Spain's Uncertain Feeling

...Touched off almost by accident over a local grievance, the strike was led and coordinated by the underground Spanish Socialist Labor party with the assistance of the moderately Left-wing Catholic brotherhoods for workers and working-class youth...

...Boldly, the Minister allowed the press to publish the letter and a point-by-point reply in which he admitted that the civil guard might well have shaved the heads of two miners' wives but rejected every other charge...

...As autumn came in, with storms and Hoods, fear and poverty drove the Asturians back to work...

...Their strike had failed...

...A national assembly could make laws and question ministers, but could not overthrow the government...

...Heavy pressure —ranging from the opening of legal proceedings to threatening telephone calls—was brought on the signatories to persuade them to recant...

...There are rumors of orders from Cuba that could boost Spain's flagging steel and shipbuilding industries...

...Yet his dismissal would heighten the existing malaise in the Falange and Sindicatos...

...In November, Fraga received two more letters...

...The Spanish regime calls itself Christian," the Abbot said, "but does not observe the basic principles of Christianity...

...It was decided to ask the Vatican to retain the Abbot in Rome, and to try and persuade him to declare that the correspondent of Le Monde had misquoted him...

...At a Cabinet meeting presided over by General Franco, the Ministers of Defense (General Antonio Barosso) and the Interior (General Camilo Alonso-Vega) suggested that the Abbot be expelled from Spain...

...But the Vatican replied that it was unable to retain the Abbot, and the envoy detailed to approach him declined the assignment...

...But nobody could be sure where the fuse led or what a stray spark might do...

...Under this law, a "strong" chief of state, advised by a privy council, would decide the general orientation of Spain's international, defense and economic policies...

...the Falangists want a president...

...Since the 1962 strike, wages have risen substantially in Catalonia ana tnc Basque country, Spain's main industrial regions, and although most Catalans and Basques dislike the Franco regime for cultural as well as political reasons (their local languages are still barred from the public schools, the daily press and broadcasting), they are presently enjoying unprecedented prosperity...

...Some influential military men, while reconciled to further liberalization, wish to see Franco succeeded by another general...

...But the changes could create more difficulties within the regime than they resolve externally...

...and any concessions to Cardinal-Primate Pla y Daniel's repeated requests for greater freedom for Catholic workers' organizations would deflate what little is left of the regime's social ideology...

...It would not be surprising," they wrote, "if the workers responded with violence to the violence to which they are subjected...

...Early in December, 30 leading members of the illegal Christian Democratic Left, all eminent professional men, wrote to the Minister associating themselves with the 188 intellectuals...

...Imports increased more than exports, but tourism (more than 10 million visitors) and remittances from Spanish emigrants in northwest Europe took care of the balance of payments...

...later, for the second time, he went into exile...

...As in 1962, General Francisco Franco's dictatorship successfully withstood the challenge of a miners' strike in the traditionally restless province of Asturias...

...The expected closure of United States airbases (nominally joint U.S.-Spanish bases) at Saragossa (in 1964) and Torrejón (in 1966) would be bad news—the Saragossa base alone pumps about $5 million a year into the local economy—but might be compensated by increased U.S...

...A strong possibility exists that the Cortes, Spain's nominated national assembly, will be required this year to endorse a constitutional law that would equip Spain, on General Franco's death or retirement, with a near-Gaultist regime...

...In the second, González Vicén, a wellknown member of the "old guard" of the Falange, and 50 other Falangists who believe Franco to have betrayed the ideals of their movement, supported this request and blamed the government's "reactionary" economic policy for driving the workers to the edge of revolt...

...The government avoided a headon clash with the miners, ordered troublesome pits closed, and allowed the security forces a fairly free hand in rounding up strikeleaders and intimidating their followers...

...He has also been discredited inside Spain by the virtual collapse of the Sindicatos' authority during the last two strike waves...

...A four-year development plan came into effect on New Year's day...

...The letter named members of the civil guard who were said to have castrated a number of miners...

...Early in October, 102 Spanish university teachers, writers and artists signed and circulated an open letter to Don Manuel Fraga Iribarne, General Franco's Minister for Information and Tourism, describing a number of excesses allegedly committed by the security forces against Asturian strikers and their wives...

...Soli's Ruiz, for example...

...This draft constitution has been approved, in outline, by ecclesiastical, military, Monarchist and Falangist personalities, but not always for the same reasons...

...This would have caught two fish with one hook, since Le Monde is the most widely read foreign newspaper in Spain and Spanish officialdom would like it to appoint a more pliable Madrid correspondent...

