and full recognition
of the rights of our people.[1]
The public pressure forced the ministry, still Franco’s men, to free
all
political prisoners not involved in crimes of violence in March. This
left many members of the ETA still in jail, and in May massive
demonstrations
filled the Basque streets demanding “total amnesty.” Police
fired on them killing five persons, workers brought the Basque economy
to a halt, and students in Madrid and Barcelona staged sympathy
protests.
At
this point a musical group in beards and jeans caught
the reigning public spirit in a song that captured the air waves, Liberty
without anger (Libertad sin ira).
The
old men say there was a war in this country
And
that Spaniards nurture the rancor of old debts.
The old men say this country needs a long stick and a firm hand
To
avoid the worst.
girl,
and to be left in peace.
And
if there isn’t, there surely will be.[2]
[292]
The
men who remembered the Civil War were old and out of touch with the new
Spain that had grown up while they stroked their memories. A
young generation wanted a new Spain, in line with the European peoples
whom they had gone to work for and who had made Spain their southern
home. And
as Franco’s men in the Cortes and in the army gnashed their teeth,
youth
brought forth a system which gave Spain modern rights.
Through
the turmoil and anxiety of these years, Spanish statesmen guided the
country
toward a democratic regime. Those who were hesitant
could not ignore the demand in the air for apertura
(an opening);
those who wanted to move fast tempered their positions for fear of
inciting
the army. Franco is reported to have said that he was leaving Spain
“thoroughly
tied up” (“atada y bien atada”) so that it could not break loose
from his system. He had concentrated power in his
own person, but now power was divided among institutions that could
check
each other and prevent any one of them from bringing the system down.
The
king was head of the state in place of Franco and on his accession took
an oath to support Franco’s fundamental laws; but whereas Franco had
until
his last years also been head of the government as president of the
council
of ministers, this position was now separate and was in the hands of
Carrero
Blanco’s successor, Carlos Arias Navarro. He was
responsible to the king, not the Cortes. The king could dismiss him but
had to select his successor from a list of three given him by he
Council
of the Realm, a body composed of members of the clergy, the armed
forces,
the Cortes, and other official bodies, persons who could be counted on
to protect the status quo. Finally, any change in
the fundamental laws would have to be ratified by the Cortes, whose
members,
except for one fifth elected by heads of household, had been appointed
by official bodies or named personally by Franco, and then submitted to
a public referendum.
Europeans
had been bought up with the sad memory of how between the World Wars,
dictators
in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere had exploited democratic
constitutional
means to turn democracies into dictatorships without ostensibly
breaking
any laws. Now Spanish statesmen would reveal to the
world how they could exploit the rules of a dictatorship to reverse the
process. Although his hand was not obvious, there
is no doubt the critical initiative came from young Juan Carlos, guided
by astute advisers, no one more important than his former tutor, the
general
Torcuato Fernández Miranda.
At
his accession Juan Carlos was little known to his people. He
promptly took his attractive queen Sofía on symbolic visits to
key
regions, to Catalonia (where he pronounced the magic words in Catalan
“¡Visca
Catalunya! ¡Visca Espanya!” [“Long live Catalonia! Long live
Spain!”]),[3]
to Andalusia (to Seville and also to Algeciras across the bay from
Gibraltar,
a thorn that unites all Spaniards), and to Asturias (where king and
queen
donned hard hats and went down a mine). In June they
followed Columbus’s path (by air) to Santo Domingo, and then to New
York
and Washington (the king addressed the United Nations and the US
Congress
in excellent English) (Franco had refused to leave Spain). The
refreshing tone of their new head of state did not fail to affect his
subjects.
[293]
Juan
Carlos’s first official responsibility proved frustrating. He
had to appoint a new president of the council of ministers, but the
choice
afforded him by the Council of the Realm was such that he kept on
Arias. Arias
gave hints of favoring apertura, but as the months dragged on
and
nothing happened, disillusion began to settle over the country. The
king, however, was working quietly. In January 1976
it fell to him to name a new president of the Cortes. He
chose Fernández Miranda. The change seemed
innocuous, but it made Fernández Miranda also president of the
Council
of the Realm. In July, Juan Carlos called Arias to
the palace and to his consternation informed him that he was dismissed.
