Word: francos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...question of Franco's succession remains cloudy if much discussed. At a rally several weeks ago, the Generalissimo announced without fanfare that he would continue to rule "as long as the Lord gives me strength. Many of the powers which are now mine are, because of their very nature, non-transferable." But twenty-five years after his victory the Caudillo is a weathered seventy-one. A hunting accident suffered several years ago brought the succession question to the front of everybody's mind. Since a 1947 plebescite--the only one during his reign--Franco has had the right to name...
Nominally Spain is a kingdom with Franco serving as regent. The pretender, Don Juan de Bourbon, lives in quiet exile in Portugal. His son, Juan Carlos de Bourbon, has been educated in Spain. The twenty-five year old prince, now an officer in the Spanish Army, Navy, and Air Force, lives with his wife, Greece's Princess Sophia, in a villa outside Madrid. But, while Franco seems fond of the young prince, he has made no official moves in his direction...
...establishment of some variety of authoritarian, presidential regime. He is a professed admirer of the Gaullist state and has moved regularly to better his relations with France. Clearly he appreciates the mystique and the personal power that the French general-president enjoys. Shortly after the hunting accident, Franco created the position of Vice Premier and filled it with his long time friend and fellow general, Augustin Munoz Grandes. A veteran of Madrid politics, Munoz Grandes is popular in the country but a scant four years younger than Franco and ailing at the moment. He will not provide any permanent solution...
Resistance to Franco and his order is generally scattered. Within Spain occasional bombs are thrown, dramatizing that opposition sentiment continues to exist, but government repression and political apathy combine to keep underground groups small and ineffective. In recent years only the illegal miners' unions have succeeded to any degree in defying the regime. Outside of Spain opposition is more active. The political parties and trade unions that existed under the Republic continue to thrive in exile. A Spanish government in exile with representatives in a number of countries, as well as smaller Basque and Catalan groups, maintain head-quarters...
...Franco's "Twenty-Five years of Peace" is a fitting celebration, for peace rather than any particular material or governmental advance have marked his reign. The docility of the Spanish nation during this period, however, has not been the product of Franco or his system of government. The memory of the war--the memory of thirty-three months of civil agony and a million deaths--still haunts the country. The Spaniard, recalling what partisanship brought him in the past, has not been eager to rush back into politics. He has been an easy target for Franco's peace and unity...