Word: franco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Spanish governing elite is deeply divided between the party of the "bunker" and the party of the "aperture", opponents and proponents of liberal change. The men of the bunker, so named by analogy to Hitler's die-hard supporters in 1945, oppose any reform and hope to preserve the Franco state intact as long as possible, including its secret police and political arrests. These men represent Franco's family, civil war generals, high state officials, and a host of para-military groups like the Falange and the Guerillas of Christ the King. The bunker deeply distrusts Juan Carlos...
...National Movement, Spain's only legal political party, as well as high bureaucrats, corporate executives, and former ministers and ambassadors. They have organized political groups like the FEDISA (Federation of Independent Study Groups) and Tacito, which publish manifestos in the Catholic press and hope to direct post-Franco Spain...
...SENSE, the "moderates" want the same thing as the bunker: both groups seek to insure a stable Spain after Franco by different means. The two factions are caught on opposite sides of a double-bind. The bunker wants to maintain discipline through immediate repression, but risks arousing opposition strong enough to topple the Franco state. The aperture prefers opening the system to certain political groups, while excluding others. In this way, they hope to limit democratic impulses, but may precipitate a powerful shift leftwards once any opposition is legalized. Each faction sees the dangers in the other's plans...
...corporations, and emigrant labor have brought Spain a 7 per cent annual growth rate, the highest in Europe. This Spanish "economic miracle" created a large middle class un-sympathetic to fascist ideology and excluded from the political system. The bunker considers anything to its left as "communist", as did Franco himself, so that middle class forces that are defenders of the status quo elsewhere are part of the left in Spain. The Christian Democrats, for example, are allied with the Socialists and the Communists in the new Common Front. The "moderate" Francoists hope to appeal to this new middle class...
Another erstwhile pillar of the Franco state now in opposition is the Catholic church. Under the "red Cardinal" Tarancon, the ecclesiastical hierarchy preaches social justice and the separation of church and state, paving the way for a republic. The lay Catholic association Opus Dei, whose technocrats engineered Spain's economic growth, leads the forces seeking political liberalization and entrance into the Common Market...