SPAIN: Man in a Sweat

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Like most of his countrymen, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain, is fond of good food. Unlike most of them, he has been able to indulge the taste consistently for many years and possesses respectable ebonpoint to prove it. Yet if ever a man had cause to pick nervously at his victuals, that man is Francisco Franco. This week his well-padded posterior is planted on one of the hottest governmental hot seats in all the world. And the main question facing him is not whether he can ease the situation, but whether he can stay there at all, and how long.

Trial Balance. Four and one-half years after his victory in Spain’s rebellion and civil war, Franco could see little enough to give him comfort or joy. After months of slow disintegration, Spanish affairs were brought into sharp focus. Out of Spain last week came the clearest picture yet of a tottering regime. Franco’s country, unreconstructed, is hungry, sullen, restive. He has not a strong friend abroad, and precious few at home. Of the two powerful allies who forged his victory, Italy lies prostrate, the battleground of foreign armies; Germany, no longer able to do him any real good, still has the means to work him grievous harm. In an economic sense he is living on the measured bounty of the “Western Pluto-democracies,” which he once scorned for their weakness.

On the credit side Franco could register only one fact that most Spaniards approved: despite his original involvement with the Axis, he had kept Spain out of World War II.

At Home & Abroad. Last week, at Franco’s northern border, German troops were poised; German agents already had infiltrated his country thoroughly, with his own connivance. On his sea frontiers, in the air, in nearby Africa, the Allies he once mocked had grown terrifyingly powerful. Even his meekest & mildest neighbor, Portugal, nestling in Spain’s Atlantic flank, was holding grim and elaborate civil-defense exercises, and rumor ran fast that she might be about to join the Allies. If, in the logic of events, Germany declared war on Portugal, the squeeze would fall on Franco. He knows, better than most, that the Allies owe him no gratitude, that any advance against him would be an advance against Hitler.

In Spain itself there was no true unity to meet such a crisis. Of the groups supporting his Government, none was entirely satisfied. Some were definitely dissatisfied. In shrill alarm the Madrid El Espanol denounced “conspiracies against the Caudillo which favor a regime of free-for-all shooting.” The paper added: “At present the operations against the legitimate regime are being launched in the name of nationalism, capitalism, monarchism, conservatism and Christian liberalism. All these groups, in league with the Reds in a half-baked alliance, fear the Falange and its unified leadership. . . .”

That covered plenty of ground. If even approximately true, it indicated that almost everyone in Spain was in a mood to gang up on the Falange and Francisco Franco. Observers recently returned from Madrid estimated that some 85% of all Spaniards now opposed the Government.

From London came detailed reports of a meeting held in Spain last fortnight by members of six opposition political groups. They were reported to have decided that

Franco must go, clear the way for restoration of the Spanish monarchy. Monarchist agitation already had gone so far that Franco last June offered the exiled Don Juan, son of the late Alfonso XIII, a half hearted proposition to return, under Franco domination. Don Juan cagily turned the offer down.

Still another British source reported that Franco had received an ultimatum: restore the monarchy within three months, or else. The Army was said to favor the plan as a hedge against loss of jobs and pensions.

Within the Gates. Boiling up at home were:

> The Falange (Phalanx—Spain’s official Fascist party, modeled on Fascismo and National Socialism). Its violently pro-German extremists would be the country’s Fifth Column if the Nazis pushed in. Franco himself is the Party’s titular head.

> Catholic conservatives—who hate and fear the wild men of the Falange.

> Monarchists—a potent force although their top leaders are in exile.

> Traditionalists—also called Carlists, these are fanatical reactionaries who supplied the Requetés, toughest fighters in Franco’s ranks during the civil war. Now they violently oppose the political program of the Falange, with which they are technically linked.

Cutting across direct political lines are the Army and the Church. Both are pro-monarchist; in the past the Army has been somewhat anticlerical. The Church is the most powerful traditional influence in Spain. The Army wields immediate physical power and could enforce any decision on which its top generals agreed.

Forgotten Men. Completely suppressed at the moment is at least half of Spain’s political potential—the people who voted in the Popular Front Government of 1936, who fought for their Republic, and lost. They are dispersed and disfranchised; thousands of them are imprisoned and some Madrid reports insist that executions are still going on. Politically the group stretches all the way from Basque Catholics to Iberian Anarchists: the regime lumps them together as “reds.” All of them hate Franco to death. Many, surprisingly, would play ball with the monarchists, on the theory that with Franco out of the way, it would be possible to send the King packing and restore the Republic.

See Change. Franco’s foreign problems are simpler—and tougher. Gone are the winy, intoxicating days of glory directly after the fall of France. Hitler and Mussolini were then Franco’s great and fairly good friends. No one could imagine German soldiers entering Spain as anything but welcome guests. (Many of them did, on shopping expeditions to strip food from a half-starved country.)

The Falange had set up its own form of Auslandsdienst to carry the gospel of Hispanidad to the New World and reestablish Spain as the dominant cultural, economic and political influence in Latin America. El Caudillo dreamed of empire. In this exuberant period, there must have been at least a half-dozen occasions when Falange extremists almost carried the day for war, for an imperialist adventure to unify and recreate Spain. But Franco always decided to wait a little longer.

