Back to the Bourbons
ALAN, RAY
THE BORE OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION Back to the Bourbons By Ray Alan Madrid Newsmen and diplomats are contentedly closing their files on what they are apt to call "the Bore of the Spanish...
...They seem indifferent...
...a minority of "blue" officers (blue is the color of the Falange) wanted another authoritarian regime...
...It has not escaped the more thoughtful monarchists that the "political realities" the official pretender is relying on can be invoked by others when the discipline of the regime—which is based exclusively on loyalty to the Caudillo —breaks down...
...Friends of Diez Alegria say he has warned the "blue" generals that a "Fascist solution" is no longer feasible, and that it would not be supported by a majority of officers...
...Morale soared...
...While Franco's doctors insist that the dictator's physical health is still good, his grasp on public affairs has weakened and the administration has become flabby...
...THE BORE OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION Back to the Bourbons By Ray Alan Madrid Newsmen and diplomats are contentedly closing their files on what they are apt to call "the Bore of the Spanish Succession...
...In government circles, however, Right-wingers disliked his cosmopolitan background and suspected him of liberal sympathies...
...Javier's claim to the Spanish throne was engagingly weak, and Hugo's candidacy was not valid (under Franco's Law of Succession) because he was born in France...
...Officials of all ranks now declare confidently: "The regime will succeed the regime...
...In a camp of their own, strongly entrenched in rural Navarra but a joke elsewhere, were the Carlists, whose standard-bearers were the aging Don Javier de Bourbon-Parme and his son Hugo...
...Before July 22, the officers' corps was split three ways: a lukewarm third was monarchist...
...During the two months preceding July 22, the morale of many of his officials and officers was low...
...Some critics of the regime, notably a handful of wealthy liberals, also supported Don Juan in the hope that he might shield Spain from military adventurers and guide it back onto a constitutional path...
...But they wanted a respectable institutional framework that would reassure foreign investors and facilitate Spain's association with the European Economic Community: no nonsense about another military strong man...
...Most officials and many of their countrymen, weary of uncertainty, would like to think so...
...The continuists want as few changes as possible after Franco, and the majority of them would have liked a "Regent"—their euphemism for another Caudillo—to Ray Alan's new book, Spanish Quest, is due to be published sometime this coming fall by Macmillan...
...but, denied access to the press and broadcasting media, their views at present count for little...
...Leading Falange members urge the appointment of a prime minister to oversee the succession and keep the reins of government in reliable hands...
...but they seemed almost hopelessly apathetic only a short time before the upsurge of militant self-confidence and solidarity that marked the emergence of the illegal Workers' Commissions last year...
...Men and women crowded around tv sets in the fourth week of July?not to follow the remote political goings-on in Madrid but to watch the more meaningful activities of the American lunar expedition...
...The liberals who once supported Don Juan have, for the most part, ceased to consider themselves monarchists...
...The Cortes, the nation's rubber-stamp assembly, approved Franco's decision by 491-19, with nine abstentions...
...Liberals, Socialists and Left-wing Christian Democrats consider Juan Carlos a creature of the regime and believe he is unlikely to survive for long without the assistance of military intervention...
...Until recently, most legitimists favored Don Juan, the third son of Spain's last King, Alfonso XIII...
...At that time, most informed observers were certain that Don Juan would take over after Franco...
...The Army would undoubtedly support Juan Carlos in a crisis...
...Don Carlos had said more than once, however, that he would never accept the throne as long as his father was alive...
...In order to preserve his authority all these years, Franco left the succession problem open as long as possible, allowing four or five lobbies to imagine that they had a chance of influencing him...
...The main split was between "continuists" and "legitimists," with subdivisions in each camp...
...Though few military men are enthusiastic supporters of Juan Carlos, all three groups now appear to be coalescing behind him...
...Both continuists and legitimists got the message and fell into step...
...The average Spaniard dislikes the government and would prefer greater liberalization, including free labor unions...
...Members of the administration began assuring everyone that, having just celebrated the 33rd anniversary of its inception (the outbreak of the Civil War), the regime was "looking forward to its second third-of-a-century...
...Half his ministers are too old, too ill or too incompetent for their jobs, but the Caudillo has been unable to bring himself to weed them out...
