1. On April 18, 1963 a slight, pale fifty-two-year-old Spaniard named Julian Grimau faced a military court in Madrid. The state accused him of having personally tortured and executed political and military prisoners in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and 1938, when he was head of the local Communist-dominated Criminal Investigation Brigade. Furthermore, the prosecution asserted, after fleeing to Russia at the end of the war, he had returned secretly to Spain in 1959 to become a leading member of the central committee of the outlawed Communist party, and he had directed subversive activities until his arrest in November 1962. The prosecution produced no witnesses, and Grimau, by rules of the military court, could not call any of his own. His counsel pointed out that evidence of his activities during the Civil War was all hearsay, and that there was none that he had plotted rebellion since his return in 1959. The military judges sentenced the defendant to death. In a final statement, Grimau proudly proclaimed, "I have been a Communist for nearly twenty-seven years, and a Communist I shall die." A few days later in Paris, lawyers from France, Britain, and Italy who had witnessed the trial described it as a tragic farce.

On the day after the trial, the Spanish cabinet and the Head of State, General Francisco Franco, reviewed the sentence. During the meeting an aide brought Franco a personal telegram from Nikita Khrushchev, prime minister of Russia, urging clemency. Despite some voices of moderation, the majority of the cabinet angrily rejected this plea and demanded execution of the sentence, a position with which [2] Franco concurred. At dawn on April 20, Grimau was led out to his prison courtyard, given a last cigarette, and shot by a firing squad.

Although this was the first known execution in Spain for political crimes since 1950,⁽¹⁾ it excited violent protests abroad. In London, Rome, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, and other cities, crowds denounced the Franco government. Police had to break up a violent demonstration outside the Spanish embassy in Paris, and in Brussels a mob assaulted and sacked the embassy.

One year later, on April 1, 1964, Franco officially proclaimed the beginning of festivities to celebrate "Twenty-Five Years of Peace." The date was the anniversary of the final surrender of the Republican army in Madrid in 1939. In the cities and smallest towns, large signs on public buildings proclaimed "25 años de PAZ" in modernistic letters. The press extolled the achievements of the quarter century under Franco, the first time since Roman days that Spain had been so long without war. During the next months different cities commemorated the occasion with folk dances, theater performances, and light opera (the nineteenth century zarzuelas). On Sunday, June 21, the Spanish soccer team met Russia's in the Madrid stadium to decide the European cup. When Franco arrived to preside over the encounter, a hundred and twenty thousand spectators gave him a prolonged standing ovation. All over Spain, wherever they could get to a television set, Spaniards tensely watched the game, and close plays called forth simultaneous shrieks from one end of the country to the other. Late in the game the Spaniards scored a goal to break a tie and win 2 to 1.

Much of what Spain was in the mid-1960's is revealed in the execution of Grimau and the celebration of 1964. A quarter of a century after the Civil War, mature people throughout Europe and America could not speak of Spain without reviving emotions from the thirties. At the same time, twenty-five years had so transformed Spain that in a very real sense it no longer was the country where the forces of communism, fascism, and democracy had staged a dress rehearsal for the Second World War. A new generation, more devoted to current sports than past politics, was rapidly replacing those who remembered the conflict (by 1964, 43 percent of the population had been born since the war). Spain's industry had grown, its cities expanded, its countryside been revolutionized in the most rapid transformation the country has ever known. Memories of the civil conflict were now hardly relevant, and yet they hung on, influencing political decisions at home and abroad.

Since classic times Spain has caught the imagination of other peoples. Stretching out toward the Atlantic from southwest Europe, reaching a fingertip toward a fingertip of Africa, it is a land unto itself. A [3] long coastline on the Mediterranean and another on the Atlantic have made it a fishing, seafaring, imperial country, yet next to Switzerland it has the highest average altitude in Europe, an arid land of sheep and goats, wheat, rye, and barley, vineyards and olive groves. In the north Galicia, Asturias, and the Basque Provinces hide from the rest of Spain behind the Cantabrian Mountains, turning their green hills toward the ocean winds. To the east a line of sierras cuts off the Mediterranean lowlands, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, and Malaga, from the high plateaus that form the heart of Spain. Jutting out from this eastern dorsal column, other ranges run like ribs to the west, slicing Spain further into Old Castile, Navarre, and Aragon in the north, New Castile and Extremadura in the center, and the low-lying valley of Andalusia in the south. Mountains impede communication and encourage regional characteristics. Only to the west does the peninsula open gently on the sea, but centuries ago the inhabitants of this fertile, moist zone broke off and formed Portugal. Beyond the seas, since the Middle Ages the Balearic Islands of the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa have also belonged to Spain.

Mountains and the sea have isolated Spain from the rest of Europe. Leaving the green plains and humid hills of France, the traveler who crosses the Pyrenees seems carried by magic to a faraway land of dazzling sun, clear dry air, and turquoise seas; of snow-crowned granite peaks, and gray rocky hills where sheep graze on fragrant herbs, partridges steal garbanzo beans, and bees gather exquisite honey; of silvery-green oak and olive trees outlined against the ochres and crimsons of the earth. Today the traveler can still see why Louis XIV is supposed to have said that Africa began at the Pyrenees, and why Romantic authors set their tales in Spain. Even man seems different, torn between the past and the present. Primitive towns all but disappear into the hillsides whence came the stones to build their houses. Mules still pull Roman plows and peasants harvest grain with sickles, while more prosperous farmers drive tractors and run gasoline threshers. At intervals new geometric apartments rise abruptly out of the fields like fortified rings built to protect medieval cities from some unknown danger the traveler may bring. Ragpickers with donkey carts collect the garbage from metropolises of a million people, and country priests in long black cassocks ride motor scooters to their scattered parishes. The clash of ages and cultures is that of present-day Spain itself.

2. Ruling over Spain since the Civil War has been one of the most remarkable political figures of the twentieth century. When the junta of officers who had risen against the government of the Spanish [4] Republic named General Francisco Franco Bahamonde Jefe del Estado (Head of State) on October 1, 1936, few outsiders had heard the name, and even in Spain other generals were more prominent. His supporters assumed the title would be temporary, and his enemies saw in him only a cat's-paw for Hitler and Mussolini, who were aiding the Nationalists, as the insurgent side was called. Three decades later Hitler and Mussolini were only figures in history, but Franco was still Head of State and even his bitterest foes had come to recognize his diplomatic acumen and his success in controlling his turbulent country.

Self-discipline, an iron will, tremendous energy, and a keen ability to judge and manipulate persons with whom he dealt enabled him to reach his position. He was born in 1892 in the port of El Ferrol in northwestern Spain. Family tradition would have made him an officer in the navy, but he was not accepted as a naval cadet. The army infantry academy at Toledo admitted him instead. Here he suffered the quips of his classmates because of his short stature--he is five feet three--and his stiff asceticism, more typical of a peasant or a monk than a soldier. He was commissioned in 1910, and two years later he volunteered for duty in Africa. Service in Spanish Morocco provided his first chance for recognition. Spain was conducting an intermittent and unpopular war with the Moorish tribes. Franco asked to join the newly formed Foreign Legion, which included some of the toughest mercenary soldiers in the world. He rose to become its commander in 1923. A story is told that one day an obstreperous legionnaire threw the contents of his mess kit in Franco's face as he was inspecting the troops. Franco betrayed no emotion and calmly finished the review. After dismissing the soldiers, he wiped his face and ordered the soldier to the firing squad. Years later he would show the same cold ruthlessness toward those he considered insubordinate on a national scale.

