The Reign in Spain

...The problems he face.d were primarily those which remained from before the Civil War and had been "resolved" by Franco in executive orders and the unchallengeable power of the state...

...The next important speaker was Felipe Gonzalez of the Spanish Workers Socialist Party...

...Another election must be held some time in the next four years and the most powerful leader of the left will surely be a young labor lawyer from Seville named Felipe Gonzalez...

...There were autonomists from Catalonia, the Balearics, Valencia, the Basque region, and so on...

...The talk was humanist and liberal in tone...

...He began to see himself in conII I I II I ROBERT JOE STOUT is a novelist and journalist living it...

...However, Fraga was also hounded by detractors as he toured the nation...

...The last poll before the election showed the Socialist Party of Spanish Workers (PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol) ahead with 28.9 percent of the vote as against 25.6 percent for the Center (UCD) led by monarch-appointed Premier Adolfo Suarez...

...He emerged from county jail broke, jobless and uncaring...

...A revival of morality and decency will require--not picketing, not legal action, not arguments--but an inner change in many religious persons that will make marked differences in their external behavior...

...Too many of those who still retain a fundamental religious conviction and who fundamentally are trying to lead a religious life, have at the same time adopted the materialistic ideals of our society and engaged in the same mad pursuit of pleasure that has characterized all sophisticated paganism...

...He appealcd to fear, to the threat of foreign-based parties and of those who would gamble with the social order...

...A shrewd and articulate public figure, he skillfully united a disorganized social democratic center by submitting his own name for a seat in the Cortes (Spanish Parliament...

...It was an authentic gamble, for once the commitment was made a passionate electorate in reprisal against forty years of fascist autocracy could vote to wipe out the past and turn the government over to a majority of the left, who once in power would immediately be at odds with the well-entrenched traditional and private sector, setting the stage for all the exigencies of deafly defined class conflict...

...The center won because the majority of voters were cautious, but the final tally reveals a powerful socialist bloc...

...His analysts, like many institution-connected professionals, were Rogerians and behaviorists...

...I THE REIGN IN SPAIN KENNETH E. MOORE The election created many heroes and a few villains The most consequential decisions made in Spain in the twenty months since the death of Franco have been made behind the scenes...

...On the Eve On the evening of the thirteenth the campaign climaxed with a nationwide TV program...

...to go as far as a modern state dare in trusting its future entirely to the will of an unpredictable electorate...

...The Spanish election created many heroes and a few villains...

...But there was little doubt that the government was sponsoring an authentic and entirely valid poll of the electorate...

...Through group encounter and therapy sessions, he unloaded part of his burden of frustration, confusion and hatred...

...The most glamorous hero was Premier Adolfo Suarez whose six-by-nine-foot picture was the most dominant artifact in the Spanish nation for three weeks before the election...

...It is this image and the program of moderate socialism that will stand against the image of corporately guided moderation in the years ahead...

...The most virulent critics of the Franco regime now brag that "we can read, print, publish anythingmthat is to say, anything[" Release from censorship and a revised election law led to a proliferation of newspapers, journals, magaTJnes and political parties...

...Cali]ornia...

...It is with him or someone like him that King Juan Carlos will in years to come join in the task of organizing and governing the New Spain...

...With positions selected by lot, the favorite UCD began with a forthright though cautious presentation by Premier Adolfo Suarez...

...Spanish politics became incomprehensible with almost 6,000 candidates and 160 political parties...

...A truant, booze-stealer and perpetual runaway, he spent the better part of his adolescence in juvenile halls, foster homes and farms for delinquent children...

...As goodlooking as Charles Percy and like him a product of the world of managers, Suarez approached the video camera audaciously and without gimmickry, and holding the cards of incumbency, moderation and progressivism, he said, "What I promise is what I can promise...

...Those few who voted the Allianza Popular are alleged to be those still clinging to pensions, awards and statuses acquired in the Franco era...

...The state-owned TV was opened to every legal party...

...A man who clearly understands the complexities of the modern world asked an electorate which does not to trust him to continue his rapid but measured pace of governmental reorganization...

...The assumption of power by the king revealed astuteness and courage from the very beginning...

...The foreman presiding over the grand jury that indicted him noted his prison record and lamented that so much in resources and energy had been "wasted" on a recidivist...

