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From The New International, Vol. 13 No. 2, February 1947, pp. 35–37.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The days of Franco’s regime in Spain have been numbered ever since the end of World War II. The Spanish clerico-militarist reaction which arose in the 30’s to head off the rising tide of social revolution had not only donned the trappings of the successful fascist movements of Hitler and Mussolini, but, what was far more important, conquered power and consolidated it solely due to the military, financial and diplomatic support of Rome and Berlin. The doom of Franco’s regime was, therefore, sealed with the destruction of its German and Italian precursors and mentors. Deprived of its international props, isolated in a world atmosphere in which “classical” fascism had become unpopular even with the ruling classes, faced by an aggressive Russian policy seeking a new sphere of influence on the Mediterranean, too compromised by its pro-Axis role in the war to permit even Great Britain to render effective assistance, subjected to pressure by the United Nations as a “menace to peace,” Franco’s regime is rapidly becoming a new “sick man of Europe” about whose impending death there is as much general agreement as there is violent controversy over who should take his place. The essence of the Franco question is, therefore, to be found, not in whether Franco’s regime will survive, but in how it will be displaced and by whom.
The forces that are struggling to determine the successor to the Franco regime can be divided into three general camps. Of these, two are prominently in the public eye – the Russian camp and the Anglo-American camp – while the third – the camp of social revolution – remains hidden by the imposing police façade which continues to mask the widening fissures in the Franco edifice and to maintain an outward appearance of great strength. As during its Civil War, Spain is again both a battleground of internal class struggle and a pawn in a contest between two imperialist camps that ranges across the face of the earth. Spanish politics are once more closer interwoven with international politics. In reality, the latter is the key to the former.
Within Spain, the political struggle is waged by the traditional
fighting tactics of the proletariat under a police dictatorship.
Internationally, the struggle is waged within the United Nations and
within the rival coalitions of Spanish politicians in exile. But the
two struggles act and react upon each other. The reverberations of
the rising resistance within Spain spur the imperialist rivals to
more frenzied activities to consummate their particular aims before
the revolution-from-below takes charge and announces the day of
reckoning for the old regime. The international maneuvers around the
Spanish question, in tum, embolden the underground and ascertain for
it the fact that the regime will soon topple. Sitdown strikes in
Barcelona textile plants and speeches at Lake Success have,
therefore. their own peculiar inter-relationship. But the main spur
to the mass opposition to the Franco regime is the whip-lash of
unrelieved hunger.
Only the dark pen of a Goya could adequately portray the profound misery of the Spanish people today. As in war-torn Europe, the black market remains the only possible source of food and clothing but at prices that the workers and peasants cannot possibly meet. A New York Times dispatch from Madrid. dated January I, 1947, gives a hint of the misery that exists in the following words:
The pay of a skilled workman with what is considered a good job is insufficient to give anything approaching an adequate diet. The top pay for a laborer is twenty pesetas daily. If he has two or three children it means that they live almost entirely on bread, and have to sell their other rations in a black market to get enough bread. At the same time they can see luxury restaurants where a single meal costs more than their family’s entire weekly income and see those restaurants crowded.
This stark picture could be further illustrated in the language of figures if we were to draw a graph with two legends that respectively represent the catastrophic fall in national productivity and the inflationary rise in the size of the national budget. (Of this budget, over 50 per cent regularly goes to the upkeep of a fantastic military and police establishment that includes twelve admirals for Spain’s tiny navy.) An example of what has happened to agriculture, Spain’s main source of wealth, can be had by noting the downward spiraling figures for wheat production. In 1942, the wheat crop, which regularly accounts for 42 per cent of all agricultural production, stood at 2,900,000 tons. By 1945, the crops harvested had slumped to 1,800,000 tons. During the years of the Spanish Republic, 1931-35, the annual production of wheat averaged 4,363,000 tons. The smallest wheat harvest on record in recent decades was that of 1924, when only 3,314,000 tons was produced. Yet a comparison of this figure with that for 1945 reveals that in the latter year less than half this previous record low was produced.
A similar situation is to be found in the industrial sector as
well. The production of iron and other minerals has fallen to half
the pre-war figures. Since it is the export of agricultural and
mineral products which provides Spain with the foreign exchange
necessary to purchase coal, petroleum, cotton and other raw material
for Spanish industry, Franco has been compelled to seize a larger
portion of the drastically reduced agricultural crops for export
purposes. Despite the “reign of hunger” imposed on Spain by
Franco, industry continues to operate under crippling restrictions
due to a lack of necessary imported raw materials. Because of this
and other reasons, many factories are idle, while it is estimated
that others are forced to operate at 60 to 70 per cent of capacity.