In 1926 France and Spain cooperated in an amphibious assault on the coast of Morocco that finally crushed the Moorish guerrillas. The plans were the work of Franco. In recognition, he was promoted to general at age thirty-four, the youngest general in Europe. The following decade saw him gradually achieve the position from which he could become master of Spain. In 1927, the king named him head of a new military academy at Zaragoza. From this post he witnessed the municipal elections in 1931 which led to the flight of the king and the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. The Republic closed the academy and assigned Franco to a military command in the provinces. After a conservative electoral victory in 1933, his fortune revived. The new minister of war admired his abilities, and when revolutionary miners captured Asturias in October 1934, Franco took charge of the counterattack, bringing troops from Africa that crushed the uprising. Eighteen months later senior generals considered his support vital to[5] the revolt they were planning against the Republic, for he could lead the forces in Morocco.

The ensuing months revealed his units to be the only disciplined and successful force on the Nationalist side. Despite his youth and inferior rank, the other leaders agreed in proclaiming him Generalísimo and Head of State. Soon he added the title Caudillo or "Leader," a title once worn by medieval warriors, and, in a characteristic style which reveals an almost mystical communion with Spain's rulers of old, the qualifying phrase "by the grace of God." In 1947 a plebiscite reestablished the monarchy, and at the same time confirmed Franco as Caudillo and Head of State and gave him the authority to select the future king, or a regent in his place. For over twenty years he named no king, and in lieu of a monarch Franco dominated Spain in regal solitude and majesty, a curious cross between a successful medieval pretender and a modern dictator, king in all but name and more than king in power.

He chose to reside in a former palace, El Pardo, on the small Manzanares River a few miles above where it flows into Madrid. To receive foreign diplomats he journeyed to the vast royal palace in the capital, and the ceremony invariably involved pomp and uniforms that recalled the nineteenth century. Like Louis XIV retiring to Versailles, Franco avoided the turbulent city that long opposed his rule, but in the austerity, piety, and sobriety of his life he has imitated a different Bourbon king, the eighteenth-century enlightened ruler of Spain, Charles III. He shared that king's love of hunting, though Franco had to settle for partridge rather than royal deer.

He has had few intimates, and most of these are close relatives; his wife, his daughter, an only child, her husband and children--he is a devoted grandfather. Only one or two persons not of the family could be called close friends. Except on rare occasions he has remained aloof from his ministers, his subordinates, and all others. He does not smoke or drink, and until his health began to fail in the late sixties he could spend interminable hours at meetings of the ministry, outlasting younger ministers. He has invariably kept his thoughts to himself until he is ready to announce his policy. The Sun King of Versailles never more effectively embodied his office in his personal bearing.

3. Franco's chief instrument for ruling Spain has been the ministry or "Government." From the outset he assumed the position of President of the Government, that is, prime minister. In most European countries one person--king or president--represents the state in diplomatic and official functions and another, usually the prime minister,[6] heads the working government. Franco took advantage of the title Head of State to fill both functions, thus allowing no one to rival his authority in any sphere.

The ministry has consisted of the heads of the different branches of government and the armed forces, each individually selected by the Head of State to advise him and carry out his decisions. Its numbers have varied; after 1962 it had nineteen members. Such political history as Spain had after the Civil War consisted in the changes that Franco made in the ministry. At first it included leading representatives of the three main groups on whose support he rested his regime--army, Catholic Church, and Falange (since 1937 the only legal political party)-- which Franco successfully played off against each other so none could challenge his position. After 1957 his tendency was to name youthful ministers chosen for their abilities, not their association with any group. Among these technocrats, as they were called, several leading figures belonged to the Catholic lay organization Opus Dei. Many observers saw in the appointment of Opus Dei ministers a seizure of power by this body, but Franco's decision to use them appears to have been aimed primarily at eliminating old rivalries and instituting much-needed changes in policy.

In 1962 Franco created the office of Vice-President of the Government, to become President of the Government (prime minister) automatically if Franco were to die. The man he chose was General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, who ranked directly below him in the army. In 1967 he replaced Muñoz Grandes by Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. A younger man of great energy, Carrero Blanco had long been one of Franco's closest collaborators, having been in the ministry since 1951 as subsecretary to the President. Long overshadowed by ministers with specific portfolios, he came more and more to public attention in the sixties. His appointment as Vice-President meant that for the time being, at least, he was the man Franco wanted to take over direction of the government if he were to be incapacitated.

Other government institutions existed more for show than for work. The vacant throne long had various claimants. Most conspicuous were Don Juan, the son of the last king, who lived in Portugal, and his son Juan Carlos, apparently Franco's favorite. Franco invited Juan Carlos to be educated in Spain, and in the sixties the young prince moved into a palace near El Pardo with his Greek wife and their children. A third claimant was Hugo Carlos de Borbon Parma, heir to the Carlist pretenders of the nineteenth century who denied the legitimacy of all reigning Spanish monarchs after the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833. Hugo was born in France and married a Dutch princess, but he had a strong following among the Carlists of northern Spain. Franco, in typical fashion, used his authority to name the next king to keep all parties and their followers courting his favor.

[7] Foreseeing the possibility that Franco would die without naming a king, the plebiscite of 1947 which proclaimed the monarchy also established a three-man Council of Regency to rule temporarily in the event of Franco's death. The Council of Regency was to call at once a meeting of a thirteen-member Council of the Realm appointed by Franco from among the leaders of the most influential bodies in Spain. Meeting with the ministry, the Council of the Realm would select either a king or a regent. Until such an eventuality, however, neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of the Realm had any meaningful function, and they existed more on paper than in fact.

Final approval of the next king lay with the Cortes, which were the Spanish parliament. (The name is traditional, going back to the estates of the medieval kingdoms of Spain.) The Cortes were the major political institution in the constitutional monarchy before 1923 and in the Republic, with the powers of other Western parliaments. Franco's victory eliminated parliamentary government, and in 1942 he revived the Cortes in much different form. Part of their five-hundred-odd deputies represented the municipal councils, part the official unions of employers and employees called syndicates, part were ex-officio deputies from the universities and other educational and cultural bodies, and fifty deputies as well as the president of the Cortes were named personally by the Head of State. No opponent of the regime could filter through the system, and for years the Cortes were but a rubber stamp for legislation drawn up by the ministry.

While officially the syndicates sent representatives to the Cortes, these deputies in fact represented the official political party, the Falange (Phalanx), which controlled the syndicates. Founded during the Republic in imitation of foreign fascist parties, the Falange became the official party of the Nationalists during the war. Franco named himself its head and outlawed all other parties. Long considered a major pillar of the regime, the Falange declined drastically in power and prestige after 1955. Even its name fell into eclipse; official statements referred to it as the Movimiento (Movement), a term that had been applied vaguely to the entire Nationalist cause during the war and now suggested that the Falange was not a political party at all but a union of all Spaniards. The leaders of the Falange worked steadily after 1960 to get Franco to "institutionalize" it, that is, to give it constitutional recognition by making its governing body, the National Council of the Movimiento, an integral part of the Cortes. More radical Falangists, worried by its decline, sought to turn it into a genuine labor party. They wished it to oppose the threat of capitalism, which they found in the alleged control by Opus Dei of the ministry and key sectors of the economy.

