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Spanish Political Parties: Before and After the Election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Jonathan Story
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Extract

AS LONG AS FRANCO LIVED, ALL MILITARY, LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE powers centred on his person. Regional autonomies were suppressed, unions outlawed and political parties banned on the metaphorically medical grounds that ‘Spain’ was historically addictive to the ‘demoliberal system of inorganic democracy’. But Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s éminence grise, was assassinated on 20 December 1973. His death marked the burial of Franco’s plans to perpetuate the regime beyond his grave. Juan Carlos, son of Don Juan - the heir to Alfonso XIII’s throne - pledged at his inauguration in November 1975 to create ‘a real consensus of national concord’. Spain was to become a full member of Europe, ‘with all that this implies’. Neither pledge was attainable without at least a major reform, or at most a dismantling of the regime’s characteristic institutions: the National Movement and the state syndicates. Both were eventually accomplished by a de facto alliance between the monarch and all political forces in the country opposed to a maintenance of the status quo.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1977 , pp. 474 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1977

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References

1 ABC, 2 April 1970.

2 ABC, 23 November 1975.

3 Chao, Ramon., Après Franco, L’Espagne, Editions Stock, Paris, 1975, pp. 95–104 Google Scholar.

4 ‘Associations’ was the regime’s terminology for cabals forming within the National Movement around personalities.

5 International Herald Tribune, 4 June 1976.

6 IHT, 10 June 1976.

7 Gambio 16, 19 July 1976.

8 Le Monde, 16 July 1976.

9 Cambio 16, 27 September 1976.

10 La Vanguardia, 10 October 1976.

11 La Vanguardia, 17 March 1977.

12 La Vanguardia, 6 March 1977.

13 Cambio 16, 18 October 1976.

14 Cambio 16, 29 March 1976.

15 Le Monde, 8 February 1977.

16 La Vanguardia, 8 March 1977.

17 La Vanguardia, 22 March 1977.

18 Calvo Hernando, Pedro, Juan Carlos, Escucha, Ultramar, Madrid, 1976, p. 38.Google Scholar

19 Cambio 16, 29 March 1976.

20 However, none of the parties was in a position to assess their relative weights, given the fact that no elections had been held in Spain for forty years.

21 Calvo Hernando., Juan Carlos, p. 253.

22 Ibid., p. 285.

23 Ibid., p. 295.

24 Cambio 16, 19 December 1976.

25 La Vanguardia, 30 April 1977.

26 La Vanguardia, 15 March 1977.

27 Alberto Pérez Calvo, Los Partidos Políticos en Pais Vasco, Turner Ediciones, San Sebastian, 1977.

28 On 30 June 1977 it was announced that the PCE had been awarded a 2oth seat in Madrid (Ramon Tamames).

29 ABC, 19 June 1977, ‘El Bipartidismo’.

30 El Pais, 21 June 1977, ‘Reflexiones sobre el resultado electoral’.

31 El Pais, 17 June 1977, ‘Hacia la democracia’.