The
Council of the Realm listened to Fernández Miranda and this time
included among the nominees for the presidency of the council of
ministers
the king’s preference. Juan Carlos was able to appoint
Adolfo Suárez, an obscure young man who had risen rapidly in the
official world during the last years of Franco. The
public was dismayed by the news, convinced that the king’s choice meant
that the opponents of reform were in control; few people knew that
during
Franco’s last illness Suárez had had the courage to tell the
dying
man that the future of Spain was inevitably democratic.[4]
Slowly
in the next months, the partisans of apertura came to
appreciate
the king’s astuteness as Suárez threaded his way through the
thicket
planted by Franco. The new president of the government
immediately attacked the primary bastion of the regime by naming as
minister
of war a senior general sympathetic to democratic reforms, Manuel
Gutiérrez
Mellado, conscious that conservative officers would hesitate to
question
his authority. His next challenge was the Cortes,
still made up of the members chosen under Franco. To overcome their
resistance
to reform Suárez made use of two instruments relied on by the
dictator,
the decree law and the referendum. Drumming into the
deputies an awareness of the public mood, he got them to approve a
referendum
to be submitted to public vote that would establish a legislature
elected
by universal suffrage whose first job would be to write a new
constitution. Political
parties that committed themselves to work within the law would
be allowed to present candidates. The referendum
was the means Franco had used to adopt his fundamental laws.
Suárez
now used it to nullify those laws, forestalling the charge that he was
betraying Franco’s legacy. When the popular vote was
counted, only 3 percent voted “No” (although 23 percent of the Basques
abstained, evidence of their objection to having any decision on their
future come out of Madrid). It was December 1976. In
the next month the forces on right and left that opposed a peaceful
transition
to western democracy played their strongest cards, frightening the
public
with their acts of violence, as described above. Their
hope lay in inciting army intervention. With remarkable
composure in the midst of the distressing events, on January 29
Suárez
appeared on television to call for calm and to assure a horrified
nation
that the course toward a democratic system would not falter.
[294]
Another
challenge remained, however, that again threatened the “Opening.” As
dozens of parties lined up for official approval, including many
representing
local regions, the Communists presented a burning question. They
met the stated conditions, but they had always been Franco’s most hated
enemy and they remained so for the generals who had fought the Civil
War
to purge Spain of their menace. On the other hand,
the Communist parties were legal in European democracies, and European
opinion would not recognize a democracy in Spain that denied them
representation.Suárez
resorted to the weapon of the decree law to end the tense uncertainty.
This
was a measure provided for in the fundamental laws that allowed the
ministry
to take action “for reasons of urgency” without need for approval by
the
Cortes. In April 1977 the government issued a decree
law authorizing the Communist Party of Spain to present candidates for
election. Eighteen generals countered in outrage with a public censure
of the government, but they did not act. The authority of
Gutiérrez
Mellado as minister of war, and the king, as commander of the army,
maintained
their discipline. Confident that the spirit of the
public was on their side, Suárez with the king behind him had
cut
through Franco’s knotted institutional web.
An
open campaign replete with appealing posters preceded Spain’s first
free
election in forty years on June 15, 1977. It was a
curious experience; millions of adults whose only political orientation
had been a dislike of Franco’s regime now had a welter of choices
before
them for which they had virtually no tradition or loyalty to guide
them.
For
many it became an existential dilemma to decide what party they
belonged
to. In their response to this dilemma, they reflected
the popular mood that rejected old men and the rancor of old debts.