After years of anticipation, Franco provided an Organic Law of the State that revised the structure of the Cortes. After submitting it to a [8] plebiscite he issued it on January 10, 1967. This was the last of a series of fundamental laws establishing the constitutional structure of the regime, the earliest of which had been promulgated during the Civil War. The new law created 108 elected "family representatives" to sit in the 563-member Cortes. Chosen by male heads of families and married women, they were to be the first directly elected deputies in Spain since 1936. The law also granted the wish of the Falangists by raising the National Council of the Movimiento to the position of an upper house of parliament, with the power to rule on the constitutionality of laws. It was to be composed of 113 members, forty of them appointed by the Head of State and the others chosen in part by the Cortes and in part by the syndicates. The law also empowered the Cortes to elect a majority of the Council of the Realm, which in turn was now to propose three candidates for President of the Government to the Head of State for his final selection.

These changes turned out to be more liberal on paper than in fact. Franco did not name a President of the Government and continued to fill the position himself. In June 1967 the Cortes stipulated that all candidates for deputy must swear allegiance to the principles of the Movimiento and made difficult the nomination of independent candidates. Nevertheless, in the first election in October 1967 many independent candidates defeated those supported by the Movimiento. For several years, some deputies had been questioning official policies in the sessions of the Cortes, and younger ones more openly in committees. When the new Cortes met early in 1968, a large number of the family representatives began to attack directly the economic policies of the government. While still under Franco's control, the Cortes had become an institution that could easily be transformed into a true parliament if the regime should change.

Beneath the central organs of government, laws are enforced and policy carried out by appointed officials who receive authority from above, from the ministers and ultimately from the Head of State. Each of the fifty provinces has a civil governor responsible to the minister of gobernación (interior). The minister of gobernación also appoints the alcaldes (mayors) of the municipalities of more than 10,000 population, and the civil governors name those of towns below this size. All but the smallest towns have ayuntamientos (municipal councils) chosen in part by the heads of families, in part by the syndicates, and in part by the civil governors, but real authority--control over the police--lies with the alcalde and civil governor. As a representative of the state, the alcalde is vested with a status of his own. Once in a small Castilian town I observed that the alcalde had his head in a bandage. An outsider who wore a tie and felt hat, out of keeping with the peasant clothes of the townsmen, he was an unpopular ruler and had been beaten by some local citizens in a fit of anger. These were now in [9] prison awaiting arraignment for attacking "an authority" (una autoridad). If the alcalde got well in two weeks their crime would be minor (levé); if not, it would be serious (grave). I did not learn the outcome.

To assist the civil governors and alcaldes in keeping order, the state has various police forces. In the cities are the Armed Police, known familiarly as the Grises (Grays) because of their dull gray uniforms, in the countryside the Civil Guard, famous for their green uniforms and shiny black broadbrimmed hats with the brim turned up in the back-- the better to be stood against a wall and shot, their enemies say. All sizable towns of rural Spain have barracks of the Civil Guard, typically a heavy stone building with strong sentry boxes at the corners near the end of the main street. Towns too small for barracks can expect regular visits by two guards on patrol, the famous parejas (couples) often seen walking beside country roads. Once the civil guards were tough veterans of war, but in the sixties young recruits who had shed no more blood than that of the family pig became numerous. The guards have their own hierarchy of officers, and the local lieutenant of the Civil Guard shares with the alcalde the distinction of being una autoridad.

In a crisis the minister of gobernación or a civil governor can appeal to the local military commander. Spain has eleven such officers, known as Captains General, a term that goes back to colonial days. After the war military forces were stationed not only where they might repulse a possible invasion but where they could swoop down rapidly on a city in revolt. Army barracks were a conspicuous feature of the highways leading out of Madrid. The regime also relied on the army in a more subtle way. Acts of sabotage and such political offenses as subversion and circulating illegal political tracts were placed under military jurisdiction, where the rights of the accused were limited to a weak plea by a court-appointed attorney. The court martial of Grimau was but the most spectacular of such cases. Until 1963 a law made the spreading of "false or tendentious news" an act of military rebellion. Even those guilty of minor offenses, such as students caught throwing stink bombs in university buildings, were tried by military courts. Partly bowing to the world outcry over Grimau, in November 1963 the regime established a civilian Tribunal of Public Order to try such nonviolent political offenses as spreading false rumors and subversive propaganda. Here defendants could call witnesses, but the new court did not become known for its leniency. Acts of force against the state remained under military jurisdiction.

For the army to be the most trustworthy pillar of the regime was a new phenomenon. In the nineteenth century generals frequently rose against the government, they failed to defend the king in 1931, and they took the lead in overthrowing the Second Republic. However, the generals have been devoted to Franco, whom they admire for his success in the Civil War. Nevertheless, they control the most powerful [10] force in the country. They are in the best position to take over Spain in a crisis--if civil turmoil were to place in doubt the form of government after the death of Franco, for instance. Significantly, the two men named vice-president since the position was created have been high officers in the army and navy.

For over a century the army has played an important role in forming Spanish society. In the sixties only a minority of its 200,000 men were career soldiers. Every year some 100,000 recruits were drafted for eighteen months. They came largely from the countryside, where the annual departure of the quinta, as the group of conscripts is traditionally called, was the occasion for local festivities. Sent to different regions of Spain, mixed together with men from other provinces, taught some reading and writing as well as military skills, the conscripts returned broadened and molded by the experience. They departed local boys and came back Spaniards, ready for marriage and adult life. At a higher social level, male university students had to go into the university militia. They received training for two summers and six months and came out either sergeants or alferezes, the lowest rank of officer. In the process their political and religious beliefs were closely supervised.

4. Franco has also delegated the formation of Spaniards to the church. The present union of church and state was worked out during and after the Civil War and embodied in a concordat in 1953. The church received surveillance over all education in Spain, public and private. After the war Catholic doctrine became a required subject in all schools from primary grades through the university, and the church received the authority to censor textbooks. Most children went to state elementary schools, but schools run by religious orders provided five-sixths of secondary education. Once in an elementary school in a cabeza de partido (county seat) of Castile I witnessed the celebration of the Festival of the Book, April 23, anniversary of the death of Cervantes. The pupils were standing lined up in a long hall, boys at one end and girls at the other (the law require the sexes to be separate in elementary and secondary schools), while the principal delivered an interminable speech to them and to a small number of local dignitaries. He informed the children that the occasion should be kept as a saint's day. He encouraged them to read good books but to shun bad ones. Lest they inadvertently read a bad one, he told them always to ask their parents or a teacher or their priest before beginning a book. The best book to read, he said, was Don Quixote, except, of course, for the catechism. (He obviously meant the children's edition of Cervantes' classic, expurgated of "dangerous passages.")

