THE TWILIGHT OF FRANCO'S SPAIN

...it has approved a catechism which denounces democracy and freedom of the press in crudely Fascist terms...

...However, the response of the Western world to Spain at present is more enthusiastic than it was in the past...

...Faced with these pressures and realizing that some move on his part is both inevitable and overdue, Franco's predicament is acute...

...But in the end the effort will have to be made, and it is not made easier by delay...

...Admittedly, it is hard to relax a censorship or to vitalize a rubber-stamp legislature...

...Spain's new prosperity, though still of,' modest proportions, is reflected in the dress, eating habits, and the amusements of the people in general...

...The face of Spain has changed proportionately as much in the last ten years as the face of most other European countries...

...Several hundred thousand Spanish workers are employed in booming Europe, and apart from sending money home, they are gathering new ideas...

...Significantly, the bond between several prominent Catholic Church leaders and the regime, maintained for a long time by the common memories of "Bolshevik terror," the mutual dedication to "Christian principles," and the Caudillo's clever balancing feats, is now loosening, each side preparing to go its own way...

...It has supported Franco since the outbreak of the Civil War...

...In return, the United States retains for ten years the lease of its military bases, all of which it has built at U.S...

...Possibly Franco might then impose the young prince on the Spanish throne, which would thereafter be "protected" by a strong prime minister—in the first instance presumably General Munoz Grandes...

...To Franco, U.S...

...But to Franco, time is all— his last asset, and one which measurably diminishes as Spain suffers and stirs under his oppressive rule...

...In many speeches he has taken particular care to assure two of these—the Army and Falange —that their merits will never be forgotten...

...The shortcomings of Castro's regime are disregarded, and his agrarian reform (so much needed in Spain), his nationalization of production, the youthfulness of his government, and his anti-Americanism provide an enchantment to which distance undoubtedly contributes...

...What makes Spain so interesting to an outsider is that, far from presenting the monolithic appearance of other totalitarian states, it shows a pattern of disintegration...

...The regime is suffering from strains resulting not from an opposition battering from without, but rather from disruptive forces within...

...The people now evince a mood of cautious defiance in contrast to the weariness and resignation following the Civil War...

...It is the mainstay of his regime, and its high-ranking officers receive free apartments and automobiles and generous salaries...

...Today Spain remains a country of many pressures, some open, many submerged...

...This is not the same as saying that the next turn of the Spanish wheel will produce a system identical with anything found elsewhere...

...What have not changed are the trappings of the dictatorship...

...He cannot pass all these responsibilities on to one successor, for there can be no renewal of the circumstances which made this concentration possible—short of another civil war...

...This younger generation does not remember the republic or the civil war at first hand, and is tired of being told that Franco saved the country from Communism—or, rather, tired of the corollary so often drawn, that Communism is the only alternative to the present regime...

...To Philip, contemplating eternity as he gazed down on the endless, barren vistas of the Spanish plain, time meant nothing...

...In the first place, though the boycott has ended, nobody can pretend that Spain is in everything on an equal footing with her neighbors...

...Of the position of the Church it is harder to judge, for the strands which weave the Church into Spanish life are so complex, involving infinite historical, regional, and personal variations, that generalization is quite difficult...

...What is happening in Spain' today is that the regime is growing old, and time breeds criticism, restlessness, and a desire for change...

...Until now the Ministry of Information has been quick to give the Communists free publicity by ascribing most troubles and opposition activities to them, as though they were the only effective critics of the regime...

...support is a credential of respectability which enables him to obtain loans and investments from abroad...

...While seeking to preserve the Church's present privileges with the state, they cannot be unmindful of the anti-clericalism its association with oppressive regimes has provoked in the past in Spain, France, and Latin America...

...Most of the people are conscious that Spain is lagging behind Western Europe, and this particularly exercises the intellectuals...

...Communists, Socialists, and liberal Monarchists are in agreement on one basic point: Franco is the Spanish Communist Party's best recruiting agent...

...The arrest or exile of the opposition leaders, student protests, and industrial strikes have taken on added significance because the same elements have recurred in the pattern of past political changes...

...Consequently, its loyalty to Franco has never been in doubt...

...There are approximately 27,000 U.S...

...Cracks are beginning to appear in the national-syndicalist state, some only in the walls, but others running deep into the foundations...

...Tourism, through helping the country's balance of payments, may bolster up the regime in the short-run...

...The opposition to Franco blames the United States for turning the Spanish army into the most efficient instrument of internal oppression in Europe...

...It must, to flourish, have its peculiarly Spanish characteristics...

...Naturally, they wish to be reassured about their jobs, and, like the "believers," they are disturbed because the regime has failed to "institutionalize" the Falange—in other words, has failed to embed the movement's creed and the professors of its creed into the national life...