...This shock is a sign of our unawareness of the moral decadence which has been growing within our society...

...In the role of heir apparent he was a study in royal innocuousness...

...Immediately after Franco's death in 1975 the king defused two of the major threats to stability by granting regions the right to write, publish, perform and sing in their traditional languages...

...In the election he opted for caution, for holding on to the benefits produced in the Franco era...

...After a day of reflection and a day of voting that brought out eighty percent of those eligible, the results 22 July 1977:462 showed an unambiguous victory for the Adolfo Suarez center...

...It was difficult to imagine that this old man had been a public enemy for 36 years...

...The third heroic figure is of course Felipe Gonzalez who maintains correctly that he is the leader of the largest single party (as against coalitions) in Spanish politics...

...It is Suarez who will be responsible for all the hard decisions in a country clearly in an economic crisis...

...An alliance of centrists and a well-organized socialist party portend a two-party nation presently in the hands of the centrists, but with the future in the grasp of the socialists and the man of the future, Felipr Gonzalez...

...The Popular Socialist Party leader Enrique TiernoGalvan appeared second in this final nationwide public meeting which matched in importance in this election the first Carter-Ford debate in the U.S...

...His party had failed to capture the imagination of the electorate, and his appearance on TV revealed part of the reason why...

...His flawless presentation Commonweal: 461 clearly assured him a voice equal to any other in forming the new parliament...

...He stands as the challenger of hypocrisy and class privilege...

...From once-a-week group therapy, he progressed into intensive counseling...

...After his conviction--he admitted his guiltmthe trial judge assessed the maximum penalty allowed under Ohio law...

...that his secret entry into the country ten years ago had been considered a threat to the nation, and that he himself had spent the last decade underground...

...He has come to be trusted for his fearlessness and basic honesty...

...Like the public meetings of the Communists, Fraga's rallies were emotion-packed and ecstatic...

...It is for the disenchanted that Gonzalez will speak, and this may well be the majority in the next election, two, three or four years from now...

...Throughout the campaign he spoke loudly for abortion and divorce, arguing that the rich secure the latter through the Church and the former in the clinics of London...

...Cries of "Fraga" and "Franco" beat out the finale of his every public appearance...

...This poll as much as anything may have contributed to the center's victory for there is no doubt that great numbers of socialist supporters decided to vote the safe center now II I II I I KENNETH E. MOORE, r associate pro[essor o/ urban anthropology at the University o/ Notre Dame, is the author of Those of the Street: The Catholic-Jews of Mallorca...

...If we cannot achieve a revival, Kahn and Wiener's projection of the Sensate trend will turn out to be a prediction of the total permeation of society by materialism and sensuality, its total dehumanization amid moral anarchy...

...Gonzalez provided charisma and "gancho" to the socialist cause and he and the party are now inseparable in the minds of those who supported both...

...Seven months later he sat, hunched and handcuffed, on a bench in a Columbus, Ohio, police station...

...What the public saw was not an inadequate personage, but the most powerful of men crushed by the cruel realities of the electoral process...

...The "turn-around" time between release from California Youth Authority and re-conviction on new charges is Commonweal: 463...

...text with the world, to learn that...

...This is a matter for all religious leaders and all moral men and women...

...The center he led was an accommodation not a party, and those who voted for it voted for the man who organized it--surely not the diffuse coalition itself...

...He is seen as a wily old revolutionary who in hard-fought campaigning will say what others dare 22 July ]977:460 not, or fear to...

...The Spanish Workers Socialist Party with almost thirty-five percent of the seats has clearly emerged as Spain's other powerful party...

...Two out of three indicted lawbreakers in Los Angeles County have previous felony convictions...

...Three-yearsand-two-months after beginning what could have been a ten-year term, Jack McKey stepped back into public life...

...The election results clearly reveal a dying Francoist right, a Communist party with voice but no power and a Christian Democratic movement that never got off the ground...

...But he also defended the rights of...

...Though at the beginning he had been feared, as the campaign ended he had acquired many admirers and some few votes...

...Under Franco, Fraga as Minister of Information and Tourism was a voice of change in an era that cried for it...

...More than 15,000 political rallies (mitins) had been held throughout the country, drawing crowds in the hundreds, and up to sixty thousand...

