Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
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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.
In fact, there were many reasons why Franco had already eliminated Don Juan as his successor. His real motive for arranging the meeting finally emerged when he expressed his desire for the now ten-year-old Prince Juan Carlos to complete his education in Spain. The advantages to Franco were obvious. Juan Carlos would be a hostage whose presence in Spain would create the impression of royal approval of Franco’s indefinite assumption of the role of regent. It would make it easier for the Allies to accept that things were changing in Spain. Moreover, in Franco’s hands, the Prince would also be an instrument to control the activities of Don Juan and the entire political direction of any future monarchical restoration. Speaking with his habitual combination of cunning and prejudice, Franco patronizingly instructed Don Juan about the dangers run by princes under foreign influence. Don Juan pointed out that it would be impossible for his son to go to Spain while it remained an offence to shout ‘¡Viva el Rey’; (Long live the King) and active monarchists were subjected to fines and police surveillance. Franco offered to change all that, but no firm agreement was made about the future education of Juan Carlos.102
Don Juan had agreed to meet Franco because he had already reached the conclusion that the Caudillo would survive and that a future monarchical restoration would happen only with his approval. He told an official of the American Embassy in Lisbon that before the Azor meeting, his relations with Franco were at an impasse and that now he had got ‘his foot in the door’. The price was a serious weakening of his position. To the delight of Franco, secret police reports revealed that some of Don Juan’s supporters were outraged at what they saw as treachery to the monarchy and were inclined to abandon his cause.103 His most prominent representatives in Spain were deep in Franco’s pocket. The Duque de Sotomayor and Julio Danvila, acting as intermediaries from El Pardo, pressed Don Juan for a decision about Juan Carlos’s education. He hesitated on the grounds that any announcement about the issue would be used by Franco to imply that he had abdicated.
Juan Carlos did not know that an even more complete separation from his parents was under discussion. He had longed to return home to Estoril for the summer holidays and once there, he spent the time playing with friends, frolicking on the beach and horse riding. He had no desire to return to his boarding school in Fribourg and was thus delighted when he was allowed to stay on at Estoril. Since preparations were afoot for him to go to Spain, Don Juan saw no point in sending him back to school. Juan Carlos was in limbo, happy to be with his parents and unaware that his father was contemplating sending him as a hostage to Franco. At the beginning of October, Vegas Latapié advised Don Juan that this situation played into Franco’s hands by making it obvious that the boy was eventually going to be sent to Spain. Within 12 hours, arrangements were made for Juan Carlos’s rapid, and presumably upsetting, return to Fribourg accompanied by Vegas Latapié. In his heart, Don Juan was convinced that there could be no restoration against the will of Franco. He knew that the international situation totally favoured the Caudillo. So, the boy’s interests were made subordinate to the need for a minor political gesture.104
The advantages of the uneasy rapprochement between the dictator and Don Juan were entirely one-sided. To Franco’s satisfaction, the negotiations between monarchists and Socialists became meaningless. The so-called Pact of St Jean de Luz, so painfully constructed throughout 1948 and finally signed in October by Indalecio Prieto and Gil Robles, was the first serious attempt at national reconciliation since the Civil War. Now it was rendered stillborn. The Azor meeting completely discredited the democratic monarchist option for which moderate Socialists and Republicans had broken with the Communist Party and the Socialist left. It must have given Franco intense pleasure to read a letter, intercepted by his secret services, in which Indalecio Prieto referred to ‘the little cutey of Estoril’.105 In return, Franco merely gave Don Juan superficial respect and a stab in the back. The destabilizing effects on Juan Carlos – educational or emotional – played no part in the considerations of any of the players in this particular game.
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