Just before Franco's final collapse, the Economist compared Spain to a car driven by a little old man whose eyes are fixed on the rear-view mirror. He has just taken it through a red light and onto a dangerous crossroacs. Can the driver be persuaded to look forward instead of back or can someone else intervene to slam on the brake?!
Now that Franco's hands have slipped off the wheel, the car looks even more dangerously out of control. Juan Carlos, elected head of government last October and Franco's designated heir, seems incapable of slamming on any brake and defusing the explosive situation building up.
On the contrary, nis election nas coincided with a deft push on the accelerator as hard-line Franco supporters have moved into action. In the past few months, •Basque nationalists have been further repressed, opposition spokesmen in Madrid intimidated and student assemblies in Valencia and Seville broken up, leading to over 1ov arrests.
Opposition The Economist's concern for democracy is not, of course, genuine, It is motivated by fear: fear that unless concessions are quickly made, the masses may very well begin, themselves, to dismantle the system under which they have suffered for 40 years, and install a democracy on socialist lines. Memories of Portugal, just after the overthrow of Catano, are still too vivid.
Such a fear is perfectly justified.
Opposition is growing on all sides as ever-wider layers grow impatient for change. The student rallies represent only one aspect of the mass discontent which has grown in determination and size since the Burgos trials in 1970.
The development of the workers commissions, which last year swept the elections in the fascist trade unions, averaging 75% of the votes, repres ents another. It is these commissions which have been responsible for the enormous growth in strikes - over 2196 last year involving over 700, 000 workers - which have shaken the country.
Another time-bomb confronting the Carlos regime is the unresolved problem ot the oppressed nationalities whose rights have been trampled on for decades by the Franco dictatorship. Despite Carlos! recent decision to grant such nationalities the right to use their own language, the situation In the Basque country, where a virtual reign of terror existed, is explosive.
As the Times recently suggested, the intensified repression of Francols last period succeeded not only in alienating ine masses but also ithe former pillars of support, in the Catholic Church and the Army!. The fact that last year alone 13 young officers of the UMD (Democratic Military Union) were arrested for advocating a return to 'democracy' is an indication of how deep popular opposition to the aictatorsnip Is.
Concessions The major concern occupying bourgeois commentators is whether, as the New York Times put it, these trends not been wanting. Individual factories from Plesseys in Liverpool to Persona in Glasgow have been occupied as the workforce spontaneously began to reject the irrationality! of a system which can throw people on the scrapheap at a moment's notice.
These struggles, while a sign of