...The first are the "believers"— the radical idealists, who genuinely believed that the movement could and would create a new society of discipline and social justice...

...The renewal of this lease is due next year...

...His work has appeared in the New York Times, Commonweal, The Christian Century, and many other publications at home and abroad...

...If the boycott had been effective it should have caused the downfall of Franco...

...it enjoys countless privileges accorded it by the regime...

...Should he allow some measure of political relaxation and perhaps endanger his rule...

...servicemen and their dependents in Spain, and although they try to make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, they have aroused a great deal of anti-American feeling...

...Whatever plans Franco may have about his succession, he does not en...

...Was his position any different from that of the lonely old general in El Prado Palace, as he tries to gauge what fate awaits him and his country...

...As for the Falange, which is the only party of the regime, its political role has declined and its two major elements are both anxious about the future...

...She has not, for example, been asked to join NATO, and her application for association with the Common Market is still pending...

...Or should he concentrate on economic reforms in the hope that they will take the edge off political discontent...

...it still gives thanks for the "National Crusade" which, at a cost of one million casualties, imposed Franco on Spain...

...Possibly Don Juan, the Prince's father, would be allowed, for the sake of appearance, to reign for a time...

...Workers complain that they are being denied their fair share of this prosperity and insist that their strikes are a protest against the slowness with which their demands are being met...

...a thousand or so political prisoners are in jail without recourse to justice...

...As so often before, the real problem facing Spain today is to adjust the growth of Spanish institutions to the ideas and influences blowing in from across the frontiers...

...The methods of public education and propaganda have failed, and the younger generation, supposed to have been reared in isolation from politics, is now stirring in political unrest...

...And they must somehow bridge the rift that has developed within the Church between the older priests who played an active part in Franco's "National Crusade," and the younger ecclesiastics who are appalled by the corruption and moral apathy bred by a generation of "Crusader" rule...

...They are disappointed to see Spain developing along the lines of any other bourgeois state, and in particular by the proposal to revive the monarchy...

...Franco's own instinct is to move slowly, for, after all, he is only sixty-nine, reportedly in good health, and eighty or so is a respectable age for active statesmen these days...

...If history is any guide—and few people are more conscious of historical precedents than Spaniards—the big change may come from small and apparently irrelevant beginnings...

...Many Western trade unionists will not hobnob with their Spanish colleagues, although they can travel without a qualm to Communist countries whose unions are less free than the sindicatos...

...outside world, it does not mean that the regime is in any danger of immediate overthrow...

...This year, for instance, ten million tourists will visit Spain...

...Of the two, the Falange needs greater reassurance, for Franco clearly favors the Army...

...The laurels of Falangist victory are withering, in spite of unflagging propaganda...

...The reason is not so much their presence but the feeling that the United States is determined to keep Franco in power...

...have not tried another way...

...Moreover, Madrid has become one of the great conference cities of the world, and millions of tourists swarm over Spain in all seasons...

...for the glowing tributes of its Secretaries of State and Congressmen—Republicans and Democrats alike —to the Franco regime...

...How, the young argue in effect, can you be sure of this if you GABRIEL GERSH i» a free lance writer who specializes in Mediterranean affairs...

...However, the task of Cardinal Pla and his supporters is a delicate one...

...They see films, for instance, which are banned in Spain, and when they return from abroad, they are bound to be discontented...

...Few problems have been solved, and many, such as those of the peripheral nationalities, will become more intractable in the future...

...A striking aspect of the recent strikes is that they are a sign of prosperity as well as of resentment against the regime's ban on the right to strike...

...Whether or not the strikes were successful, they have undoubtedly contributed to the atmosphere of change —to the feeling of being on the eve of something new—which Spaniards sense without always being able to define...

...Thanks to Franco's alliance with the United States, he feels protected against a coup, and the mili- tary equipment he has received from the United States makes such an event unlikely...

...representatives in Spain to establish contact with the opposition...

...visage the restoration of a liberal monarchy that would agree to any fundamental changes in the structure of the state...

...expense...

...The only survivor of the pre-World War II group of dictatorships which included those of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, the Franco regime seems to many to have outstayed its welcome: The people are tired of it, and are increasingly troubled by the problem of who or what will succeed it...

...But this prosperity has tended to increase the income of the middle class at a rate with which general wage levels have failed to keep pace (the per capita income is $280 a year...

...the censorship is still absolute (although the recent appointment of the Catholic intellectual, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, to the Ministry of Information probably heralds a new press law, undoubtedly many subjects will remain taboo...

...for its ingratitude to friends who sided with the Allied cause in World War II, while Franco openly supported Hitler...

...The trouble, of course, dates back to the passions of the Civil War, and since these passions are not dead inside Spain it is unreasonable to expect them to be forgotten abroad...

