SPAIN: Dictator’s Day

It was just 22 years since he took over as the Caudillo of Spain, and Francisco Franco, 65, is not the sort to let an anniversary pass unnoticed. Last week, at the “suggestion” of the government, Madrid’s newspapers dutifully listed Franco’s accomplishments (e.g., no fewer than 16 towns now bear the name Franco). “The moral qualities of Francisco Franco as a ruler,” said Arriba, “are infinitely superior to those of Emperor Augustus, Charles V, and Napoleon.” Such men as Franco, concluded the Catholic Ya, “are the instruments of the highest designs of Providence.” The Monarchist A.B.C. recalled Vichy Marshal Petain’s remark that Generalissimo Franco’s “is the cleanest sword in Europe.” Only the Syndicalist paper Pueblo avoided sycophantic assent. Wrote Pueblo sharply: “We believe that rhetoric is indissolubly united to the decadence of Spain over the past centuries.”

Even those who did not like the dictator had to concede his staying power. He had won the Civil War (with German and Italian help). He kept out of World War II (except to send his Blue Division to fight against Russia). And he had avoided the postwar debacle of his fellow fascist dictators. Though denounced by the U.N. in its early days, Spain is now a U.N. member. And largely because of letting the U.S. build vast air and naval bases in Spain, Franco has in recent years got more than $1 billion in U.S. aid.

Spain is still a dictatorship, but not so severely as it once was. It is more prosperous than it used to be—though still the poorest nation in Western Europe, outside its next-door neighbor Portugal, where a fellow dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, is Franco’s only senior in office.