On 13 April, the Observer, the BBC and the New York Times published declarations by Don Juan – drawn up by Eugenio Vegas Latapié and Gil Robles, in collaboration with the exiled Spanish scholar Rafael Martínez Nadal – to the effect that he was prepared to reach an agreement with Franco only if it was limited to the details of the peaceful and unconditional transfer of power. Since Don Juan had declared himself in favour of a democratic monarchy, the legalization of political parties and trade unions, a degree of regional decentralization, religious freedom and even a partial amnesty, Franco was livid. He later told his faithful confidant and head of his military household, his cousin Francisco Franco Salgado-Araujo ‘Pacón’, that it was the Observer interview that led him to contemplate Juan Carlos as his eventual successor. He unleashed a furious press campaign against Don Juan, denouncing him as the tool of international freemasonry and Communism. The fury of his reaction intensified the divisions within Don Juan’s group of advisers. Against the anti-Franco line of Eugenio Vegas Latapié and José María Gil Robles, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez had come to the conclusion that Franco increasingly held all the cards and thus advocated a tactic of conciliation towards him. Distressed by the press assault, Don Juan began to incline towards Sainz Rodríguez’s view. In consequence, in the autumn of 1947, Vegas Latapié resigned as his secretary.94
The Ley de Sucesión was rubber-stamped by the Cortes in June and endorsed by a carefully choreographed referendum on 6 July 1947.95 Long before this plebiscite, Franco had been, in every respect, acting as if he were King of Spain, even dispensing titles of nobility. Ironically, as part of the campaign for the referendum, spectacular propaganda was made out of the visit to Spain by the glamorous María Eva Duarte de Perón (Evita) in June 1947. The publicity given to the visit implied that Evita had come just to see Franco, and the Movimiento press omitted to mention that she was also visiting Portugal, Italy, the Vatican, Switzerland and France. In Portugal, she visited Don Juan. Greeting him effusively – according to José María Pemán, she kissed him on both hands and part of his forearm – she had no hesitation in giving him a spot of advice about the Ley de Sucesión. Take the crown from whoever offers it,’ she told him, ‘you’ll have plenty of time later to give him a good kick in the backside.’ When Don Juan stopped laughing, he replied, ‘There are certain things that a lady can say and a King cannot do.’96
Meanwhile, the now nine-year-old Juan Carlos exhibited a precocious concern for events in Spain. In January 1947, shortly after his first communion, Don Juan had suggested to one of the monarchists who had come from Spain, José María Cervera, that he give the Prince an account of the Spanish Civil War. Juan Carlos reacted by asking: ‘And why does Franco, who was so good during the war, treat us so badly now?’97 However, Don Juan came to realize that sporadic contact with monarchists, fascinating though it might be for the young Prince, hardly added up to an education. Accordingly, the happy period, just 18 months, that Juan Carlos had been able to spend in Estoril came to an end. In late 1947, Don Juan sent his son back to the severe Marian fathers of Ville Saint-Jean, again under the supervision of Vegas Latapié.
The promulgation of the Ley de Sucesión, and its potential permanent exclusion of his family from the Spanish throne, led Don Juan to seek wider support for a restoration. In London for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mount-batten on 20 November 1947, Don Juan had a brief meeting with Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary. He also met State Department officials in Washington in the spring of 1948. He was forced to accept that, in the context of the Cold War, the Western powers had little stomach for the removal of Franco. In an effort to convince them that the departure of the dictator would not lead to another civil war, throughout the first eight months of 1948, Gil Robles and Sainz Rodríguez tried to negotiate a pact with the leader of the Socialist Party, the PSOE, Indalecio Prieto. Agreement was finally reached at St Jean de Luz on 24 August. The text was sent to Estoril for Don Juan’s approval, but the days passed and there came no reply. Then to the consternation of both Prieto and the monarchist negotiators, the news arrived that Don Juan had met Franco on 25 August. Prieto said, ‘I look like a total bastard in the eyes of my party. I’ve got such big horns that I can’t get through the door,’ a reference to the Spanish expression for sexual betrayal, poner los cuernos.98
Don Juan had been sufficiently impressed by the strength of Franco’s position to consider some form of conciliation. The Caudillo, for his part, was now toying with the idea of grooming Juan Carlos as a possible heir. Although the tension between the two was not in the interests of either, all of the advantages lay with Franco. He knew that the United States would not risk provoking the fall of his regime through economic blockade, lest the left rather than Don Juan benefited. In mid-January 1948, messages had also been sent to Don Juan urging him to seek some agreement with Franco.99 Pressure also came from Don Juan’s most conservative supporters in Madrid – his senior representatives in Spain, the Duque de Sotomayor (also head of the royal household), José María Oriol, and two even more reactionary monarchists, the Conde de Vallellano and Julio Danvila Rivera, both of whom had been active members of the ultra-right-wing monarchist organization, Renovación Española, during the Second Republic. They hoped, with no concern whatsoever for the welfare of Juan Carlos, to negotiate with Franco by using the boy as a pawn.