Moderation
and youth carried the day. The parties of the center,
the newly constituted Union of the Democratic Center (UCD) garnered 34
percent of the vote and the Socialist Party (PSOE) 29; while appealing
to the far left, the Communists got only 9 percent and on the right
Alianza
Popular 8 percent. Voters also were responding to
the age of the leaders. The UCD had been cobbled together
from different groupings by Adolfo Suárez, who was 43, and
Felipe
González, recently chosen to head of the PSOE was 36. The
Communists boasted popular figures like Dolores Ibarruri (the famous
Pasionaria
of the Civil War) and the poet Rafael Alberti, a colleague of
García
Lorca, but Ibarruri and Alberti were about 80, and Santiago Carillo,
head
of the Communist Party, was 65 and had a murky reputation from the
Civil
War. Old time socialists had gathered around Enrique
Tierno Galván, a university professor expelled by Franco who was
sixty years old. Though moderate, his party drew 4
percent. As the political picture evolved in the next years, a whole
generation
of well known opponents of Franco who had dreamed
of this moment found to their dismay that they were being passed over.
[295]
Suárez,
with the largest party behind him, remained at the head of government.
Spain
presented a more favorable augury for its new experience with democracy
than it had in 1931. The social transformation of the last decades
under
Franco tempered the sting of current economic bad news, while within
the
new Cortes, the ever-present apprehension of a military coup muted the
kind of ideological conflict that destroyed the Second Republic. In
the “Moncloa Pact” of October 1978 the leaders of the parties of the
left
agreed to press for an end to strikes in return for moderate wage
increases
and social reforms, specifically a progressive income tax. The
acceptance of these terms demonstrated the willingness of the
Socialists
and Communists and their labor unions to give priority to the
consolidation
of democracy over immediate workers’ benefits. The different parties
showed
the same spirit of moderation in drawing up a new constitution for the
monarchy. The Cortes adopted the text in October,
and another public referendum approved it by 88 percent in December.
After
Juan Carlos promulgated it, Suárez dissolved the Cortes and
called
for new elections. Through these months those who disapproved of the
new
democracy continued to provoke unrest. The ETA assassinated
61 persons in 1978. To counter the protests of leading
generals and the extremists of Fuerza Nueva, the king made a special
appeal
to his people on January 8, 1979.
In
writing the constitution, the touchstone was to undo the system of
Franco. This
meant guaranteeing individual and political liberties (the constitution
specifically established equality of all Spaniards before the law,
banning
discrimination on account of race, sex, religion, or any other personal
condition) and establishing a parliamentary monarchy with universal
suffrage
and a ministry chosen out of and responsible to the Cortes. It
also meant destroying the powerful centralized state. Few
questioned that democracy for Spain included local authority for its
ethnic
regions.I n Basque and Catalan eyes, historic rights
and democratic self determination justified treating their peoples as
unique
nationalities, separate from Castilians. The authors
of the constitution sought to solve the age-old Spanish conundrum, how
to mold one country out of different peoples. Breaking
with Franco and the nineteenth-century liberals before him, the new
parliamentary
monarchy would lean far toward the solutions of the two republics.
Article
2 of the constitution proclaimed “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish
Nation, common and indivisible country of all Spaniards,” while
guaranteeing
“the right of autonomy of the nationalities and regions that form
it.”
Castilian (that is, Spanish) would be the official language, but other
languages of Spain would also be official in their respective
communities
(Article 3). Contiguous provinces “with common historical,
cultural and economic characteristics” could establish Autonomous
Communities
(Article 143). Before the adoption of the constitution, Catalonia and
the
Basque Provinces were already given “pre-autonomy statutes” setting up
assemblies to draft definitive statutes, that, when approved by the
Cortes,
would formalize their autonomy.
[296]
The
next years saw Spain testing the waters of democracy. The
first elections under the new constitution in 1979 gave UCD the most
deputies,
closely followed by the Socialists. Adolfo Suárez
remained as head of government, but in the face of the continuing
economic
depression and acts of terrorism, he seemed to have played out his
role.
He resigned in January 1981, and the UCD, having lost most of its
support,
disbanded in 1983. In 1979 and 1980 Catalonia,
the Basque provinces, and Galicia received their statutes of autonomy.
