Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
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for Welt am Sonntag, he explained that: ‘For patriotic reasons I was predisposed against England and I refused to learn the language. My father used to reprimand me for this, as did my grandmother and my teachers. We had lunch with the Queen of England and my father said to Elizabeth II: “Sit next to him so that he feels ashamed at being unable to answer your questions.” That is precisely what happened. I felt deeply ashamed at only being able to speak in French with the Queen, and realized that patriotism had to manifest itself in other ways and that I had to learn English no matter how much it outraged me to do so.’ Juan Carlos would take a long time to master the English language. By his own admission, the early days of his engagement to Sofia were complicated by the fact that his English was still quite poor and she spoke no Spanish.29
Aurora Gómez Delgado claimed later that Juan Carlos’s worst subject was mathematics – a view confirmed by his maths teacher, Carlos Santamaría. He remained indifferent to the Francoist doctrine imparted in the Formación del Espíritu Nacional, writing to his father on 31 January 1954: ‘Today the text books for political formation have arrived and they are unbelievably boring, both for sixth and fourth year but, since we have to get stuck in whether we like it or not, we’ll just have to study it all with patience.’ Despite his block about English, Aurora was struck by the young Prince’s extraordinary gift for foreign languages. She noted too a clear leaning towards the humanities, in particular towards history and literature. Juan Carlos remained passionate about Juan Ramón Jimenez’s Platero y yo and allegedly showed a highly improbable predilection for Molière and French philosophers such as Descartes and Rousseau. During the holidays, like many boys of his age, he would, more appropriately, read adventure stories by Salgari. Juan Carlos also showed a keen interest in music. He enjoyed classical music, Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Bach as well as Spanish zarzuela, but also contemporary music, Mexican rancheras and the hit songs of the day. He would often be heard walking down the corridors singing popular tunes. Excursions within San Sebastián included trips to the stadium of Real Sociedad, where Juan Carlos was able to indulge his support for Real Madrid when they played in the Basque city. His brother Alfonsito supported Atlético de Madrid. Juan Carlos was most notable at Miramar as a keen and gifted sportsman, who enjoyed horse-riding, tennis, swimming and hockey on rollerskates.30 In 1951, the staff was joined by Ángel López Amo, a young Opus Dei member and professor of the History of Law at the University of Santiago de Compostela. This would be one of the first fruits of Don Juan’s meeting in Rome with Padre Escrivá de Balaguer. It constituted the practical beginning of the strong Opus Dei influence in the life of the Prince.
Although it no longer interrupted his schooling, the tension between Don Juan and Franco did not diminish during Juan Carlos’s stay at Miramar. The Caudillo’s international position was improving through ongoing negotiations with the United States to bring Spain into the Western defensive system. As his confidence grew, Franco’s tendency to behave as if he were King of Spain increased. On 10 April 1950, his beloved daughter Carmen married a minor society playboy from Jaén, Dr Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiu, soon to be the Marqués de Villaverde. The preparations and the accumulation of presents were on a massive scale. The press was ordered to say nothing for fear of provoking unwelcome contrasts with the famine and poverty which afflicted much of the country.31 The wedding itself was on a level of extravagance that would have taxed any European royal family. Guards of honour, military bands, and hundreds of guests including all members of the cabinet, the diplomatic corps and a glittering array of aristocrats, took part in a full-scale State occasion.
The Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, the Chinese revolution and outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 had increased Franco’s value in the eyes of the Western powers. On the other hand, the regime had suffered considerable domestic erosion as a result of the recent massive strikes in Barcelona and the Basque Country in March and April. Feeling that the scale of domestic opposition might have made Franco open to negotiation, on 10 July 1951, Don Juan wrote him a letter that would have enormous repercussions both for himself and his son. In it, he managed to squander years of sacrifice and opposition to the regime yet gain nothing in return. Franco was outraged by Don Juan’s comments about the ‘attrition’ inflicted on the regime by the strikes. Having blamed the strikes on foreign agitators, the Caudillo was even more annoyed by Don Juan’s suggestion that they were the consequence of the economic situation and government corruption. Franco had no interest whatsoever in Don Juan’s offer of a negotiated transition as a route that would allow him to consolidate his work within the stability of a monarchy that could unite all Spaniards. Don Juan’s letter achieved the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, it merely stimulated the venom of Franco, because it criticized his regime and insisted on the need for national reconciliation – an idea that was anathema to the Caudillo. On the other, Don Juan was abandoning his past championship of a democratic monarchy and accepting the Movimiento. Despite the unctuous intervention of Danvila, Franco rudely delayed replying for two months. His long letter on 14 September 1951 was both disdainful and cruel.
Franco simply ignored the offer of negotiation within the Movimiento, expressing in the most patronizing terms his outrage that Don Juan had dared to criticize him. The scale of insult was breathtaking. Accusing Don Juan of ‘ignorance of the Spanish situation’, and dismissing his comments on the economy as ‘inane’, the Caudillo brushed aside his criticisms of the conditions in Spain with self-satisfied references to the ‘indisputable triumph of Spain’s policy in the international media’. He claimed that he had selflessly committed Spain to the idea of monarchy, but built in safeguards against the dangers of hereditary monarchy throwing up an incapable heir: ‘Precisely because I consider the monarchical institution to be tied to our history and the best way to secure the revival and the greatness of our Fatherland, even though I was under no obligation to do so, I set the nation down that road and I recommended that Spain be constituted as a monarchy in the great plebiscite in which the nation unanimously endorsed the fundamental laws of the Fatherland. However, in so doing, I needed to guarantee the Spanish nation that the possible deficiencies of individuals would never bring about crises in our institutions as happened twice in the past’ – references to the collapse of the monarchy on 11 February 1873 and 14 April 1931.
Having claimed that the Ley de Sucesión elevated the institution of monarchy above the defects of the hereditary principle (that is to say, by leaving the choice of king in his hands), Franco went on, rather bizarrely, to suggest that there was no support for the monarchy in Spain and claimed that the only reason there was any hope for a monarchical future was because the Spanish people had listened, as he put it, to ‘the authoritative voice of he who gloriously led them in the Crusade and dexterously steered Spain through the stormy seas of the universal revolution in which we live’. Don Juan had referred to his efforts to join the Nationalist forces during the Civil War. Franco loftily scorned the idea that this constituted ‘identification with the Movimiento’. His outrage was evident in the statement that: ‘You are mistaken in thinking that the regime needs to seek a way out since it actually represents the stable way out of centuries of decadence. What other regime could have survived the harsh test of two wars and the international plot to which Spain was subjected?’
Regarding Don Juan’s allusion to ‘the historic laws of succession’, Franco rejected the hereditary principle, stating that the Ley de Sucesión made no a priori assumptions about ‘the dynasty or line with the best rights’. He went on to inform Don Juan of his hope that, ‘when the time comes, if it were in the interests of our Fatherland or even of the monarchy itself, you would follow the patriot path of renunciation, of which your august father gave an example when he abdicated his rights in favour of Your Highness, just as the King of Belgium has done recently or as the King of England did’. He raised this matter because, ‘a large number of Spanish monarchists, in the light of how your public acts are repelling great swathes of the country and undermining your good name, recognizing that the monarchy can come back only through the will of the Movimiento, begin to see in your renunciation in favour of your son a way, when the right time comes, of helping me perhaps to declare in favour of your dynasty, of your branch, when the dynastic problem is finally resolved.’ Thus, after this devastating