...This misguided policy, the opposition argues, has led to a mounting feeling of revulsion against the United States, the ultimate consequence of which may be a "Castro Spain...

...Yet Spanish satisfaction with these developments is qualified...

...But indirectly the sight of so many teachers, students, and businessmen, well supplied with dollars, pounds, marks, and francs, provokes curiosity about the system which produces such travelers...

...But if there is a danger of Communist infiltration—and some observers believe it will grow— the fault lies, not with the regime's eternal scapegoat, "liberalism," but with the policies of the Franco government itself...

...It is still common for Spanish institutions to be described in disparaging terms that are seldom used for other countries...

...For there is no harder political exercise that any country can undertake than the peaceful unwinding of a personal or absolutist system of government...

...Perhaps he sees himself eventually retiring, like Diocletian, to the background, after dividing authority among his chosen heirs...

...In the Escoral, the isolated and gloomy palace-monastery on the hills outside Madrid, Philip II, the religious fanatic and world statesman, spent his last years praying with the monks and brooding on his sorrows and failures...

...Although the Church has not abandoned Franco, the Primate of Spain, Cardinal Pla y Deniel, and several other Church leaders are beginning to reconsider the Church's attitude toward Franco, and question the wisdom of becoming too closely identified with a regime which may not be so permanent as it thinks...

...Thus, any traveler today can find plenty of evidence of hardship and echo the astonishment of earlier generations of travelers when they came face to face with Spanish suffering and endurance...

...Undoubtedly this king-making could be delayed until Franco dies—though, since he comes of an exceptionally long-lived family (his father died at ninety-three and his grandfather at 102), the delay might be long...

...Differences between rich and poor are sharp, and the plight of the peasants is still tragic...

...The labor unrest and the stirrings of discontent among the intellectuals and students are symptoms of a new mood...

...It is often pointed out that hitherto Franco has preserved his power by brilliant balancing among the forces on whose support he relies—Army, Falange, and Church...

...Prince Juan Carlos has said that under no circumstances could he reign before his father, and Spanish monarchists (who otherwise differ greatly) all support Don Juan...

...The United States has done much to bolster up the regime in many ways, including an attempt to save it from bankruptcy in 1958...

...for the failure of many U.S...

...From the point of view of the regime, this has been a mixed blessing, for the international contacts that have been developed seem to have a weakening as well as a strengthening effect...

...Instead, the past several years have seen the entry of Spain into the United Nations, and various other international bodies, a concordat with the Vatican, economic and military agreements with the United States, goodwill visits by British ships to Spanish ports, and the frequent exchange of cordial visits and messages with rulers of other countries...

...The collapse of the international boycott to which Spain was subjected at the end of World War II is regarded by the regime as a considerable achievement...

...Castro's revolution in Cuba has had a great impact on many of these youths...

...The way ahead for Spain involves a balance of risks—the risk of explosion if there is no change, and the risk that a planned change may get out of control...

...But the scars of war and the inflation of the 1950's have disappeared...

...in the long-run it must help to erode it or at least destroy the concept of Spain as a country insulated against European heresies...

...It is employed to discredit the opposition, or to justify the harshness of Franco's repression...

...the Cortes still has no real power...

...However, judging by his pronouncements and public gestures, his own plan for his succession seems to rely on the prospect that he will continue to live, in full control of his faculties, until 1967, when he will be seventy-five and Prince Juan Carlos, son of the Pretender Don Juan, will be thirty (the Law of Succession of 1947 prescribes that any future king of Spain must be thirty, a Spaniard, and a Catholic...

...The administration is riddled with corruption and inefficiency...

...At present all power is vested in Franco...

...The other Falangists are those who have joined the movement because it provides a ticket to official life in the civil service and the sindicatos— the official trade unions permitted by the regime...

...Since they are pleasure bent, and most of them ignorant of their host's language, they will exercise no direct subversive influence...

...Simultaneously, a window on the outside world has been opened for thousands of families by letters and visits from Spaniards working in Europe...

...He is head of the state and head of the government, head of the armed forces and head of the movimiento (Falange...

...Perhaps this dire prophecy is exaggerated, but the specter of a "Castro Spain" is constantly evoked by the official press...

...Today every group in Spain, is asses-ing its position in relation to an unpredictable future...

...Or should he continue to keep all forces in play, sometimes giving a little, often temporizing, sometimes turning a deaf ear...

...Despite the surge of industrial expansion in recent years, the economic situation is disquieting for most of the people...

...But if the average Spaniard is more conscious of the...

...However, it is safe to say that the Church has been a bulwark of the regime...

...Justice in political cases (and the decision as to what constitutes a political case) is still an instrument of the executive...