...At thirty-five, he now stands as spokesman for the loyal opposition...

...A few evenings prior to this final TV appearance, Fraga's supporter, former premier Carlos Arias Navarro taunted the nation with a future chaos should it move leftward...

...TiernoGalvan spoke so slowly, he seemed tired...

...Fraga is not a hollow man...

...I I I I I 'ONE OF THE LUCKIER ONES' ROBERT JOE STOUT Rehabilitation or punishment...

...He trained as a jet pilot and entertained himself with yachting...

...The problems were varied--the rights of regions, land reform, the role of the Church, women's rights, the distribution of wealth and the freedoms of press and assembly...

...Those who thought they knew Spanish journalism a few years ago now faced a whole new array of daily and weekly papers...

...Hc did not democratize Spain alone, but after advice and counsel it was always with him and his conscience that the final decision rested...

...By the thirteenth of June the litter of handbills left every town and city looking like the aftermath of a gigantic New Year's Eve party...

...He moved to Cleveland to find work as an unskilled laborer but was laid off repeatedly as the economy wavered...

...Spain's democratic future seemed attainable only through violence...

...Next time, Felipe...

...He had been arrested, with three other black ex-convicts, after forcibly breaking into and stripping a small Eastside drugstore...

...When 160 parties sought to attract the attention of the electorate, the PSOE revealed itself the master of symbolism and media...

...a man from the South, a bit crude, yet brilliant and caring...

...Its party symbol was a clenched fist that held a rose...

...It was heard everywhere, 'Tin voting for Suarez this time...

...The flow of conservative sentiment against "rehabilitation" as opposed to punishment used him as an example to enforce their drive for stiffer sentences and less coddling of prisoners...

...Also, he did away with the hated censorship of the Franco era which had stifled journalism, theater, art and education since 1939...

...His only royal failing was an inability to smile...

...Why did McKey fail...

...The walls of every thoroughfare in the country were plastered with election posters...

...Ohio prison officials considered 25-year-old Jack McKey "one of the luckier ones...

...Thus, the election campaign this year began in confusion, and a fear of violence...

...There can bc no mistake about this...

...The slogan "Fraga, Espafia no te traga" (Fraga, Spain doesn't swallow you) was the best known incantation of the campaign...

...Yet less than five percent of the electorate cared to follow him or Fraga back to the security of the Franco era...

...He moved from a stumbling and fumbling lecture to a shrill and almost hysterical oration...

...Many persons have realized with a shock that large numbers of Americans are quite willing to support the 1973 Supreme Court decision and the revocation of laws against the murder of the unborn and of others...

...It is well known from the simplest worker or peasant to the powerful heads of state that the real strength of this party was hidden in the final returns...

...In a period of transition with high unemployment, inflation, an unfavorable balance of trade and violence from Basque terrorists, few would take serious issue with him...

...his personality was integrally tied to assumptions about that world and, consequently, about himself...

...Practically unknown ten months ago, Suarez revealed the brilliance and personal skills that led to his selection by the king to lead the transition to democracy...

...Its posters appealed to Spanish familism by asking an end to families separated by the emigration of fathers to North European factories...

...Suarez began the election in a somewhat heroic stance for he more than anyone else is seen as the architect of Spain's democratizing process...

...It was a talk that could have been given at the national Democratic Convention in America without causing a stir...

...He acquired immense power as have few people in Spanish history...

...He spoke for the young, the unemployed and for women...

...Army and the Air Force and been turned down, McKey had grown up (with eight or nine brothers and sisters) on the fringes of a rural Ohio town watching his parents raise chickens and do odd jobs for the crop-conscious white community...

...The question nags penologists in every state in the U.S...

...He spoke to the wrong camera repeatedly, and technicians changing backdrops only added to the disconcerting confusion...

...Political parties with candidates in more than twenty-five provinces were each allowed ten minutes to seal their case with their outstanding spokesman...

...He appealed for patriotism, caution and protection of the family, and even his supporters had to be embarrassed...

...He presented a position so general it was meaningless...

...He is a capable administrator, a first-rate scholar and a master of oratory...

...He took and passed enough high school level courses to earn a diploma...

...Black, a high school drop-out who'd tried to enlist in both the U.S...

...The freedom was total...

...If he had any enemies, it was only monopolistic capitalism...