[11] In ways like this the state and the church have reinforced each other. Benjamin Welles, long the New-YorkTimes correspondent in Madrid, obtained figures that in the early sixties about half the men in rural Spain went to church regularly, but only 5 to 10 percent of the workers in the cities.⁽²⁾ In small towns the priest, who frequently had tended his flock for years, had strong moral authority. But everywhere Spaniards, with rare exceptions, must be baptized, married, and buried by the church. Baptismal certificates are needed to go to school. In return for the authority accorded the church, Franco obtained by the concordat the right to nominate candidates for bishoprics, submitting three names from which the Pope would select one. Spanish rulers traditionally had such a right, but no other European power now enjoys it. Like Napoleon, Franco has tied the church to the state as a spiritual police force.

The alliance of the state, the church, and the army is marked time and time again in public ceremonies. In many cities the processions of Holy Week are the greatest festival of the year. The most famous at Valladolid, Seville, and Granada attract thousands of tourists. Members of the lay confraternities march silently in long robes, hooded faces, and peaked hats reminiscent of the victims of the Inquisition. In their midst rise carved images representing the Passion of Christ and the sorrows of Mary, many of them marvels of baroque sculpture, borne aloft on platforms by penitants who stagger forward in slow rhythmical motions not unlike the rowing of chained galley slaves. Instead of the mallet of the galley captain, however, trumpets and muffled drums of military bands beat out a deathly march. The church finds nothing incongruous in the scene. The presence of the army signifies not Caesar's troops who arrested Jesus but the secular power that protects the Christian faith.

Nevertheless, the church is not a branch of the government, and within it a strong element of opposition to the regime has emerged. In the 1950's some prelates became critical of official policies. Encouraged by the example of Pope John XXIII, they urged the church to demand greater social justice. Younger priests became even more outspoken. Some of them helped organize poor parishioners to improve their condition even when such activities brought them into conflict with the civil governors. Such was the case of a young Catalan priest I met in a remote parish in central Spain. He had been trained for social work in the Leo XIII Institute in Rome and on his return had organized the inhabitants of a slum in a provincial capital to bring in their first running water, in conflict with official plans for the growth [12] of the city. Under his leadership they contributed money and labor to install the water main. When the alcalde and the civil governor objected, his bishop transferred him to the mountain parish where I met him. The incident exemplified the tensions within the church, where young priests challenged older, state-selected bishops.

It was not accidental that many of the restless priests were Basques and Catalans. Catalonia in northeastern Spain and the Basque Provinces at the other end of the Pyrenees have languages and cultures of their own and a long tradition of opposition to rule from Madrid. In the Civil War both peoples fought against Franco, and since then they have sullenly resented his iron rule, exploding sporadically into acts of violence. Because of the church's independence from direct civilian authority, the clergy could demonstrate their opposition with relative impunity. Priests conducted services in the local languages, which had been banned for official usage, and in this simple way helped keep alive a sense of local patriotism. Resistance movements in both regions had the support of the lower clergy. In 1960 about 350 Basque priests signed a letter to their bishop protesting police brutality and the violation of human rights. In 1965 the government brought several Basque and Catalan priests to trial in Madrid. Over two hundred priests came from their regions to attend the trials and demonstrate their support. More than one hundred priests and monks marched in a group to police headquarters in Barcelona on May 10, 1966 to protest the mistreatment of an arrested university student. They refused to disperse and were beaten and kicked by the police. Priests were active in the underground organization Euzkadi ta Akatasuna (the Basque Nation and Liberty), which was responsible for acts of terrorism in 1968.

The church displayed its disenchantment with the regime in an official capacity by organizing Catholic workers' brotherhoods known as the Hermandades Obreras de Acción Católica (HOAC). Cardinal Enrique Pla, archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, founded them in 1947, as an organ of the Spanish branch of the society of laymen called Catholic Action. The activities of the HOAC were justified as a form of religious proselytizing.

In the 1950's the HOAC made little headway. Workers suspected their motives and for opposite reasons so did the more conservative bishops. Their big opportunity came in April 1962 with a series of strikes. The coal miners of Asturias in the north had a long history of militancy. Recently they had protested the failure of their wages to rise along with those of workers in the nearby government-controlled steel plant at Aviles. They petitioned through the official syndicates, but as Spaniards say, "las cosas de palacio van despacio," affairs of state move slowly. On April 6, workers in one mine struck for several hours. Since the war, strikes have been illegal, and seven leaders were arrested. The [13] next day between fifty and sixty thousand Asturian coal miners walked out in protest. Although official censorship kept news of the strike out of the press and off the air, knowledge of it flew through Spain, helped by the broadcasts of Radio Free Spain (Radio España Independiente) from Communist Czechoslovakia. Workers in shipyards and metal trades in the Basque port of Bilbao, miners in the Sierra Morena and Andalusia in southern Spain, industrial workers in Barcelona and elsewhere, perhaps a hundred thousand in all, staged walkouts in sympathy. Although the government decreed martial law in Asturias and sent in four thousand soldiers, it hesitated to use force against so massive and peaceful a demonstration. Partly it feared foreign reaction. The Asturian strike lasted two months. In the end the government conceded most of the workers' demands for wage increases. Although police arrested two hundred and fifty miners after the strike, Franco could not hide the fact that for the first time under his rule workers had conducted a successful strike. Spanish labor was recovering its prewar position as a powerful and independent force.

Official publications blamed foreign agents led by Communists for instigating the strike. In truth, once the strike had begun labor unions and socialist parties in Western Europe and the United States sent funds to support the strikers, and Communists came from abroad along with others to encourage and direct them. But the strongest Spanish force behind the strike, besides the anger and determination of the miners themselves, was the young priests who headed local branches of the HOAC. During the strike police arrested the president of the HOAC and the president and vice-president of the affiliated youth movement, the Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC). The HOAC denied taking part in the strikes, and Cardinal Pla personally protested the arrests to Franco. Nevertheless, the HOAC gained wide favor among workers for the actions of their local leaders. This event belied the church's reputation as a monolythic bastion of the Franco regime.

5. The demonstration of proletarian power in 1962 was a direct threat to the syndicates, one of the major instruments of the regime. Originally established during the Civil War on the model of the state corporations of Fascist Italy, the twenty-four syndicates are vertical labor-management unions. Some of them group together workers and employers in an industry, others cover the professions, agricultural workers, and even university students. In 1962 their membership both male and female was about 3 million industrial workers, 3 million employers, and 5.5 million in other categories including agriculture. (How inclusive their membership was can be judged from the fact that the total active [14] labor population in 1960 was calculated at 9.5 million men and 2.1 million women.) The syndicates collected and disbursed retirement, sickness, and other social insurance funds, and acted as employment agencies. In theory they provided a channel for collective bargaining of labor disputes, but in effect they were the institution through which the government enforced its control of wages and working conditions. In 1957 Franco named a new minister responsible for the syndicates, Jose Solis Ruiz. The latter instituted a policy of enlarging workers' control over the syndicates. He multiplied the number of enlaces, representatives to the syndicates elected by the workers, and encouraged independent candidates to run for the office. As a result in 1963 various leaders of the 1962 strikes were elected, whereupon the government, violating Solis' objectives, tried them for their previous activities. Since higher syndical officials were elected indirectly and since strikes were illegal, the syndicates did not become a viable representative of the interests of labor. During the 1963 elections the HOAC and the JOC demanded free unions and the right to strike as prerequisites for fulfilling the social doctrines of the church. Strikes and slowdowns continued to be the most effective means of protest. Official figures recognized 777 "labor conflicts" in 1963 and 484 in 1964, most of them in Asturias, the Basque Provinces, Catalonia, and Madrid--the industrialized areas of Spain.

