Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
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Juan Carlos would relate how, the first time they met, the 15-year-old Sofia told him that she was learning judo. On hearing this, Juan Carlos said jokingly, ‘That won’t be much use to you, will it?’ at which point she replied, ‘Is that what you think? Give me your hand,’ and proceeded to throw him to the floor.45 While sailing back from the cruise, Juan Carlos began to complain of stomach pains, which turned out to be appendicitis. Without his mother’s prompt reaction, he might have suffered a possibly fatal peritonitis. Whilst the crew insisted on keeping the Prince warm, Doña María de las Mercedes, who had been trained as a nurse, remembered that, in the case of appendicitis, the affected area had to be kept cold with ice cubes. Don Juan’s yacht, the Saltillo, put in at Tangier, where Juan Carlos was operated on at the Red Cross hospital by Alfonso de la Peña, a renowned Spanish surgeon who, luckily, happened to be in the town when they arrived.46
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 Movimiento, Don Juan was provoking the Caudillo. Franco pointedly delayed more than two months before replying. It seems never to have occurred to him that he would not be able to bend Don Juan to his will. On 2 October, he confidently told his cousin Pacón, head of his military household, ‘Don Juan Carlos will be prepared for entry into the Zaragoza academy; and even though he won’t have to undergo examinations, he should have some idea in mathematics, so as to be able to carry out his studies there on a reasonable basis.’47 In the event, the young Prince would not get off so lightly.
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 ‘¡Viva el Rey!’ Carmen Polo was quick to express her disgust to her husband when this was reported back to her.50 Franco’s fury was directed against the aristocratic guests, and he talked of removing the privilege of a diplomatic passport enjoyed by the highest ranking nobility, the grandes de España, ‘because they use it to conspire against the regime’.51
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 Movimiento candidates put up by the regime. The monarchists were harassed and intimidated by Falangist thugs and by the police. The Movimiento press network mounted a huge propaganda campaign that presented these elections as a kind of referendum. The entire issue was seriously mishandled, exposing as it did the farce of Franco’s claim that all Spaniards were part of the Movimiento. Monarchist publicity material was destroyed and voting urns were spirited away to prevent scrutiny of the count. Inevitably, official results gave a substantial victory to the Falangist candidates. It was clear that there had been official falsification and the monarchists claimed to have received over 60 per cent of the vote.52 At first, Franco was happy to believe that the municipal elections constituted an outpouring of popular acclaim for him. However, a stream of complaints from prominent monarchists and a threat of resignation from Antonio Iturmendi, the traditionalist Minister of Justice, made even the Caudillo begin to doubt the official interpretation of events. He was shocked when General Juan Vigón, now Chief of the General Staff, but still a fervent monarchist, told him that military intelligence services had discovered that the bulk of the Madrid garrison had voted for the monarchist candidates. He was appalled to hear Vigón stating that: ‘The regime lost the elections of 21 November.’ This indication that support was gathering for Don Juan compelled Franco to take action.53
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 Movimiento in order to be in tune with ‘the generations that were forged in the heat of our Crusade’. This was a matter on which, according to Franco, there could be no misunderstanding. If the Prince were not to be educated in this way, it would be better for him to go abroad, since: ‘the monarchy is not viable outside the Movimiento.’ Altogether better would be for the Prince to be educated in Spain under Franco’s vigilance.
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.