Пол Престон – Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy (страница 20)
Don Juan set off for Spain by car on 28 December 1954. Franco left El Pardo at 8 a.m. on the next morning in a Cadillac and with a convoy of guards. Both were headed for a halfway point between Madrid and Lisbon – Navalmoral de la Mata in the province of Cáceres in Extremadura. Arriving in Spain that evening was an emotional moment for Don Juan, the first time that he had set foot in his homeland since his failed attempt to join the Nationalist forces in 1936. The meeting – at Las Cabezas, the estate of the Conde de Ruiseñada, Juan Claudio Güell, the Pretender’s new representative in Spain – lasted from 11.20 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. with a late lunch break. At the steps of the mansion, the ever-affable Don Juan greeted Franco cordially and had created a relaxed atmosphere by the time that they sat before a roaring fire. He felt confident, telling Franco that he had received thousands of messages of support from Spain including telegrams from four Lieutenant-Generals. However, such references to the current debate on the monarchist succession went over Franco’s head as relating to a far distant and theoretical future. This became clear when he began to talk of the possibility of separating the functions of Head of State and Head of Government. He would do so only, he said, when his health gave out, or he ‘disappeared’ or because the good of the regime, with the evolution of time, required it, ‘but, as long as I have good health, I don’t see any advantages in change’.
Franco was clearly at his ease, talking without pause or even a sip of water, and he proceeded to give Don Juan an interminable, rambling history lesson. Don Juan commented later that it was like listening to an obsessive grandfather boasting about his past. In fact, Franco’s reminiscences about his own military exploits could be seen as a sly attempt to humiliate Don Juan, who had not been allowed to fight in the Civil War. Efforts by Don Juan to get a word in edgeways and turn the discussion to the timing of the transition to the monarchy and the terms of the post-Franco future met with a frosty response. Franco did not hesitate to criticize many prominent monarchists as drunks and gamblers, accusing Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, about whom he had the most neurotic delusions, of being a freemason. When Don Juan praised Sainz Rodríguez as a faithful counsellor, in whom he had complete confidence, Franco replied, ‘I have never trusted anyone.’
Don Juan’s suggestion of the introduction of freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, social justice, trade union freedom and proper political representation merely reinforced Franco’s conviction that he was the puppet of dangerous aristocratic meddlers who were probably freemasons. Through the impenetrable and self-satisfied verbiage glimmered the Caudillo’s message. As he had already informed the Conde de los Andes: if Don Juan did not bow to his demand that Juan Carlos be educated under his tutelage, he would consider it as a renunciation of the throne. The needs, let alone the wishes, of Juan Carlos simply did not enter into the debate. Faced with Franco’s ultimatum, Don Juan thus agreed that his son be educated at the three military academies, at the university and at Franco’s side. However, he made it quite clear that none of this constituted a renunciation of his own rights. With the greatest reluctance, Franco accepted an anodyne joint communiqué whose terms implicitly, if not explicitly, recognized the hereditary rights to the throne of the Borbón dynasty. It was a minor victory for Don Juan that his name should appear alongside that of Franco.56
The joint communiqué aside, Franco had made no real concessions about a future restoration, or rather installation, as he called it. Nevertheless, the theatrical gesture of meeting Don Juan had, for the moment, drawn the sting of the monarchists and gave the impression that progress was being made. In his end of year message on 31 December 1954, he made it quite clear that he had conceded nothing to Don Juan. Using the royal ‘we’, he stressed that the monarchist forms enshrined in the
Chatting with Pacón on the same day, Franco claimed that, at Las Cabezas, Don Juan had asked him if he thought it was necessary to abdicate in order that his son should have the right to inherit the throne. The exchange is not recorded in other accounts of the meeting. Indeed, those accounts suggest that what Don Juan actually said was that allowing his son to be educated in Spain did not constitute an abdication of his own rights. However, if it was not just wishful thinking on Franco’s part and Don Juan did ask the question, it could be interpreted as a ploy to force Franco to acknowledge the dynastic rights of the family. If, at Franco’s behest, Don Juan had abdicated in favour of his son, the Caudillo would have been committing himself to choosing Juan Carlos as his successor. It is unlikely that the question of abdication was raised in the precise terms recounted by Franco to his cousin. However the subject was raised, Franco’s reply, at least in his own account to Pacón, was a masterpiece of cunning.
