Spain's New Politics
ALAN, RAY
Euro Vista BY RAY ALAN Spain's New Politics... Long ago, when I was a very young journalist barely able to reach a telex keyboard, I visited Israel. Israel too was very young And incredibly...
...Inflation is roaring away at an annual rate of 27 per cent...
...The economic slowdown in other Western countries has reduced income from tourism (although more tourists are visiting Spain this year than last, they are spending less...
...The newspapers have published dozens of pictures of political opponents shaking hands...
...The small Popular Socialist party (PSP) has received subsidies from Libya in return for promoting a "Mediterranean Socialist" front directed against Israel and other elements in the region considered unhealthily pro-Western...
...Leading members of the more important Socialist Labor party (PSOE), which has had contact with the Israeli Labor party in the Socialist International, recommend recognition of Israel and "nonmercenary friendship" with the Arabs...
...By the time this is published, all Franco's political prisoners should have been released...
...Occasionally a nostalgic Falangist scrawls on a wall: "Life was better under Franco...
...but since the June election fear has at last ceased to be a significant political factor...
...it will also judge the government by its willingness to return buildings, printing works and other union assets confiscated by the Franco dictatorship...
...Spanish intellectuals are intrigued by the culture of the Sephardic Israelis, many of whom speak the medieval Spanish of the Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492...
...But to most Spaniards the Franco dictatorship already seems as remote and irrelevant as the Ottoman empire and the British mandate did to Israelis after 1948...
...Arab military rulers were urged to consider the Falange and Spain's rubber-stamp Parliament models for their own single-party regimes...
...The government has a problem with the unions because it is eager to negotiate a "social pact"meaning, mainly, pay-restraint with them...
...Almost 1 million Spaniards are unemployed...
...When the time is ripe," is the official answer...
...Fine, Spanish liberals say, but why must Spain be the only Western country to give the Arabs veto power over its diplomatic relations...
...Thanks," Suarez replied, "I'll need it...
...Almost everything one saw was the first of its kind for 2,000 years...
...it has also curtailed remittances from Spanish workers in France, Germany and Switzerland, many of whom have had to return home...
...Petrodollars have cascaded into Spanish real estate, mainly in the southern tourist resorts and Madrid...
...Only democracy can work wonders like that...
...Their aim is to slow down price and wage increases, raise revenue, and win union cooperation by stepping up taxes on high incomes, legacies and luxuries, and introducing a small tax on wealth...
...When...
...Most exiles who want to return are back...
...These measures have been attacked as "socialistic" by some of the government's more conservative supporters, and the Prime Minister has told other political leaders that strong backstage pressure is being exerted against fiscal reform...
...Even so, the UGT is not op...
...and Old Diplomacy Spain's new democratic regime has established diplomatic ties with the Soviet bloc and Mexico, and may soon allow its citizens to resume contact with Gibraltar...
...They consider the Libyan regime repressive and "neofascist" and call the Spanish PSP the "Petro dollar Socialist party...
...After the 1973 oil crisis Franco's was the only Western government that made no effort to reduce fuel imports, being convinced that its "special relationship" with the Arabs would somehow override economics...
...A vast amount of private capital has fled to Switzerland...
...Social Democrats talk of the "moral alliance" linking Spaniards and Jews because of their past oppression by fascism...
...This summer Spain has reminded me more than once of that distant Israel...
...They were legalized only four months ago and are still weak and short of funds...
...A new style is apparent in Spanish politics...
...A social pact can be meaningful only if it is negotiated with strong, self-confident unions...
...It has taken longer to lay fear to rest in Spain, mainly because many military and police units are still commanded by Francoist officers...
...Government and opposition personalities go out of their way to pay tributes to each other, and the Prime Minister, Adolfo Suarez, has initiated the practice revolutionary for Spain of consulting opposition leaders on important matters...
...Enrique Miigica, a Socialist deputy from San Sebastian and senior member of the PSOE's executive, is one of the very few Spanish politicians of Jewish origin...