...The future of Spain seemed locked in the hands of an unimaginative militarist who would rule with the army from a hidden center of power...

...An equally important symbol was the face of Felipe Gonzalez, young, with workingclass good looks...

...and history will record that he used it thoughtfully, courageously and at times brilliantly...

...Perhaps the abortion issue will bring many of these persons up abruptly to face the issue, between their religious convictions and their materialistic mode of life, their moral obligations and their acquiescence in so much immorality in society...

...Thus we are dealing with problems far deeper and broader than the abortion issue...

...The most important decision they made was to risk democracy...

...The campaign ended on midnight June 13th, to allow for a day of reflection before that most important day which the newspapers referred to as 154...

...Chosen by Franco as against his father, Don Juan (the son of the last king of Spain, Alfonso XIII), Juan Carlos was assigned the dubious task of maintaining order in Spain after the Caudillo's death...

...small business...

...They were made by the Spanish king, Juan Carlos I, in association with a select group of articulate and pragmatic advisers who began their political careers in the Franco era...

...and as the man who had the courage to allow the entry of the Communist party in Spain's first election in fortyone years...

...His adaptability to prison life improved so much under their supervision that he was recommended for early parole by both the hard-nosed prison superintendent and the counseling staff...

...Candidates with no hope of winning claimed their ten minutes on the national media every third or fourth evening during the campaign...

...Appeals to patriotism ("Only Spain is important"), Christianity and security lured less voters than Communist appeals to a faintly defined future...

...The country will soon be in a "pre-revolutionary state," said Arias on "IV...

...last fall...

...At a time in history when royalty's role is to live mutely as living symbols of national unity, to aspire to dullness and ceremonious dimwittery, Juan Carlos began his career in true form in the sixties...

...These three figures and one "heavy," Manuel Fraga Iribarnc, dominated the campaign but the real hero of the Spanish election of 1977 was the king...

...A veteran campaigner, he was nevertheless the most obviously nervous of all the party leaders who appeared that final night on TV...

...He spoke without text for he had given the same rousing talk many times in packed bull rings and soccer fields around the country...

...He promised to work for a constitution that was short and flexible and to move the country forward...

...The range was incredible, from the extreme right of Mediterranean fascism presented in ideologically distinct forms, to neo-Francoists, centrist democrats, social democrats, socialists and communists of both west European and Maoist orientation...

...and vote their true feelings in the next election...

...Fraga's appearance on this final night of TV campaigning openly revealed the wounds suffered by a man who had started the campaign as one of the most potentially powerful leaders of the nation and ended it as the spokesman of a rejected and insignificant minority party...

...With almost fifty percent of the popular vote and a proportional number of seats in the bicameral Cortes, an alliance with any minor bloc would give the UCD the majority it needs to govern...

...He responded well to pre-sentencing evaluation and despite a background of juvenile arrests, assault, suspected armed robbery and firearms violation conviction and parole, he demonstrated a willingness to thrust the past behind him and begin a new life...

...From the Center I can work with any combination of parties elected...

...Three years of catch-as-catch-can employment, petty crime (including transporting drugs and soliciting for a prostitute) and attempts for a strong-armed robbery which netted McKey less than $6.00...

...Its posters showed a young father at a railroad station, carrying a suitcase in his right hand and a rose in his left returning to Spain, employment and family...

...Another hero created in the electoral process was Santiago Carillo, leader of the Communist party...

...The remaining speakers were studies in futility, the most celebrated failure being that of Manuel Fraga Iribarne, head of the Popular Alliance (Allianza Popular), the choice of those who still yearned for the safety and predictability of the Franco era...

...The third position was won by the Communist party and its Secretary General, Santiago Carillo...

...Optimistic prison evaluators enrolled him in a comprehensive rehabilitation course...

...Other socialist parties were unable to match either the organizing skills or the talent for creating symbols and images that were so much a part of the PSOE campaign...

...He gambled his unemployment checks away at a local pool hall, then was arrested as the bag-man in a con game...

...He had captured the public's imagination as had "El Cordobes" in the bullring during the sixties...

...In the last years of the Franco dictatorship even those who hated the Caudillo passionately feared his death and the violence that must surely follow...

...His first arrest as an adult came shortly after his eighteenth birthday...