Unwilling to reduce his options, the Caudillo allegedly replied, ‘I do not think that the problem of your abdication needs to be raised today, as we are here to discuss your son’s education, but since you’ve mentioned it, I must tell you that I believe that Your Highness rendered himself incompatible with today’s Spain, because against my advice that Your Highness remain silent and make no declarations, you published a manifesto in which you refused to collaborate with the regime and thus made yourself incompatible with it.’ He went on to talk of his ‘inclination’ to name as his successor a direct heir to Alfonso XIII. However, he also mentioned the strong temptation to nominate a prince from the Traditionalist branch of the family as a reward to the Carlists for their role in the Civil War and their loyalty thereafter. If the conversation took place as he claimed, it revealed his determination both to humiliate Don Juan and to keep open his own options.58
At the point at which Juan Carlos was about to return to Spain to be educated as a possible successor to Franco, his own interests as a human being were being sacrificed for a gamble. Franco could choose between a Carlist, Don Juan, Juan Carlos, Don Jaime or his son Alfonso and, perhaps, even the newborn Francisco Franco Martínez-Bordiu. Neither Juan Carlos nor his father can have been unaware of this. It must have been difficult for Juan Carlos not to feel like a shuttlecock in someone else’s game.
Before setting out for Las Cabezas, Don Juan had written to the Caudillo’s wartime artillery chief, General Carlos Martínez Campos y Serrano (the Duque de la Torre), asking him to be the head of the Prince’s household in Spain and thus charging him with the supervision of his son’s military education. Stiff and austere, the 68-year-old Martínez Campos was known for his dour seriousness, his acute intelligence and his sharp tongue. His marriage had broken down, and by his own admission, he had failed in the education of his own children. Even Franco was moved to comment: ‘God help the boy with that fellow!’59 Nevertheless, it was a choice that provoked considerable satisfaction at El Pardo. Until recently, Martínez Campos had, after all, been Military Governor of the Canary Islands. The general reported to Franco on 27 December. Pacón noted in his diary: ‘The Duque de la Torre is totally trustworthy and utterly loyal to the Caudillo.’ In fact, this was not entirely true – Martínez Campos was loyal and obedient, but he had considerable reservations about Franco personally and about the way in which he treated Don Juan. Juan Carlos later commented that the Duke ‘didn’t get on’ with Franco. Now, in the course of their conversation, Martínez Campos mentioned Don Juan’s annoyance at the way in which Franco, in laying out his plans for the Prince’s education, had ridden roughshod over his own rights as a father to educate his son. The Caudillo was unmoved, reiterating blithely his view that it was one thing to educate a son, another to train a Prince to reign. He added that, if Don Juan didn’t like it, he could do whatever he liked but would lose the chance of ever seeing his son on the throne.60 Once more, it was being made crystal clear that the personal interests of the 15-year-old adolescent mattered little in the wider political game being played out.
When General Juan Vigón, Chief of the General Staff and a fervent monarchist, heard of the choice of Martínez Campos and the arrangements for Juan Carlos, he was shocked, exclaiming, ‘It’s the wrong way to go about this! It’s playing politics rather than educating the boy!’61 Martínez Campos himself was hardly less critical of his own appointment. He remarked to a family friend, ‘This is women’s work.’62 It is fair to say, therefore, that the selection of this rigid and irritable soldier was based not on any consideration of Juan Carlos’s needs but on the fact that he had enjoyed good relations with Franco. It was typical of Martínez Campos’s style that, once in charge, he would prevent Juan Carlos receiving visits from his beloved old tutor, Eugenio Vegas Latapié. In his eyes, the deeply conservative Vegas Latapié was a subversive.63 The consequence of the meeting at Las Cabezas, as far as Juan Carlos was concerned, was that, in early 1955, he would be obliged to leave Estoril once more and start preparing for the entrance examinations for the Zaragoza military academy.