A new form of labor opposition developed in the middle sixties. Within the structure of the syndicates, the enlaces could communicate officially only with the local headquarters of the syndicates. There was no provision for enlaces of different companies in the same industry to discuss grievances together or to formulate joint proposals. In various industries independent-minded enlaces began to meet together to do just this, and from here it was an easy step to planning active labor opposition to achieve their objectives. About 1966 these informal groups of workers' representatives became known as "workers' commissions."

In the elections for enlaces held at the end of 1966 the workers returned the activists in force. Solis Ruiz reacted energetically. The government declared the workers' commissions illegal and sought to arrest their leaders, but it was unable to destroy them. The commissions had become so well organized that they called work stoppages, walkouts, and demonstrations at a moment's notice, paralyzing key industries. In April 1967 at their instigation five thousand workers fought police in open battle in Bilbao, and in October in Madrid and Barcelona police had to use force to break up demonstrations which chanted, "Liberty!" "Unity!" and "Workers' Commissions, yes; Franco, no!"⁽³⁾ In July 1967 the workers' commissions clandestinely held their first [15] national congress in Madrid. Some seventy deputies from forty-six provinces attended representing local commissions.⁽⁴⁾ Much of the credit for the ability of the commissions to defy the government and avoid the police belonged to radical priests, who permitted the associations to hold secret meetings in church buildings.

Violent active opposition to the regime was not a monopoly of the proletariat. Beginning in 1956, many students at the University of Madrid, followed less daringly by those of Barcelona and the smaller provincial universities, protested vociferously the regulations that governed their academic lives. A small number of courageous professors supported them. The major objection of the reform-minded students was to their enforced membership in the student syndicate, the Sindicato Español Universitario (SEU), which was controlled by the Falange. The students wished to elect syndicate representatives of their own choice who would have authority over the SEU, with the ultimate objective of obtaining freedom from censorship and from state control of the courses taught at the universities.

The opposition of the students to the structure of their official syndicate made them sympathetic to the demands of the workers for their own syndicates, although university students by and large came from professional and employers' families. Many students also openly favored some kind of socialist state, accepting the view of the left-wing political opposition that the regime furthered capitalist exploitation of the masses. On May 5, 1962 about one thousand students in Madrid demonstrated in favor of the Asturian strikers until dispersed by the police. Trouble continued intermittently thereafter. In the winter of 1964-65, Madrid students organized a series of lectures on the cultural situation in Spain. When the rector prohibited one of the lectures, on February 20, 1965, students responded with a petition for academic freedom. A silent march by some 5000 students (of 32,000 enrolled in the university) was dispersed by police and some students were seriously injured. The protests continued, backed by a few professors. In Barcelona 17,000 students boycotted classes and strikes spread to the smaller universities. Eventually the government conceded the demand to recognize freely elected syndicate delegates, but it refused absolutely to allow freedom of expression, specifically maintaining censorship of student newspapers. The professors received much more severe treatment. Despite the time-honored sanctity of the university chair in Spain, three were expelled and two suspended. Among those expelled were Jose Aranguren, professor of philosophy in Madrid, a liberal Catholic, and Enrique Tierno Galvan, professor of political science at Salamanca and a leading spokesman for socialism in Spain, both of them men of the highest reputation.

[16] Student resistance continued unabated. Agitation spread in the following winter to Barcelona, where students demonstrated against the SEU, were beaten by police, and eventually went out on strike. The government responded by closing the university on April 27, 1966. In May, as noted above, over one hundred priests and monks marched to protest police brutality and in turn were clubbed. Madrid students conducted a sympathy strike and again demanded the right to associate freely outside the SEU. The reaction of the government was once more a compromise between repression and concessions, the same tactic employed with the workers, but it was unable to establish peace. Student strikes were worse than ever in the fall of 1967.

The opposition of students, priests, and workers to the regime was a spontaneous reaction to the situation under Franco. As one could expect, those who had fought Franco during the Civil War tried to attract these forces of active resistance. The three largest parties on the Republican side in the war were the Socialists, the anarchists, and the Communists. Almost all their leaders left the country after their defeat and thereafter sought to maintain a following in Spain from abroad. Within Spain the parties had to operate clandestinely, so that none had a large organization, but they hoped to win sympathy and support for their ideologies among the large numbers of people who had become disenchanted with the regime and thus prepare a following for the day when they would come out in the open, presumably after the death or retirement of Franco.

Of the three groups, the anarchists had the least success. Before 1936 the center of their strength had been the industrial workers of Catalonia, and they sought to preserve this base, encouraging strikes and other forms of protest. They were not part of a well-organized international movement which could provide financial help, and as a result, even in Catalonia, they lost ground among the proletariat to the Communists and Socialists. Elsewhere the anarchists were blamed for acts of terrorism, such as placing small bombs in Madrid streets and public buildings in 1963 and succeeding years in an attempt to scare away tourists, but such activity was ineffectual and was evidently the work of a dissident minority organized from France.

After the Civil War the Communists broke with most other Republicans in exile and operated on their own out of Paris. They were the most militant party and eventually penetrated the syndicates, the Falange, and the student movement. They supported strikes along with the other parties, but they did not seem bent on violent upheaval. (The prosecution could produce no evidence that Grimau had plotted rebellion.) Since Spaniards remembered Russia as the sole power to aid the Republic in the Civil War and since they saw the United States form a military alliance with Franco, the cold war enhanced the [17] popularity of the Communist party. Radio Free Spain in Prague effectively exploited the connection between the international situation and Spanish developments. The split between Russia and Red China hurt the Spanish Communists after 1960, however, for their followers by inclination admired China's uncompromising stand against the United States (an understandable sympathy for Fidel Castro's Cuba also contributed to their sinophile leanings), while the source of their foreign support was the European Communist parties, which remained loyal to Russia.

Most successful of the three parties in winning sympathy in Spain were the Socialists. Democratic and reformist in spirit since the end of the Civil War, they alone gained a significant following in professional circles. Lawyers and university professors became prominent among their leaders. Abroad they were long headed by Indalecio Prieto, remembered as a forceful middle-of-the-road minister of the Republic. But Prieto died in Mexico in 1962, and his successor, Rodolfo Llopis, although also a minister of the Republic, lacked Prieto's reputation. Within Spain the police repeatedly penetrated the Socialist organization, arrested its leaders, and sent them to long terms in prison. That the Socialists continued to make headway testified to a deep desire among many Spaniards to transform Spain peacefully along Western European lines.

These parties presented no real threat to the regime, for there was no danger of the government falling into their hands. They depended for financial help on foreigners and Spanish refugees, many of whom were motivated by romantic memories of the Civil War. They could also thank the regime. The press continually reminded Spaniards that Franco saved Spain from the Republic, which, it said, had fallen into the hands of international Marxist Communism and godless freemasonry. By parading the specter of the Republic, Franco encouraged his enemies to turn to its defenders. On the whole, however, Spaniards did not take enthusiastically to direction from abroad, feeling that their struggles were no longer those of the Civil War and that men who lived and suffered in Spain were more qualified leaders.

