Spain After the Trial
ALAN, RAY
zRUMBLINGS IN THE ARMY Spain After the Trial BY RAY ALAN Madrid "What we need," a supporter of General Franco told me the other day, "is a government of national reconciliation. What we have is...
...Still, he is 78 and his health is failing...
...About 340 Catalan writers, artists, musicians, and actors assembled in the mountainside monastery of Montserrat, near Barcelona, to draw up a manifesto...
...Franco, though grateful for--and moved by--the loyalty demonstrations, has so far stood by his Cabinet...
...Many Falangists and Right-wing officers regarded the Opus Dei ministers--who like to be considered "technocrats" and economic liberals--as insufficiently nationalist and dangerously pro-European...
...About 5,000 officers, most of them captains, are now believed to be associated with these groups, and it was they who, in collaboration with the Movement, organized the "patriotic" demonstrations...
...In mid-January he fired the captain-general of Granada who, the week before, had publicly criticized the "intrigues and infiltrations" of Opus Dei...
...Their hope was to convince the government they are a force to reckon with...
...Democrats can only hope that within the military a reasonably enlightened faction wins out...
...Small groups of discontented officers have been meeting regularly in several garrison towns since last October...
...the Army seems bound to have the last word...
...Thus he can resist the campaign against his Opus ministers--though he is expected to make cabinet changes that will afford the ultras one or two satisfactions...
...The Opusdeistas' infiltration of key positions in the civil service, provincial administrations, media, and banks raised fears that they might employ the same tactic in the sindicatos (official unions) and even the Army...
...A steady chorus of Falangists and other ultras keeps reminding the Army of its duty...
...One of them, General Perez Vifieta, captain-general of Catalonia, declared in December that "the Army will not allow disorder to triumph: If necessary it will launch a new crusade against the lawless and the godless" ("crusade" is the regime's euphemism for the civil war...
...It was natural that some of the ousted factions should draw together...
...These officers are not all hardliners...
...Most Spaniards would agree that their government is disliked by a great many workers and intellectuals...
...Previous Cabinets had been carefully balanced coalitions of military men, Falangists, traditional Catholic conservatives and, later, Opusdeistas...
...Denouncing the repressive character of the regime and its "systematic" use of torture, they demanded amnesty for political prisoners and the establishment of democracy...
...The principal charge against the Basques was the murder of San Sebastian's secret police chief, a notorious sadist...
...But he is both stubborn and cautious, and he does not like to be seen responding to pressure...
...Don Manuel is eager for the Spanish Army to become a "normal" army, uninvolved in politics and cured of its 19th-century penchant for issuing pronunciamientos...
...Most of then-civilian allies, however, are Right-wingers who want the Army back into politics because they see it as a source of support for their ideas and interests...
...More surprisingly, it is highly unpopular in military, ecclesiastical and other circles that have upheld the Franco dictatorship for 30 years...
...Franco's position has been strengthened by the loyalty demonstrations, and his commutation of the Burgos death sentences was popular...
...others speak of "military socialism...
...This threat gave officers, Falangists and non-Opus Catholics a common interest in resisting them...
...But this played into the hands of Franco's critics in the Army and Movement...
...Neither does he wish to jeopardize his plan to turn the regime into a monarchy and have himself succeeded by Don Juan Carlos...
...What we have is a government that seems intent on tearing the nation apart...
...The national news media did not carry a word about foreign or domestic protests, nor of the aspects of the trial that provoked them...
...Some would feel at home in Athens...
...Many of them have since had their passports withdrawn and been blacklisted by the state-controlled radio and television networks...
...The military tribunal kept the defendants in handcuffs and treated their lawyers like conscripts...
...Even before the trial opened, protesters demonstrated in almost every Spanish city...
...Hostility to the regime was clearly evident at the "patriotic" demonstrations organized by the Army and Movement (the Falange in a false nose and top hat) here and in several other cities in late December...
...The Matesa affair, the biggest financial scandal in Spanish history, gave this Right-wing opposition a boost: It was revealed that at least three, and possibly five, ministers or ex-ministers with Opus Dei connections, and some of their friends and officials, were involved...
...The barbarous judicial mores revealed by the trial provoked an uproar in every Western European country except Portugal...
...The chief of the general staff, General Manuel Diez Alegria, let it be known that he too dislikes the use of military tribunals to try political offenders...
...General Franco commuted the death sentences to 30-year prison terms after most Western European nations appealed for clemency...
...Some are Falangists, while others scorn the Falange's record of corruption and opportunism...
...Only one of the 16 was tied to the killing, but the tribunal gave three of the accused two death sentences each, three others "single" death sentences, and nine long terms of imprisonment...
...instead, the Ministry of Information inspired a xenophobic campaign against Spain's "eternal enemies," said to be jealous of its peace and stability...
...Franco is no sentimentalist, of course, and has dropped more than one praised and devoted minister overnight when it has suited him...
...Disturbed by the vigor of the Basque resistance and the illegal workers' commissions, they felt the government had mishandled the internal security problem...
...It accepted confessions the defendants said had been extracted by torture...
...In his new-year speech Franco praised the achievements of his ministers for foreign affairs and education, two men critics allege to have been involved in the Matesa affair...
...Most officers favored stern punishment of the Basques on trial at Burgos, but a substantial number resented the government's use of the Army to do its dirty work...
...But a few other influential generals--called the "blue" generals after the color that used to denote the Falange--are eager for the Army to have a political role...
...He knows that while his Cabinet agrees with him on the succession, dissident officers and their civilian friends feel little enthusiasm for monarchical flimflam...
...They lost no time in organizing mass rallies "to let mischief-makers know that Spain is still loyal to its Caudillo and Army"--rallies that soon took on a distinctly antigovernment tinge...
...Antipathy between the dominant faction in the regime and other sectors of the Establishment had been intense ever since Franco's decision in October 1969 to appoint a more or less homogeneous cabinet dominated by men connected with the secretive Catholic lay order Opus Dei...
...Ray Alan's recent book, Spanish Quest, was published by Macmillan...
...Many agree with General Diez Alegria that the Army should not play politics...
...Proclaiming their loyalty to Franco, they advocated measures to rid the government of corruption and incompetence and strengthen national unity...
...The government responded by suspending already fragile constitutional rights and empowering the police to detain anyone without trial for up to six months...
...Officers below the rank of colonel had their own grievances over pay, so low that many must moonlight to support their families...
...In mid-December, they submitted petitions to the chief of the general staff and the principal captain-generals expressing discontent with Vice-president Carrero Blanco and the Opusdeista ministers...
...The tension and dissension now afflicting the Spanish leadership came to a head during the recent trial of 16 Basque separatists in Burgos...
...they are not, they add, playing politics now but merely applying another of Diez's teachings--that the Army should refrain from supporting a corrupt and unpopular government...
Vol. 54 • February 1971 • No. 3