...A Socialist mayor has emerged from the little house where he had been hiding for 38 years: He is thought to be the last of Spain's many topos (republicans who became "moles" rather than face imprisonment and probable execution by Franco's victorious forces...
...He will...
...Some weeks ago an Arab diplomat in Madrid indicated that his government reputedly eager to buy a vote in the Socialist International?might be willing to subsidize the PSOE "provided they keep Mugica in a subordinate post...
...Three or four days after the Portuguese Revolution in the spring of 1974, the Lisbon daily Republica published a rather moving front-page headline: O povo ja nao tern medo (The people are no longer afraid...
...Israel too was very young And incredibly old...
...The congress had been intended as an act of Spanish-Jewish reconciliation, and King Juan Carlos was to have received its organizers...
...The weapon Spanish politicians now draw, on the slightest provocation, is courtesy...
...To Premier Suarez, La Pasionaria said: "I wish you luck...
...The unions can become strong only by attracting more members...
...The other day, Marcelino Camacho, secretary of the Workers' Commissions, a Communist-led labor organization, embraced the Minister of Labor, Manuel Jimenez de Parga...
...Carrillo described the King's speech at the opening of Parliament as "fine, positive, good," and his colleague Dolores Ibarruri (the wartime Pasionaria) said: "I applauded a lot...
...Spain has a huge payments deficit (it may reach $5 billion this year), a foreign debt of about $12 billion, and reserves that have fallen to under $4.8 billion (from $6.5 billion three years ago...
...To combat tax evasionGeneral among the wealthier classes-more tax inspectors are being appointed, with authority to inspect private bank accounts...
...The atmosphere here is that of a nation reborn with its first elected parliament for 41 years, and its first democratic monarch for 104 years...
...It is still pretending, however, that Israel is a hole in the ground...
...Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the deflated ex-Falangist demagogue who today leads the Right-wing Popular Alliance, and Santiago Carrillo, the Communist leader, smile when they meet...
...The pessimists who predicted that free elections would end in a bloodbath have been disappointed...
...The Socialists are divided...
...But (Catch 22) workers are not going to flock to unions that show themselves willing to negotiate pay-restraint...
...The Falange was allowed to talk of sending volunteers to help the Arabs crush Israel...
...One of his colleagues said: "There is no question of our doing a deal of that kind...
...Some Spanish Cabinet ministers now favor recognizing Israel, and in July the government said it intended to continue normalizing Spain's international relations...
...This lack of realism inflated the bill Spain must now pay to set its economy in order...
...Suggested translations of this include: "When Spain's economic health improves" and "When the Arabs have something else on their minds...
...And Spain's economic difficulties have inflated its fears of the consequences of recognizing Israel...
...Euro Vista BY RAY ALAN Spain's New Politics...
...posed to the idea of a social pact, though it says it wants to see how serious the government is about fiscal reform, price controls and the reduction of unemployment...
...After the June 15 election, some rival candidates had dinner together...
...The two most important unions are the Socialist General Workers' Union (UGT), founded just a century ago, and the Workers' Commissions, organized by Communists and Left-wing Catholics in the 1960s...
...Arab threats to hold up a $500 million loan persuaded the government not to extend the official welcome that had been planned for an international Jewish congress in Madrid last December...
...I remember witnessing the arrival in Tel Aviv of the first Jewish train from Haifa in 2,000 years...
...Moreover, they face lively extremist competition from the small but growing anarchosyndicalist CNT, which is opposed not only to negotiations with the government but to government as such...
...He sent several envoys to the Middle East (including his daughter and Manuel Fraga) to assure the Arabs that, as Fraga told Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, "your revolution is the same as ours...
...Hence the recent 25-per-cent devaluation of the peseta and the government's stabilization measures...
...It inherited this attitude from General Franco, who boycotted Israel in return for Arab support at the UN (Israel" opposed his admission) and in the hope of acquiring influence in Arab politics...
Vol. 60 • September 1977 • No. 18