This spirit helps account for the success of the Christian Democrats, who could trace their ancestry not to the Republican cause but to the moderate Catholic and monarchist parties who at the time supported the Nationalists. Under the Republic a young lawyer named Jose Maria Gil Robles brought these parties together into an alliance called the CEDA (Confederation Española de Derechas Autónomas). The CEDA was banned in 1937 along with all other parties except the Falange. Gil Robles was in France at the outbreak of the war, and he did not return to Spain permanently until 1954. Two years later he publicly proclaimed his opposition to the regime by defending four young men accused of [18] inciting university students to rebel. Thereafter Gil became recognized as the leader of the Catholic opposition, which took the name of Christian Democracy, with a vague program in favor of constitutional monarchy, religious freedom, and unity with Europe. For some Catholics he was too moderate, and a radical left wing of the Christian Democrats grew up under Manuel Giménez Fernandez, a professor of canon law in the University of Seville.

By 1960 the active opposition within Spain was a vital force arising out of the contemporary situation, not a morbid attempt to fight the Civil War over again. Many leading figures who were once associated with Franco broke with him, took public stands against the government, and as a result suffered loss of position, prison, or exile. Probably most of these considered themselves Christian Democrats or Socialists. In either case they were guided by a desire to merge Spain with Western Europe. Among the Christian Democrats one could include Professor Aranguren of Madrid, who lost his chair in 1965, and Pedro Lain Entralgo, rector of the University of Madrid in the 1950's. In the Socialist camp were Dionisio Ridruejo, once the leading theorist of the Falange and now an outspoken enemy of Franco and protagonist of a genuinely democratic system, and Antonio Tovar, rector of the University of Salamanca before 1965, who left Spain in disgust at the dismissal of Aranguren and his colleagues and went to teach in Germany. All of these men were leading Falangists in earlier days and became disillusioned with what they felt was a betrayal of their ideals. They were the real leaders of the opposition among students and intellectuals, who could identify with their aims and fate.

So far the regime has been able to deny political freedom to the opposition parties. After the reform of the Cortes in 1966, the Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists considered presenting candidates for family representatives. The subsequent official prohibition of all candidates who would not swear to the principles of the National Movement caused them to drop their plans, convinced that they could not give their candidates effective support.⁽⁵⁾ Nevertheless, like any political authority, the regime must recognize the demands of the forces that provide the sinews of society. This is why it has had to meet the protests of students and workers with concessions as well as force. Since the beginning of the century industrial workers on one hand and engineers, technicians, and professional men on the other--the latter group represented in recent conflicts by the university students--have struggled to wrest control of the country from those classes that have been dominant--landowners, manufacturers, conservative clergy, the military. The recent evolution of Spain, which has more and more [19] rapidly followed the economic and social course of the Western world, has been achieved by the owners of special skills and knowledge as much as by those who control capital and more than by military men. This evolution has provided the basis for the successful defiance of the regime by the new groups.
 

6. In the 1960's Spain experienced the most rapid transformation in its history. From a country that had been primarily rural, backward industrially and in agricultural methods, it was evolving into an industrialized, urbanized, mechanized society. Peasant costumes and local dances died out in the first half of the century; and now the quaint old ways of plowing and threshing with mules and oxen, of charcoal fires and oil lamps, of wagons and pack animals, were retreating into the remote, hilly areas, preparatory to disappearing altogether. The generation that has grown up since the Civil War will be the last to recall much of what has been the famed charm of Spain. Their memories will be of an old way of life vanishing before the spread of modern civilization, as Spaniards everywhere seek to raise their standard of living.

A few figures will suggest the magnitude of the transformation. In 1950 Spain had under 90,000 registered passenger automobiles. In 1957 the figure had doubled, and by 1966 there were 1,050,000. In addition Spain had in 1966 almost 500,000 commercial vehicles (as compared to 60,000 in 1950) and 1,200,000 motorcycles; in other words, one motorized vehicle for each eleven persons. Traffic jams and smog had come to plague the cities. Returning to Madrid from a Sunday in the mountains, a family could spend four hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic along a new four-lane highway to make the fifty-mile drive. In 1953 Spain did not produce automobiles--in 1958 it built 33,000, in 1965, 156,000, plus 93,000 commercial vehicles. The same growth took place in other areas. Thanks to a vast plan for constructing dams for irrigation and hydroelectric power inaugurated early in the century and pushed energetically after the war, the output of electricity doubled every seven years. In 1950 Spain produced 7 billion kilowatt hours, in 1966, 37 billion. There were 650,000 telephones in 1950, 2,800,000 in 1965. In 1958 Spain inaugurated a national television network and by 1962 transmitters covered the entire peninsula. From 50,000 television sets in 1960 the figure rose to 1,750,000 five years later. To understand the significance of these figures the imagination must translate them into more rapid and efficient transportation for farmers and manufacturers, into weekends in the countryside, into the spread of factories and workshops run by electricity, of dwelling places and storefronts [20] with electric lights, telephone conversations for business and pleasure, and into hours spent in front of television sets watching activities hitherto not accessible to the vast majority.⁽⁶⁾

Perhaps the most expressive statistics are from the census. The population of Spain has grown steadily in the twentieth century, and accompanying this growth has been a migration from the countryside to the cities. These developments are not new, and they are a feature of the modern history of all Western countries. By comparison with the rest of Europe, Spain's growth in the twentieth century has been rapid. From 18.8 million in 1900, its population has risen to 30.4 million in 1960, a rise of 62 percent. In the same period France and England grew 21 percent and Italy 49 percent. (The United States grew 135 percent.)

Another striking feature in Spain's growth is the migration to the cities. About 600,000 Spaniards abandoned the countryside between 1960 and 1966. What was once a stream has become a torrent, increasing as time passes. In 1900 only eighteen cities had reached 50,000 population, and they accounted for 15 percent of the total population. In 1965, sixty-eight cities had 50,000 or more people, and they had 41 percent of the total. To visualize the development better, one can look at the growth of these sixty-eight cities relative to the rest of Spain since 1900. In 1900 they had 3.8 million people, 22 percent of the total Spanish population. Between 1900 and 1950 they grew 5.3 million, while Spain as a whole was growing 10.8 million; that is, the cities accounted for almost half of the nation's growth in those fifty years. Between 1950 and 1960 the same sixty-eight cities grew 2.1 million, while Spain grew 2.5 million; 85 percent of the growth of the decade was accounted for by the larger cities. Figures for 1965 based on estimates rather than a census show that the cities grew 1.8 million since 1960, while Spain grew only 1.5 million; that is, they absorbed all the growth of Spain and some 300,000 in addition. Between 1900 and 1950 these sixty-eight cities grew 19 percent per decade while the rest of Spain grew 7 percent per decade. The available figures show that between 1960 and 1965 they grew 35 percent per decade and the rest of the country, including the smaller cities as well as the countryside, was losing population at the rate of 6 percent per decade. According to these recent data, which are indicative of trends even if not fully reliable, all of central and southern Spain lost population between 1960 and 1965 except for those provinces with rapidly growing capitals: Madrid, Valladolid, Seville, Cadiz, and Malaga.

[21] That urbanization should accelerate so rapidly after 1960 can be explained largely by the expansion of industry. Appreciable growth in industrial output began about 1953, and it became remarkable after 1959. In that year the government instituted what was known as the Stabilization Plan, which freed trade and industry from many state controls and attracted foreign loans and investments. Inflation in the following years encouraged industrial expansion while it set the stage for the labor strife of 1962. The gross national product rose about 5 percent per year.