Spain
was becoming a multinational state, but determined groups remained who
refused to accept the new order. Aggrieved members
of the military and vocal supporters of Franco
lamented the passing of the unitary state, while extreme groups among
the
Basques and Catalans would not be satisfied with anything less than
independence. Like
nationalists before them they wanted their own nation states. The
Basque ETA kept up its frequent attacks and assassinations of policemen
and political figures. On February 4, 1981 the first
official visit of the king and queen to the Basque provinces was the
occasion
of violent protests in the streets. In the Basque Assembly at Guernica,
partisans of independence tried to drown out the king’s speech and
fighting
broke out among the deputies, until guards forcibly evicted the
protesters. In
the next days, the suspicious death during police interrogation of an
imprisoned
member of ETA set off particularly fierce encounters between Basque
demonstrators
and the forces of order. By now many opponents of
the new democracy were convinced that the continuing disorder had made
Spaniards nostalgic for the days of Franco. Some military
figures who were determined to end parliamentary government and keep
Spain
“united” believed this to be the moment to mount a response. On
February 23, 1981 Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero led a force of
civil
guards into the Cortes and made the deputies hostage with the intention
of overthrowing the constitution. In Valencia General
Milans del Bosch sent tanks into the streets and took power. The
plotters appear to have been told that Juan Carlos would join them.
Instead,
as Spaniards kept vigil in the face of this new pronunciamiento,
an hour after midnight Juan Carlos appeared on television in full
military
uniform. He called on the military commanders “to
uphold the constitutional order,” saying that he would not tolerate, in
any form, actions or attitudes by people who attempted to interrupt the
democratic process.[5]
His
aura of firm authority brought the coup to a sudden end. Tejero
and Bosch surrendered, and Spaniards breathed a collective sigh of
relief. Three
days later a million people marched in Madrid and hundreds of thousands
in other cities to show their support for democracy, and for their
king. Five
years after Franco had been buried in the Valley of the Fallen, the
state
he had created had finally been laid to rest.
[297] In October 1982 the worst fear of the
right wing materialized when an election gave the Socialist party and
their
young leader Felipe González control of the government. Juan
Carlos opened the new session of the Cortes with the words, “The
Spanish
people have made evident their decision that the designs of a minority
that resorts to force shall never prevail over the freely and
peacefully
expressed will of the majority of the citizens.”[6]
The
government would be in the hands of the Socialists until 1996. The
great
achievement of the Socialist period was the integration of Spain into
the
community of western democracies. After the failed
coup of February 1981, the government had approved Spain’s entry into
NATO,
a move that angered many Spaniards who recalled bitterly that the
United
States treaties with Franco had been instrumental in cementing his
dictatorship.In
their campaign the Socialists had promised to submit the decision to a
referendum. Felipe González fulfilled the pledge, but he worked
for a favorable vote, and the majority of voters supported him.
Rejected
while Franco was alive, Spain had become ideologically acceptable to
the
democracies of Europe. After years of negotiations,
Spain was admitted to the European Economic Community (the future
European
Union) on January 1, 1986, along with Portugal, which
had also consolidated its democracy. The European
community gave Spain financial assistance to boost its economy, and
since
Spain’s entry, the economy has indeed advanced, reviving the rhythm of
growth of the last years of Franco.
A
second major change of government took place peacefully in 1996 when
the
center right Popular Party under José María Aznar took
over
from the Socialists, demonstrating the permanence of the new order. The
peaceful transfer of rule from right to left and back again in 1982 and
1996 established the commitment of the major parties to behavior as a
loyal
opposition, not the manipulated turno pacífico of
Canovas’s
system, but a genuine response to fair elections. It
gave the Constitution of 1978 the legitimacy that all previous
constitutions
lacked and that Franco’s regime struggled in vain to obtain.