In Switzerland, far from his family, Juan Carlos’s loneliness was hardly mitigated by the company of Eugenio Vegas Latapié, for all his affectionate concern. In February 1948, the sense of being left alone was intensified when his parents went on a long trip to Cuba as the guests of King Leopold of Belgium. Juan Carlos began to suffer headaches and earache. It was not the only time that his distress at the separation from his parents would manifest itself in illness. Vegas Latapié took him to a clinic where he was diagnosed as having otitis, a severe inflammation of the inner ear. It was necessary that he have a small operation to perforate the eardrum. With the boy’s parents entirely out of touch, this meant an enormous responsibility for Vegas Latapié. With the greatest difficulty, he finally managed to contact Queen Victoria Eugenia who granted permission for the operation to go ahead. Juan Carlos’s ears suppurated so much that his pillow had to be changed several times during the first night. Juan Carlos had to spend 12 days in the clinic, his only regular visitor Vegas Latapié. His grandmother visited him only once. A sense of just how sad he was can be deduced from his anxiety to please. Vegas Latapié had spoken to him of the merit in eating what was put in front of him even if it was not exactly what he liked. He then discovered him eating, with the greatest difficulty, a plate of dry, indigestible ravioli. When Vegas asked why, he replied, ‘I promised you I’d eat it.’100
Danvila and Sotomayor were suggesting to Franco the many advantages to be derived from having Juan Carlos in Spain. News of the monarchist negotiations with the PSOE galvanized the Caudillo into arranging a meeting with Don Juan on his yacht, the Azor. At first, precisely because of the negotiations with the Socialists in France, Don Juan fended off various invitations passed to him by the courtiers in Madrid. However, he was aware of the difficult situation in which the monarchist cause found itself and was also concerned about the education of his son. Danvila visited him in Estoril and finally Don Juan agreed to meet the Caudillo in the Bay of Biscay, on 25 August 1948.101 Don Juan omitted to inform his own close political advisers, even Gil Robles.
When Don Juan came aboard the Azor, Franco greeted him effusively and, to Don Juan’s bemusement, cried profusely. They then spoke alone in the main cabin for three hours. Apart from the short official account given to the Spanish press, the only detailed information derives from Don Juan’s various accounts. The emotional outburst over, Franco quickly gave Don Juan the impression that he believed him to be an idiot, entirely in the hands of embittered advisers and totally ignorant of Spain. Barely allowing him to get a word in edgeways, the Caudillo counselled patience and blithely reassured Don Juan that he was in splendid health and expected to rule Spain for at least another 20 years. To the consternation of Don Juan, he spoke of his devotion to Alfonso XIII, and again wept. Franco claimed that there was no enthusiasm within Spain either for a monarchy or for a republic although he boasted that he could, if he wished, make Don Juan popular in a fortnight. He was nonplussed when Don Juan asked him why, if the creation of popularity was so easy, he constantly used popular hostility as an excuse for not restoring the monarchy. The only reason that the Caudillo could cite was his fear that the monarchy would not have the firmness of command necessary. In contrast to what he must have supposed to be Don Juan’s practice, he declared, ‘I do not allow my ministers to answer me back. I give them orders and they obey.’ The meeting took a dramatic turn for the worse when, exasperated by Franco’s patronizing distortions of history, Don Juan reminded him that in 1942, he had promised to defend Berlin with a million Spanish soldiers. As the temperature plummeted, Franco stared at him silently.