In 1963 the government announced a four year Development Plan (Plan de Desarrollo) to go into effect the following January. Copied after recent French four-year plans, it aimed to direct the economic development of the country toward Spain's eventual integration with the rest of Europe. The plan called for a 6 percent per year growth in the national product based on a massive investment program of 5.5 billion dollars over four years. Sixty percent was to be provided by private investors, most of it from abroad. To end the concentration of industry in the north and northeast and in Madrid, the plan offered lower taxes and easier credit to industries that would move into seven secondary cities, or "poles of development" as they were called, four in central Spain (Valladolid, Burgos, Zaragoza, and Seville) and three on the Atlantic coast (La Coruna, Vigo, and Huelva.) The government's share of investment was to go into the expansion of programs already under way whose usefulness had been demonstrated by the achievements of the twenty-five years of peace. Mostly these were in the areas of agriculture, utilities, and transportation. They included the redistribution of farmlands by collecting small scattered plots into efficient holdings ("parcelary concentration"), the mechanization of agriculture, and the extension of irrigation. The plan called for 75,000 hectares of new irrigated land per year; since 1950 the extension of irrigation had averaged 40,000 hectares per year (250 hectares equal one square mile). The plan projected 120,000 hectares of reforestation per year; slightly higher than the 114,000 per year achieved since 1953. Construction of more hydroelectric installations and the building of two atomic power plants would increase the output of electricity, while 1.3 million telephones would be added to the 2.3 million in service. The government would build roads, railroads, and facilities for maritime and air transport. Finally the plan called for government subsidies and direction for social and cultural progress. Industrial expansion would produce 340,000 jobs, to be filled by persons leaving the countryside, whose emigration, along with the improvements planned in agriculture, would raise the average rural income. To house the new arrivals in the cities, 180,000 dwelling units were to be built each year, 155,000 of them with government subsidies. Spain had built about 70,000 per year from 1951 to 1960. And to educate Spaniards for better living and [22] better jobs, schools would be expanded and teachers trained to handle more students at all levels, from elementary to university and technical. The development plan is worth describing in such detail because it summarized the objectives of those in command of Spain in the 1960's and indicated the progress being made. Partly because of a favorable world situation, Spain reached most of the goals more rapidly than anticipated. Industrial output grew 9 percent per year from 1964 to 1966. In 1960 the average annual income per person was under $300; by 1966 it had more than doubled, to about $640.⁽⁷⁾ Early in 1967 the government made public a second four-year plan for 1967-71, which was to emphasize the improvement of agriculture, transportation, and education.

Faced with such economic growth, observers spoke of a "Spanish miracle." Much of the explanation for Spain's success lay in the appearance of a new breed of Spaniard. Hitherto its wealthy classes had been timid and skeptical, lacking an orientation toward investment in industry. Those responsible for the recent expansion have been industrial and governmental technocrats who have come of age in the hard years since the Civil War. Some of them obtained posts in the cabinet in 1957 and were able to use the authority of the government to achieve their ends. These included the minister of commerce, Alberto Ullastres, a professor of economics; the minister of finance, Mariano Navarro Rubio, previously a director of the Banco Popular; and the technical secretary general in charge of drawing up the four-year development plans, Laureano Lopez Rodó, a professor of administrative law. All three belonged to the lay Catholic organization Opus Dei. Although the religious objective of Opus Dei is to proselytize for the church, within Spain those of its members who reached positions of authority in government, business, and banking worked to modernize the economy by encouraging private activity. They hoped to bring Spain into the European economic orbit through membership in the Common Market, most of whose members have economically progressive Catholic governments.

Within Spain the technocrats, both inside and outside Opus Dei, have appealed to the interests of those Spaniards who have capital to invest, lands to improve, or industries to modernize and who are willing to use their resources actively. Landowners, merchants, manufacturers, and persons with capital (which includes the religious orders) stand to reap more than their fair share of the benefits of this new progress. [23] Engineers, technicians, and skilled workers have also been favored groups. Although the expanding economy has also improved the condition of the other professional and laboring classes, they have lagged behind and therefore struggle forcefully for better treatment. Worst off have been the small farmers and agricultural laborers, and their young people have reacted by fleeing the countryside.

The institutional link that unites the advantaged interest groups has been the great private banks of Spain. Their directors cooperate with the government in formulating economic plans and directing investment. They float stock issues and have a controlling influence over many industries. Their power spreads out of the cities through the countryside. Any cabeza de partido will boast large modern buildings in its center. Invariably most of them are local branches of the great banks. In 1962 six major Spanish banks joined four Portuguese banks to form a consortium to promote the financial and industrial expansion of both countries, approaching foreign banks for funds for investment. The consortium was apparently the achievement of young Opus Dei bankers. One of the banks was the Banco Popular, known to be controlled by the Opus Dei, of which Navarro Rubio, the minister of finance, had once been a director.

After 1957 the technocrats set out to attract foreign investments and promote policies that would bring foreign exchange in order to purchase needed machinery and other supplies. In this they had the backing of the United States government and international monetary agencies. For two decades Spanish policy had been based on the principle of economic autarky inherited from fascist doctrines of the thirties. A fear of economic subjection to foreign interests existed, expressed in trade restrictions and a rigid limit on the share of stock in Spanish corporations owned by foreigners. In the 1950's Spain had sought and obtained aid for its lagging economy in the form of grants and loans to the Spanish state by the United States government. By 1959 the United States refused further direct aid of this kind, and Spain had to change its policies. This was the background for the Stabilization Plan of that year. In addition to reducing economic restrictions, Spain encouraged foreign investment by permitting foreigners to own up to 50 percent of the total capital of corporations, and facilitating the repatriation of profits. In the next three years 200 million dollars in investments came from abroad. The four year plan hopefully called for further foreign capital, again offering better conditions. Led by the United States firms, foreigners answered the call. By 1967 foreign investments in Spain totalled 1.25 billion dollars. Of this, 500 million dollars came from the United States, which in 1958 had only 68 million dollars in Spain.⁽⁸⁾

[24] An even greater source of foreign exchange in the 1960's was an extraordinary flow of tourists into Spain. The Civil War, the Second World War, and subsequent international ostracism kept away tourists while other Western European countries began to fatten on their expenditures. In 1950 only 75,000 persons from abroad visited Spain. By 1957 the figure was 3.2 million. After 1960 it rose dizzily: 6.1 million in 1960, 14.1 in 1964, 17.9 in 1967. Some drove across the French border for only a day, but three quarters stayed for longer periods. The largest number were French, followed by other Western Europeans. Tourism became Spain's main export industry. National income from tourists rose from 297 million dollars in 1960 to 1.16 billion in 1965. Private hotels and elegant state-owned paradores (inns established in historic buildings) sprang up to meet the need; restaurants, souvenir stores, travel agencies, air and bus lines, all expanded rapidly in one of the most successful economic ventures in Spain's history. At a time when private spending in industrial countries is being directed more and more to leisure activities, Spain has discovered a resource of inestimable value in its rugged landscape and sunny coast, its bullfights and flamenco dancing, and the artistic and architectural legacy of its complex Roman, Moslem, and Christian background.