[298]
In
achieving this legitimacy, Juan Carlos has played a key role. When
monarchy seemed to be a dying cause in Europe, Spain has demonstrated
that
a gifted king can be a powerful asset. Under the Old Regime kings of
Spain
had had the aura of majesty. Theirs was a rule of
law, for though laws were often unenforced, they were not openly
flouted. Legislative
authority lay with the king; he was advised by councils but not bound
by
a written constitution or hampered by a separation of powers, for the
Cortes
had become hardly more than a convenient formality called to give the
approval
of the kingdom in matters of the royal succession. The
American and French Revolutions proclaimed the principle of a written
constitution.
In a monarchy it called for the king to give up his
role as fount of law in favor of the representatives of the sovereign
people,
while maintaining that of father and guardian of his people. The
French National Assembly had such a concept of kingship in mind when it
wrote the Constitution of 1791. The behavior of
Louis XVI clashed with this intention, with fatal consequences for him.
Few monarchs were prepared to accept this amputation of their
authority. When
they found themselves caught in a constitution, their self image as
lawgivers
led them into personal involvement in political conflicts. Ferdinand
VII was a case in point, but the failing was general in Europe. Royal
participation in partisan politics invited opponents to replace
monarchies
with republics, as over the next centuries most countries did. Those
monarchs who learned the lesson are still with us, the British case
being
the most notable.
After
France, Spain was the first major European country to establish
constitutional
monarchy, but its crowned heads failed to adopt the new role. The
Constitution
of 1837, accepted by both Moderados and Progresistas presented an
opportunity
for the crown to take a position above politics. But
a child queen could not play the role, and her regent mother lacked the
necessary aura and in any case was tied to the Moderados. The
Constitution of 1876 again presented propitious conditions, and Alfonso
XII had the makings of a constitutional monarch, but he died young,
leaving
another regency, and the mature Alfonso XIII could not keep his hands
off
the government. Franco’s concept of monarchy also
gave the king a political role. In a country that
harbored the bitter antagonisms of the Civil War, Franco sought to make
the king the guarantor of his own order. At the outset
of his reign Juan Carlos did play a role in highest politics, but not
as
Franco had planned. Sharing the spirit of his generation
he used his position to undo the system Franco had made him swear to
uphold. Against
the military rebels of February 23, 1981 he defended the constitution
he
had helped engineer, and the masses gave their approval.
[299]
It
was after February 23 the Juan Carlos showed his full gift for rule,
because
he understood and fulfilled the role of constitutional king, devoted
father
of his people and symbol of his country but not fount of law. He
and his popular queen have provided a sense of stability and continuity
allowing governments to change and the economy to evolve without clash
of arms. Max Weber found two
ways to establish the legitimacy of a new regime, either the presence
of
a charismatic leader or the belief in the impartial working of a new
constitution. Juan
Carlos may not be charismatic in Weber’s sense, but he is genuinely
respected,
and his abstention from partisan involvement in government has been
essential
to establishing the practice of a loyal opposition and the legitimacy
of
the constitution. Recent Spanish history shows that
democracy is compatible with monarchy as well as with a republic,
provided
kings accept the role conceived by the democratic revolution of the end
of the eighteenth century.
[303]
El
Sotillo was more prosperous than in 1964, but I left saddened by the
visit. The
empty houses and the lack of young people were disheartening. People
had always emigrated, but not the entire young generation. In
1951 El Sotillo was a backwater, but a different kind of backwater.
Then
it was an integral community, on its own apart from the outside world.
Now
the outside world had come in and given it a few material advantages in
exchange for sucking off its vital organs, its life.
I
returned again in 1991, with Spain now a functioning democracy, an
industrial
economy, and part of the European Union. Paved streets
had replaced the cobblestones, and cars drove right down to the church
and to the houses that were being built, made of hollow bricks and
plastered
like modern houses everywhere else in Spain. A new
two story building near the church had a bar facing the street and
living
quarters above. The bartender had returned after thirty
years in Madrid, with a wife from Granada. He served
the usual bar food, wine, beer, liquors, tapas, chorizo, and
sandwiches.