...Things can't go on like this," a senior information official told me early in June...
...Official propaganda media kept Juan Carlos constantly in the news...
...They may yet have something to say about the succession...
...On July 22, General Francisco Franco, who has ruled Spain since the end of the 1936-39 Civil War, announced that when he dies or retires his successor will be a king?Don Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon, now aged 31...
...But Javier had the magic name Carlos added to his son's baptismal certificate, and the pair conducted a lively public-relations campaign...
...He was boosted for a time by publicists of Franco's National Movement (the Falange with trimmings) to sap the confidence of Don Juan's following...
...succeed him...
...Fortified by the dowry of his Dutch bride, Princess Irene, Hugo Carlos succeeded in establishing himself as a pretender of sorts until he and his father were expelled from Spain last winter, ostensibly for contacting the democratic opposition...
...But the enthronement of Juan Carlos will hardly do this...
...For longer than anyone expected, he succeeded—splitting his supporters as deftly as he had divided his opponents...
...Some Falangists still mistrust the monarchists to the extent of believing that Don Juan Carlos and his father may secretly be working together in order to preserve the Bourbon throne and frustrate the National Movement's hopes for political continuity...
...In an unguarded moment six years ago, he revealed the procedure he envisaged for bringing Juan Carlos to the throne...
...He would much prefer to see a more democratic form of government evolve under Juan Carlos...
...the remainder were politically apathetic or agreed with General Manuel Diez Alegria that while the Army has the right and duty to uphold law and order, it should not intervene in politics to establish another dictatorship or bolster an unpopular government...
...Alfonso's other sons renounced their interest in the throne...
...He was persuaded to dissociate himself publicly from the "anachronistic rights" invoked by Don Juan and to hitch his star to "political realities...
...He takes a detached view of the situation, however, becoming in turn fatalistic and cynical...
...Generally, Spaniards are keeping their political opinions to themselves...
...Right-wing Army men were becoming impatient and outspoken...
...This obstacle was removed last winter when he was told bluntly that Franco would never nominate his father and that the only serious alternatives were himself and a Regency...
...The minority of Spaniards who advocate monarchical government justify it on the grounds that it puts the succession beyond dispute...
...A legitimist fringe candidate was Don Jaime's son Alfonso, an able, intelligent young man who works for a Madrid bank...
...They argue that a referendum or, preferably, free elections should be held to decide the character of Spain's next regime...
...Influential roles in the selection of a successor were played by Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco's "vice-president" and closest adviser for many years, and Lopez Rodo, minister for economic planning and chef de file of the group of "technocratic" ministers associated with the influential Catholic lay order Opus Dei...
...one?who has since died—on contracting a morganatic marriage...
...Behind the scenes, confidence is less absolute...
...But there are still a few doubts...
...Most legitimists have by now rallied to Juan Carlos, yet the split in their ranks is still perceptible...
...He has, after all, sworn to uphold "the principles of the Movement...
...Thus a lobby developed which preferred his son Juan Carlos, who had been educated in Spain under Franco's supervision...
...Monarchy was the obvious answer, under the malleable Juan Carlos rather than the more independent Don Juan...
...the other, Don Jaime, because of a speech defect...
...The formal nomination of Don Juan Carlos as Franco's eventual successor acted like a tonic in bureaucratic circles...
...The proclamation of a state of emergency last January underlined the regime's unwillingness to concede further political liberalization...
...they are again, like most Spanish democrats, republicans...
...But Carrero Blanco, Lopez Rodo and their friends had already opted for an intermediate position between continuists and legitimists...
...Is the succession cliffhanger really over...
...They were determined to preserve what they considered the most positive features of the Franco regime, in particular its marriage since 1960 of political authoritarianism and mildly liberal capitalism, and its bias toward indicative planning and "technocracy"—developments carefully fostered by the Opus Dei group...
...Few people think Juan Carlos has sufficient strength of character to resist the pressure groups currently in control, let alone to pilot Spain toward democracy...
...The legitimists, while on the whole admirers of Franco, wished Spain to return to what they consider to be the mainstream of constitutional legitimacy: the Bourbon monarchy...
Vol. 52 • August 1969 • No. 15