Impelled not only by their hatred of the fascist tyranny,but spurred on as well by their desperate economic condition,the workers cautiously but firmly demonstrate against Franco’s regime of hunger. That more strikes than ever before are taking place against the Franco regime is reported in the capitalist press. What is not reported, however, is that these strikes are taking place without police interference. The workers strike without fear of punishment or reprisal. La Batalla, published in France by the left-wing Socialist group, POUM, relates the following events in its issue of November 15:
On Monday, November 4, the workers, men and women, 4,000 in number, of the important textile firm, Battlo and Trinchet, stopped working. For three days in succession they maintained the same attitude. Although they came to the factory, they refused to start the machines. The demands of the strikers were those imposed by the present situation itself, more food and an increase in wages.
A little while after the strike started, a large number of armed police arrived, ready to repress the movement. But the workers were not intimidated by the police and firmly refused to go back to work, saying, “We do not wish to work, because we die of hunger. We lack the strength to keep the looms going.” These irrefutable arguments morally disarmed the police. The police, who receive a bigger’ food ration than the civil population, lost their initial arrogance when confronted by the spectacle: of these starving workers resolved not to yield until their demands had been met. The police left, saying they would not intervene unless there were acts of sabotage or violence.
Despite the slow revival of working-class opposition in the
factories and the ever-wider circles of workers participating in the
organized activity of the joint committees of the UGT and CNT unions,
the immediate threat of an upheaval is not from this quarter. The
armed forces of the Spanish underground, in the main, represented by
the Democratic Alliance,are as yet too weak and inadequately prepared
for such an attempt without an internal crisis of the regime.
Franco’s main and immediate danger consists of the growing and
articulate opposition that emanates from the bourgeoisie and the
military hierarchy. Under its influence, even Franco’s fake Cortes
has come to life, and on December 30 the Caudillo was
confronted by an unmistakable “parliamentary” opposition. Out of
500 deputies, only 189 voted on a question involving tax increases,
and of these, 68 voted against the bill! A startling symptom
of the decomposition of the Franco regime.
As for the military hierarchy, Franco came to power with its aid and he cannot remain in power without it. Yet it is no secret that Franco has lost favor among the military despite the tremendous sums set aside for them in the annual budget. Franco has been forced to send one general after another into genteel exile, usually for a few months on the Island of Mallorca, for opposition to his regime. So numerous are these departures that the saying in Madrid is, “One general comes, another one goes.”
One monarchist general, Kindelan, upon being allowed to return to Madrid from exile, stated publicly a few weeks ago that “I think as I did before that only the monarchy can save the country.” Perhaps even more revealing is the atmosphere of intrigue and conspiracy which surround General Antonio Aranda, just sent into exile. Aranda is one of the most important figures in the military caste, having commanded Franco’s mercenaries on the Asturian front during the Civil War. Aranda was exiled to Mallorca on the very day he was scheduled to testify at a trial of fourteen Spanish republicans found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the Franco regime in 1944. According to these members of the Spanish underground, they had discussed the question with General Aranda. The court found the fourteen guilty, sentenced two to death at the hands of a firing squad, the others to long terms in jail, but declared Aranda innocent of the charges. Aranda’s exile to Mallorca has, for the present, disrupted the negotiations he has obviously been carrying on with leaders of the Democratic Alliance. More than this “punishment” Franco dares not inflict on members of the military caste.
A New York Times dispatch from Madrid, dated January 1, states:
“New talks among all the opposition parties in Spain except the Communists have led to a definite agreement among them to work for the restoration of the monarchy. Socialists, Republicans, Monarchists and Catalan Autonomists are said to have been represented in talks ten days ago. At that time they decided that the most important point was to change the regime without disorder and that the best means to do so was through the restoration of the monarchy.”
The nature of the transitional regime is made explicit in a later paragraph which says:
“The need has become urgent enough. to have brought all the opposition elements together except the Communists. The plan is said to be for the formation of a secret ‘shadow’ government of three generals and three political figures to prepare plans for reforms and then when ready to present the demand that they be allowed to take over under the aegis of the King and direct the country until elections can be held.”
That Aranda was involved in these talks is indicated by the fact of his exile. That the spokesmen of the underground in this case were representatives of the Democratic Alliance is established by the repeated phrase, “except the Communists.” The Democratic Alliance is led in exile by the right-wing Socialist, Indalicio Prieto, and is composed of a coalition of Catholic Republicans, right-wing Socialists, Catalan Autonomists, UGT union leaders, plus a section of the Anarchists. As the Spanish front for the Anglo-American camp, it aims to exclude the Stalinists from power when Franco falls. Its main strategy is to present the world with the accomplished fact of a “transitional regime” inside Spain, established through backdoor negotiations with Franco’s generals and the Catholic hierarchy. Such a step would void the “legitimate” claims of the self-avowed government-in-exile, headed by Giral.
