Пол Престон – Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy (страница 19)
In the letter to Franco written in Tangier, Don Juan referred to himself ‘as a father conscious of his duty’. This was a clear indication of his annoyance at Franco’s attempt to usurp his role. His pique was evident too in the way that he deliberately ‘misunderstood’ Franco’s scheme. With a dig at Franco’s status, he expressed his satisfaction that: ‘The view of Your Excellency, who is currently responsible for the government of Spain, agrees, essentially, with my own that it is entirely fitting that Don Juan Carlos receive a Spanish, religious and military education.’ By deliberately sidestepping any reference to the Prince’s education within the principles of the
The delay in resolving Juan Carlos’s immediate future hardly mattered since, in the wake of his operation, he was in no fit state to be sent anywhere and spent the winter of 1954 convalescing in Estoril. Nevertheless, Gil Robles was appalled to learn that, while awaiting the reply to his letter of 23 September, Don Juan had permitted negotiations with the Caudillo to continue through the mediation of the Conde de los Andes, the recently appointed head of Don Juan’s household. However, these talks would take place in the shadow of other events, and unexpectedly their eventual fruit would be the Caudillo’s agreement to a private meeting with Don Juan to discuss the details of the Prince’s education in Spain.48
Behind his apparent confidence, Franco still had concerns about monarchist opposition. Already, in February 1954, he had received a visit from several generals, including the influential Captain-General of Barcelona, Juan Bautista Sánchez. To his outrage, the generals touched on the forbidden subject of his eventual death and politely asked if he had made arrangements for the monarchist succession thereafter.49 Then, while still contemplating Don Juan’s letter of 23 September, Franco was alarmed to be informed that the coming out of Don Juan’s eldest daughter, the Infanta María Pilar, had given rise to 15,000 applications for passports from Spanish monarchists who wished to travel to Portugal to pay homage to the royal family. Franco’s oft-repeated claims that there were no monarchists in Spain were severely dented. Twelve thousand applications were refused but 3,000 monarchists made the journey to Estoril for the celebrations held on 14 and 15 October. Along with the cars of aristocrats and senior Army officers there were also charabancs packed with significant numbers of the more modest middle classes.
The Caudillo’s brother Nicolás, the Spanish Ambassador to Portugal, was present at the spectacular ball given at the Hotel do Parque in Estoril, at which the great Amalia Rodrigues sang traditional Portuguese fados. He reported back to El Pardo about the warmth and spontaneous enthusiasm that had greeted the words of Don Juan when he spoke of his hope of seeing a Spain in which all were equal before the law and referred to ‘the Catholic monarchy which is above any transitory circumstances’. Nicolás probably did not mention that he had clapped furiously when Don Juan took to the dance floor with his daughter or that his wife, Isabel Pasqual del Pobil, had eagerly joined in the shouts of ‘
The strength of the monarchist challenge was further brought home to Franco in the course of limited municipal ‘elections’ held in Madrid on 21 November 1954, the first since the Civil War. They were presented by the regime as genuine elections because one third of the municipal councillors would be ‘elected’ by an electorate of ‘heads of families’ and married women over the age of 30. Enthusiastically supported by the newspaper ABC, there were four monarchists up against the four
Instructions were sent to Nicolás Franco in Lisbon to inform Don Juan that he was now ready to meet him. Since Franco had never had any doubts about the kind of education that he wanted for the Prince, there was, from his point of view, no need for a meeting. The boy’s personal needs were of no concern to him. His surprising agreement to meet the Pretender was merely a reaction to growing evidence of the strength of monarchist feeling within Spain. The encounter was to be no more than a propaganda stunt to neutralize that feeling. He had no intention of making any concessions. In his much delayed reply of 2 December 1954 to Don Juan’s September letter, Franco wrote in dismissive terms, limiting the agenda for the meeting. He made it clear that Juan Carlos had to be educated according to the principles of the
It was an irony – and one that Franco was anxious to conceal from Don Juan – that the neutralization of the monarchists and the consolidation of his own plans for the succession were probably now his greatest concern. Hitherto, his most effective weapon in silencing Don Juan had been to conjure up successive revivals of the Falange. This also served to strengthen his argument to Don Juan that, as Caudillo, he could tolerate no restoration of the line that fell in 1931, but rather only the installation of a Falangist monarchy. However, the unexpected success of the monarchists in the Madrid ‘elections’ showed that the Falange was increasingly anachronistic while the monarchist option seemed more in tune with the outside world. The policies of autarchic self-sufficiency favoured by both Franco and the Falange had brought Spain to the verge of economic disaster. At the very least, it would be prudent to convince the royalists among his own supporters of his own good faith as a monarchist – hence the meeting. Don Juan and his supporters might believe that they would be discussing ways of hastening a restoration but Franco’s letter showed again that he would hand over power only on his death or total incapacity and then only to a king who was committed to the unconditional maintenance of the dictatorship.
It was clear that Franco saw the education of Juan Carlos as the preparation of precisely such a king. That did not necessarily mean that there was certainty as to the Prince’s eventual succession to the throne. Apart from encouraging the claim of Don Jaime and his sons, Franco now had another candidate nearer home. On 9 December, his first grandson had been born and his sycophantic son-in-law, Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiu, suggested changing the baby’s name by reversing his matronymic and patronymic. The formal agreement by a servile Cortes on 15 December to his name being Francisco Franco Martínez-Bordiu made the new arrival a potential heir to his grandfather. Alarm spread in monarchist circles that Franco planned to establish his own dynasty.54 This was exacerbated when the Conde de los Andes reported on the harshness of Franco’s tone during their negotiations on the agenda to be discussed in the forthcoming meeting between the Caudillo and Don Juan. Outlining his own plan for the Prince’s education, he had told the astonished count that: ‘If Don Juan does not accept such an education for his son, or his son does not agree to it, the Prince should not return to Spain and that will mean that he has renounced the throne and that I will consider myself free of any understanding with him.’ Pacón noted in his diary that a meeting was utterly pointless because he knew that nothing would make Franco deviate from the plan that he had laid out. He bluntly told Pacón, ‘If Don Juan wants his son ever to reign in Spain, he must submit to my wishes, which are for his own good and for that of the fatherland, by entrusting the boy’s education to me. It must be without interference from anyone and handed over only to people that I trust totally.’55