...as was to be expected, he accused the signatories of toeing a Communist line...

...Fraga is generally believed to be grooming himself for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in succession to Castiella, whose pro-Nazi past is a liability in some of the European capitals Madrid needs to woo...

...There were also sporadic stoppages in Leon and Bilbao, but efforts to fan the movement into a political general strike were unsuccessful...

...The Ministers for Foreign Affairs (Fernando Maria Castiella) and Information (Fraga) advised against any such measure...

...Useful credits ($150 million) for the purchase of capital equipment have been obtained from France...

...In the first, 188 intellectuals expressed surprise at the flippancy with which the Minister had conceded that two Asturian women might have had their heads shaved, protested against the inadequacy of Spain's information media, and urged that a commission of lawyers be allowed to hold an impartial inquiry into Asturian complaints of ill-treatment...

...Neither of these letters was published in the Spanish press, and Fraga announced hurriedly that he had broken off his "dialogue" with the intellectuals because they desired only to stir up scandal...

...General Franco's Minister for Falangist and Sindicalo (trade union) affairs, is understandably unpopular in labor circles throughout the free world and identified—sometimes unjustly, since he favored concessions to the workers during the 1963 Asturian strike—with the regime's rough handling of strikers...

...The Monarchists, for example, take it for granted that (in accordance with the 1947 Law of Succession) the next chief of state must be a king...

...He was not to be let off so lightly...

...Dayto-day administration would be the responsibility of a cabinet headed by a prime minister appointed for a definite period by the chief of state...

...It would damage Spain's chances of association with the European Economic Community, they argued, and besmirch the image of a "liberalized" Spain being projected in London and Washington...

...They believe that Washington, whose backstage influence in Madrid, although declining, might just tilt the scales, shares their desire...

...After the intellectuals and the "old guard" Falangists, ecclesiastical critics of the dictatorship joined in the controversy...

...The year 1964 is expected to bring ministerial and even minor structural changes that will reflect the present liberalizing trend within the Catholic Church, and the need to improve Spain's chances of acceptance by the EEC...

...In addition, he annoyed influential members of the establishment—including, it is said, Franco himself—during his recent visit to London by "disloyally" striking attitudes and dropping hints which suggested that he represented some kind of third force that would ultimately save Spain both from dictatorship and from republican chaos...

...A day or two later the Catholic opposition began circulating the text of a letter to the Vatican Council, signed by more than 200 Spanish Basque priests, complaining of the repressive nature of the Franco regime—in particular, the harshness with which it crushes strikes and acts of political opposition—and drawing attention to the "great abyss" that has opened between Church and people in Spain as a result of the Church's past support of the Franco dictatorship...

...Tourism, now Spain's biggest business, was also a restraining influence: Few of the workers dependent on it would willingly down tools at the height of the summer season...

...Roy Soames, a new contributor to these pages, is a British journalist currently living in Spain...

...Fraga then ordered El Espanol, a weekly published by his ministry, to run a series of attacks on the Abbot...

...expenditure in the Cadiz area, where Rota is preparing for Polaris submarines...

...When the Abbot of Montserrat left for Italy, rumors were put out, and echoed in the press, suggesting that he had been called to Rome by the Pope for a reprimand (the Abbot had, in fact, arranged his trip before giving his interview to Le Monde...

...but its political consequences were to harass the Franco regime for the rest of the year...

...The Spanish economy continued to grow in 1963...

...The official propaganda machine speedily obtained a declaration criticizing the Abbot of Montserrat, and praising the government for its support of the Catholic faith, from the Abbot of the Benedictine monastery in the Valley of the Fallen (near Madrid), who is a supporter of the Falange and owes his appointment to Franco...

...Politically, the outlook remains uncertain...

...Its exploitation by the Communists was solely verbal and peripheral— over their "Free Spain" Radio, which operates from Prague...

...Despite rising prices and fairly widespread expectation of inflation among Spanish businessmen, 1964 opens under favorable auspices...

...The mitred Abbot of Montserrat, the prestigious Benedictine monastery near Barcelona, gave an interview to Le Monde of Paris in which he complained of Spain's lack of a free press and "sincere" information media and expressed concern over the government's efforts to intimidate the intellectuals who had written to Fraga...

...But Fraga has irritated the military ministers by beating his "liberalization" drum too loudly and engaging in the "dialogue" with the intellectuals which he was unable to sustain...

...often it seemed the fuse had gone out...

...The 70-year-old Catholic writer, Don José Bergamin, singled out by Fraga because he supported the Loyalists during Franco's insurrection, felt obliged to seek political asylum in the Uruguayan embassy...