Until now, the Prieto group has given conditional support to
Giraland has been represented by two ministers in the cabinet,
Enrique de Francisco, Socialist, and Trifon Gomez, UGT leader.
But, confident that an agreement will be reached with the Spanish
military caste, Prieto has been urging the Socialist Party to
withdraw from the Giral cabinet. On the eve of the joint conference
of the UGT and the Socialist Party in Toulouse, France, on January
14, it was announced that Prieto’s two representatives, Gomez and
de Francisco, would withdraw from Giral’s cabinet. The
announcement was made by another member of the Prieto coalition,
Rafael Sanchez Guerra, a representative of the Catholic Republican
group in the Giral cabinet. Guerra said he would also resign because
his group considered the Giral cabinet too far to the Left.
Deprived of the Socialist and UGT support, the Giral regime becomes almost entirely a front for the Stalinists. Giral, a bourgeois political hack, represents nobody in his own right. In this respect he continues to play the same role he occupied throughout the Civil War – that of providing “respectable” window dressing for a succession of cabinets. His reward was always the same, the opportunity to remain in office.
The Stalinist forces themselves, however, represent a considerable power in the Spanish underground. It is entirely likely, as some sources maintain, that the Stalinists have the largest and best-organized movement within the resistance. However, the greater the mass participation in the underground, the smaller will become the specific weight of the Stalinists. For the traditions of the Spanish masses are rooted in the Socialist and Anarchist movements, and as successive layers of the now dormant proletariat move into action, the underground organizations identified with the old movements will grow more rapidly than the Stalinists. It is for this reason that the latter are driving to secure the quickest possible downfall of Franco. Time is not on their side.
However, their desire for speed in removing Franco is not so great as to cause them to risk igniting a general revolutionary conflagration. The Giral-Stalinist group has, of course, attacked the proposals for a restoration of the monarchy, a transitional regime and a plebiscite. Yet every group and party in the Giral regime, including the Stalinists, has announced itself willing to participate in a government that includes monarchists and generals to avoid a revolutionary upheaval. Moscow no more desires an uncontrolled movement from below in Spain than does London-Washington.
On February 24, 1946, the New York Times correspondent, C.L. Sulzberger, obtained an interview with a Stalinist party underground functionary in Spain. According to the interview, the Stalinist declared: “Should Don Juan succeed to the government, contrary to general belief we will make no precipitate move until we ascertain the objectives and program of the new government.” In addition, the Stalinist said: “We seek a peaceful solution and are ready to negotiate with all groups opposing Franco, including monarchists. We would like to form provisional government, representing all factions, and then submit the final form to a popular plebiscite.” Clearly, it is not to Prieto’s program that the Stalinists object, but to their exclusion under Prieto’s scheme from governmental power. Here again we see that the domestic program of the. Anglo-American and Russian camps do not differ. It is the international orientation that is decisive.
Against this background, the actions of the British in the UN become clear. By agreeing to the diplomatic gesture of withdrawing their chief envoy they placate public opinion at home and block the Russian-Polish move to invoke economic and diplomatic sanctions against Franco, a move that might precipitate events in Spain too quickly for the British. Meanwhile they are working feverishly to bring about an agreement between the military and clerical hierarchies and the Prieto group for the purpose of installing a “transitional regime” and thus head off the Stalinist-backed Giral regime. It need not be added that though London has taken the initiative in the matter, it acts with the consent of Washington. It thus becomes apparent that all the agitation in the UN over the Franco regime is in reality agitation over the possible consequences of his removal. The Anglo-American camp and the Russian camp both fear that the removal of Franco will strengthen their rivals. But both camps have a common fear that the removal of Franco may unleash social forces that will prove difficult to control. The UN intervention against Franco turns out to be a precautionary intervention to intercept a possible social upheaval against Franco.
The bankruptcy of the Franco regime is complete. Its economic, political and moral [1] props are gone. Its military prop is wavering. The Spanish people are preparing to settle accounts with their bloody oppressors. The intervention of the imperialist powers, whether in the guise of the UN or not, can only, on the one hand, afford Franco with capital for nationalist demagogy, while on the other it prepares the machinery of intervention against the Spanish Revolution. The line which the Fourth Internationalists must follow, therefore, is the following: No imperialist intervention in Spain! All possible world proletarian support to the Spanish Revolution!
1. Such as the public blessings of the Vatican.
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