Then a change came o’er the spirit of his dream, and made itself felt in his speeches. From confidently predicting Axis victory he fell to talking gloomily of a six-or seven-year war to the death, then (last May) to calling for peace. The invasion and cleanup of Africa gave Spain a close and eye-popping demonstration of Allied power. On Oct. 1, speaking before the Falange, he omitted the ringing Spanish phrase for “nonbelligerency,” used in its place a calm, almost Swiss formula: “vigilant neutrality.”

Pointed Pressure. Aside from military events, hard economic facts have made their imprint on Spanish policy. The civil war hurt Spain badly, cost her 1,200,000 lives, left her agriculture and industry crippled. Spain had desperate need of grain, petroleum and cotton. Germany could give her none of these, nor anything else of immediate value. Britain and the U.S. could arrange the matter. For a time the products were granted to Spain in a process which seemed to be appeasement at its unprofitable worst. But somewhere along the line British and U.S. negotiators seem to have learned the technique of horse trading. London sources last week guardedly admitted that the U.S. Oil Allocation Board and the British Ministry of Economic Warfare have finally maneuvered themselves into key positions in Spain’s large-scale economic life.

Thus, for many months, inexorable economic pressure has been shifting Spain’s alignment from the Axis to the Allies. There was no question of a choice for Franco, nor has he made any choice. But in the process: Spain has kept strictly hands-off the Allied invasion of Africa; the Falange press and radio have steadily toned down, and at times stifled their anti-Allied ravings; Franco’s “Blue Division” has been gradually reduced and withdrawn from Russia; Spain has virtually halted all supply to Germany.

For “security reasons,” other instances of Spanish courtesy to the Allies cannot be published. But Spanish newspapers now publish Allied war communiques, Allied war photographs; the radio carries advertisements of American goods. In a recent test of strength the Allies “persuaded” Franco to clear Axis shipping spies out of Tangier on the North African coast.

For better or worse, Spain has been forced to turn almost full-circle, from outright pro-Axis alignment, to neutrality, to dependence on Allied good will. Franco is still a Fascist. But he is not the Franco of 16 months ago; he is a man on a spot, compelled to look at the growing certainty of Allied victory, compelled to find, if he can, a way to save his Fascist skin.

Dictator’s Beginnings. The U.S. once had a remarkable effect upon the remarkable life of Francisco Franco. Born in El Ferrol, Spain’s great naval base, in 1892, Franco was the son of a naval officer, destined for a naval career.

But when Francisco was six years old the Spanish Navy sailed out on its brave, hopeless campaign against the upstart Yanqui tinpots and presently ceased to be a going concern. Having no warships to speak of, the Spanish Government decided to shut the Naval Academy down; 14-year-old Francisco went instead to the military academy in the Alcazar of Toledo. If he had followed his planned career he might have been a captain or admiral by 1936, when rebel naval officers were heaved over the sides of their warships by Loyalist crews.

As it was, Cadet Franco got his Army commission at 17, served with distinction in the endless Riff campaigns, got to be a major at 23 and the youngest general in a standard European army at 32. His fortunes sagged for a time under the Spanish Republic, then brightened when a Rightist Government came into power in 1935 and his friend, War Minister Jose Maria Gil Robles (now exiled leader of the Catholic CEDA) made him Chief of Staff.

Franco had been an expert in Moroccan warfare. He knew all the admirable qualities of the Moorish trooper, who requires only to be paid, fed and told to kill. In 1934 he gave Spain an innovation in the class struggle by importing Moors to put down an uprising by Socialist Asturian miners. Later he brought the Moors in again to fight the milicianos of the Republic. To this day Moors, picturesque in their white, blue and red burnooses, make up his personal bodyguard.

The Popular Front Government which came to power in February 1936 did not dare keep Franco in Madrid, but assigned him a responsible outpost command, the Canary Islands. He soon began plotting with other generals; as his part of the July revolt, flew to Morocco to take charge of the rebel troops there. Franco expected the whole show to be over in a week or ten days, scarcely dreamed of becoming the top leader.

Dilemma and End? One of Franco’s several mistakes during his rebellion was not military but political. Franco apparently reasoned that one reason for the failure of Primo de Rivera’s earlier military dictatorship was that the government lacked any real popular basis. To cure that, while the war was still in progress he adopted the Falange Party, approved by Hitler and Mussolini.

Since Franco’s victory the Falange has become intensely unpopular with virtually all other Spanish groups. A favorite Madred café joke runs that the Falange has unified all Spain—in hatred of the Falange.

Now the Falange is the only party on which Franco can depend. Yet it is exactly the party which will strive most vigorously to block any monarchist deal he might hope to offer the ascendant democracies. All this must be bitter drink for Franco, a proud man, who has himself assumed much of the panoply of royalty in Madrid. He appears at public functions surrounded by an entourage of aides and has a lordly way of refusing to see foreign ambassadors in person. Madrid gossips have long whispered that Franco dreams of founding a dynasty of his own. He might, they murmur, marry off his young daughter, Carmencita, to the Duke of Veragua, scion of a famous bull-raising family and descendant of Christopher Columbus.

Yet El Caudillo must have little time now for dreams, either of royalty or empire. At home he can hear the murmur of a discontented people. When the wind is right he may fancy that he hears the rumble of distant drums from Hendaye on the French frontier, from Allied North Africa, from Portugal.

Francisco Franco is a neat, spotlessly turned out little man (5 ft. 3 in.). He is fastidious about his person. One of his characteristic gestures is a dainty dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. When he dabs these days, it is no mere gesture.