He made a nice lunch interspersed with conversation. He
catered to the weekend clientele, opening on Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday,
and other days only by special request. The house
up the hill that was a bar in 1964 was still going at a different pace,
serving the permanent villagers. The schoolhouse we
had slept in 1951 had gone derelict, with rotted shutters falling off
and
the sky showing through its roof. A “taxi” paid for
by the state now came daily to pick up the two children of school age
to
take them and others from other villages to Cifuentes, some twenty-five
kilometers way. Curiously, the church had been picked
up, whitewashed, and some older women were entering for rosary, a
ceremony
unknown in El Sotillo under Franco. Outside influence
had taken many forms.
All
the people we had known had died except the woman who had been our
young
maid in 1951, and with their passing I had lost my main source of
information
on the society and economy of the village. It still
had flocks of sheep and goats, and now four tractors,
for farming kept going. A new and profitable market
crop was white beans grown in the irrigated huertas by the
stream,
which before had raised vegetables for family consumption, another
evidence
of expanding involvement with the urban economy. The
census of 1991 counted 63 people, 39 males, 24 females, not much
changed
from 1977. These were the permanent residents. For
second and third generation city people who could trace ties to El
Sotillo
it had become a weekend town, as villages in the sierra closer to
Madrid
had done in the fifties for Madrileños recovering from the war.
The
two bars revealed two societies, the weekenders and the permanent, with
different ambitions and topics of conversation. Separate
societies but not divorced, however, for second and third cousinships
would
keep them on speaking terms.
[304]
Forty
years had waived their wand over the village. My memory
recalled the low stone houses and tile roofs that curved around the
church
and the schoolhouse and ran up the hillside to the threshing ground,
the
eras. From the hill across the stream, the
village, the vegetable plots beneath it, the eras above, and to
one side a sloping valley with green plots of grain presented a scene
of
integrated charm molded to an economy worked by human and animal
effort. Recent
buildings and paved streets, modern, functional artifacts of a new
generation,
had destroyed the intimate pattern caught in my old photographs. In
1950
Unamuno would easily have recognized the rural Spain that he traced
back
to Roman times, the bearer of his intrahistory. Today
it is gone. Telling evidence that this “modern”
history of Spain is the story of a past era.
When
one enters Spain by car, as my wife Valerie and I have on various
occasions,
one still senses the geography that makes Spain so special, the round
verdant
hills of Euskadi or the striking coast of Catalonia, giving way to the
vistas of Castile and Aragon, stark plains set against
mountain ranges.But the human infrastructure now
hardly differs from the one left behind. At the border
document checks and exchange bureaus no longer exist. One’s credit
cards
work in stores, and ATMs provide the same Euros as
in Spain’s neighbors. The road network burgeoning
under Franco now boasts many motorways, including toll roads of the
highest
quality. For the World’s Fair of 1992 (five hundred
years since Columbus’s voyage) a new highspeed rail line opened between
Madrid and Seville, and others will soon link Madrid with Barcelona and
France. Spain’s birthrate has fallen to one of the
lowest levels in Europe, and like other European countries Spain is
struggling
to absorb legal and illegal immigrants attracted by its standard of
living. Franco’s
authoritarian regime has become a bad dream; except for a diehard
minority
his imposing tomb at the Valley of the Fallen is a mere tourist
attraction. Spain
has become so clearly an integral part of the Western economic and
democratic
world that the theories of Ortega, Américo Castro, and the
others
cited at the outset of this book, explaining why in Spain not fitted
for
modern times, read like fanciful lucubrations.
Dicen
los viejos que en este país hubo una guerra
Y
que las Españas guardan aún el rencor de las viejas
deudas.
Dicen
los viejos que este país necesita palo largo y mano dura
Para
evitar lo peor.
Pero
yo sólo he visto gente que sufre y calla dolor y miedo,
Gente
que sólo desea su pan, su hembra y la fiesta en paz.
Libertad,
libertad, sin ira libertad.
Guárdate
tu miedo y tu ira,
Porque
hay libertad, sin ira libertad,
Y
si no la hay, sin duda la habrá.