A third source of foreign capital came from an exodus of skilled and unskilled workers who sought employment in northwestern Europe. Between 1959 and 1963 700,000 Spaniards went abroad, to Germany, France, Switzerland, and in lesser numbers to other countries. They included industrial workers from Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities, whose trades were in demand abroad. Many more were young people leaving the small towns--both men and women--finding work in construction, transportation, and domestic help, where supply was growing short in advanced countries. These emigrants sent home money and visited Spain as tourists, thus helping to build up its foreign exchange. Later many returned, bringing their savings and new skills to the further benefit of Spain's economy.

These sources of foreign exchange were essential to Spanish development, for they counterbalanced what would otherwise have been impossible trade deficits. Since Spain's economic progress began in the early 1950's, imports far outdistanced exports (Spain had 500 million dollars of exports and 900 million of imports in 1958). Each year its holdings in gold and convertible currencies declined until early in 1959 it had a balance of only 65 million dollars, while its foreign obligations stood at 68 million dollars. The stability of the peseta was in serious danger. Tourists and the 1959 Stabilization Plan saved the day. Although the trade deficit continued to rise (it was 1.2 billion dollars in 1963), Spain had piled up 1 billion dollars in reserves by 1962, 1.4 billion by 1964, and the peseta had become one of the soundest [25] currencies in Europe. The technocrats felt confident that Spain's future lay in further economic integration with Europe.

7. The Spanish government was unable, however, to match its economic achievements in the diplomatic field. The memories of the Civil War have had their most permanent effect on Spain's foreign relations. Because Hitler and Mussolini aided the Nationalist side, European and American liberals and leftists reacted with strong emotional support for the Republican cause, and they later looked upon Franco's rule as another fascist dictatorship whose overthrow was a prerequisite for the completion of the democratic victory of 1945. After the Second World War, the Allied governments refused Spain membership in the United Nations and recalled their ambassadors from Madrid, and France closed the Spanish border to trade. During these years Spain's only friend was Portugal, whose dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, shared Franco's outlook. Cut off from Europe, Franco developed ties with the Arab states, claiming for Spain the role of "bridge" between Africa and Europe. He also looked to Latin America, playing up the concept of Hispanidad, the bond that a common language, religion, and culture gave the Spanish-speaking nations.

Early in the 1950's international developments put an end to Spain's isolation. The cold war, followed by the Korean War, made the United States look with new favor on regimes that claimed to be stoutly anti-Communist. Spain fitted the description, and furthermore its geographic location was strategically ideal for air and naval bases needed to control the Mediterranean. American leaders swallowed their liberal feelings and signed a pact with Franco in 1953, which gave them the coveted bases. By then Spain's appeal to Latin America had succeeded in placating all but its most bitter opponents (Mexico has still not recognized the Franco government). Together the United States, the Latin American nations, and the Arab states obtained Spain's entry into the United Nations in 1955.

This was the high point of Spain's diplomatic recovery. European memories proved much more impervious to military expediency than American. The United States and Spain foresaw Spain's rapid entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defensive alliance formed by the United States and Western European countries against Russia in 1949. The British Labor Party and continental Socialist parties, however, had a violent ideological revulsion against admitting Spain to an organization whose charter said it was "founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law." Belgium, [26] Denmark, and Norway, where socialist and Protestant sentiment was strong, successfully blocked Spain's entry.

After the change in ministry in 1957, Spain's technocrats turned their attention to penetrating various European economic groupings, hoping to use Spain's military ties with the United States and its improving economy as magnets to attract reluctant governments. At first their success seemed assured. Charles de Gaulle became president of France in 1958 and started courting Spain's favor, and West Germany now also backed Spain's entry into NATO. The next year the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which was founded 1948 by the countries receiving Marshall Plan aid, took part in drawing up Spain's stabilization plan and admitted Spain to full membership. But this was a technical rather than a political body, and Spain's entry wounded no sensibilities.

Despite all efforts, Spain has advanced little beyond this stage. In 1962 it applied for membership in the Common Market, the tariff union of six Western European countries. Great Britain was also seeking entry to it, and the Spanish government felt economic union with its best customers was essential to Spain's future, even if for the moment its industries could badly stand the competition of more advanced countries. But Spain's application fell on deaf ears. Liberal and socialist parties in the Common Market countries blocked Spain's entry as they had to NATO. Rebuffed by the Common Market, Spain managed to expand its trade by negotiations with individual Western European countries, and it went in search of customers in Communist east Europe. But its major diplomatic associates remained Portugal, most Latin American countries, and the United States. To offset its failure in Europe, Spain was able to point to its new bosom friend across the Atlantic. The United States renewed the bases agreement in 1963 for five years with the flattering but not very meaningful proviso that it would consult Spain regularly on military questions.

In many parts of the world--notably central Europe and the Orient--the provisional status quo achieved in the decade after the Second World War has solidified, often along irrational lines. Spain attained its postwar position with the United States treaty of 1953. Despite untold efforts, it has had little diplomatic success since then. The clouds of the Civil War still hang on.

The failure of Franco to break his diplomatic isolation indicates that many Europeans still questioned the permanence of his regime. On the surface their doubts appeared unjustified. Despite worker and student unrest, most Spaniards were apolitical, far more interested in soccer results than in protest movements. The economic transformation was making them more conservative. Many who never owned anything before were now proud of a transistor radio, a television set, or a motor scooter, while better-off people had new four-door cars or [27] apartments with modern kitchens, even summer cottages in the mountains or by the sea. They had steady jobs and they feared that violent change might deprive them of what they had. Spain was, in fact, becoming middle class.

Nevertheless, Spain's future is still wrapped in mystery. Like every country that has been ruled recently by a strong man, it is subject to the question, "After he goes, what?" For Spain this anxiety is especially keen because it has a long history of political instability, going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Spaniards have appeared by nature rebellious and politically mercurial. Indeed their recent striving for economic betterment has been interpreted as a sublimation of the energy they would normally devote to political agitation, a sublimation forced on them by the ban on politics.⁽⁹⁾ Should the ban end, many persons, both friends and enemies of Franco, anticipate that Spaniards will return to their former habits. Clearly, in order to understand Spain today, one must place recent developments in historical perspective.

1. Time Magazine, June 22, 1962, p.28.

2. Benjamin Welles, Spain, the Gentle Anarchy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1965), p. 143.

3. The New York Times, Oct. 29, 1967, p. 24.

4. Ibid., July17, 1967, p.8.

5. Ibid., Sept. 21, 1967, p. 18.

6. On recent Spanish economic development, in addition to official government publications, the following works provide much valuable information and interpretation: Ramon Tamames, Estructura economica de Espana (3^rd ed., Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1965); L'Espagne a l'heure du developpement, Revue Tiers-Monde, Tome VIII, No. 32 (Oct.-Dec. 1967).

7. Fernandez Diaz, "Annexes statistiques," L'Espagne a l'heure du developpement, p. 964 (see above, note 6). United Nations, Statistical Office, Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics, 1967, gives slightly higher figures for per capita income. For goals see Spain, Commissioner for Economic and Social Development, Economic and Social Development Program for Spain, 1964-1967 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965).

8. The New York Times, June 13, 1967, p. 75.

9. Welles, p. 312; Stanley G. Payne, Franco's Spain (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1967), pp. 76-77.