Word: franco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sense, the draconian sentences expressed the army's pique at the gingerly moves toward liberalization undertaken by Franco's technocrats. Though the verdict was meant to embarrass Franco, he put it to masterful use. Acting swiftly-by tradition, death sentences are executed within twelve hours-Franco first summoned his Cabinet and then the prestigious Council of the Realm. Soon a short announcement from the Pardo Palace told the nation that Franco "has seen fit to commute all the death sentences." The six would still get life, which under Spanish law means a maximum of 30 years...
Last Lunge. For the moment, Franco's calculated magnanimity seemed to have satisfied all sides. Even the convicted terrorists went so far as to say through their lawyers that "it was the common people who had won out in the end." Hardly. Early on, the issue went beyond the Basques to the shape and direction of post-Franco Spain itself. The Basque terrorists brought a whiff of anarchy to Spain, and that was all that the fading, right-wing Falange needed to try a last lunge for power. The blue-shirted Falangists had been useful to Franco during...
...eclipse, the Falange has long raged at the rise of the pragmatic, outward-looking Opus Dei, whose members dominate Franco's 19-member Cabinet. As many conservatives in and out of the Falange see it, the efforts by the envied "holy Mafia"-also known as "Octopus Dei"-to build bridges to the rest of the world, Communist and nonCommunist, are directly responsible for Spain's increasing problems with all manner of separatists and dissidents at home. In their mass rallies, the Falange faithful often take up a pointed chant: "Franco si, Opus...
Masterly Inertia. Who wins? For the moment, Franco seems determined to exercise what Journalist Brian Crozier calls his "masterly inertia"-his practice of moving on an issue only as little as possible and as late as possible. Now that the army, too, has begun to fret about Spain's social disease, however, the pressure on the Caudillo to end the liberalizing influence of the technocrats may grow irresistible...
...universal storm of protest that greeted the verdict seems to have embarrassed the Soviets, who like to project an image of a society where all people, whatever their race or religion, live in perfect contentment. Also, the Soviet leaders probably did not wish to appear more barbarous than Franco; the commutation of the two death sentences in Moscow came less than 24 hours after Franco's decision in Madrid to reverse the death sentences of the six Basque nationalists...