Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
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preparing an early transition to the monarchy. Franco responded quickly to the first mutterings of protest about such a prospect. Within a week of Juan Carlos’s arrival, he gave a widely reproduced interview that dispelled any hopes of his early departure. ‘Although my magistracy is for life,’ he declared pompously, ‘it is to be hoped that there are many years before me, and the immediate interest of the issue is diluted in time.’ Franco was yet again making it clear, to his supporters and to Don Juan, that the monarchy would be a Falangist one in no way resembling that which had fallen in 1931.68 In the face of potential opposition to what seemed to be the appeasement of Don Juan, Franco was asking the docile Falangist hierarchy to postpone the ‘pending revolution’ even longer in return for a Francoist future under a Francoist king.69 Accordingly, in February 1955, he authorized the drafting of laws to block loopholes in the Ley de Sucesión and irrevocably shackle any royal successor to the Movimiento. At the same time, to make this more acceptable to his monarchist supporters, the Falangist edges of the Movimiento would be blurred, censorship of the monarchists would be relaxed, and Eugenio Vegas Latapié was reinstated to the Consejo del Reino.70
Within hours of the Prince’s arrival in Madrid, a queue of well-wishers, among them some aristocrats, had gathered outside the Palacio de Montellano. Like Franco, Martínez Campos was determined to ensure that there would be no entourage of courtiers at the palace. The Civil Guards on duty permitted those who came merely to sign the visitors’ book and then leave.
The year and a half spent in the Palacio de Montellano preparing for the entry examination for the Zaragoza military academy would be a hard trial for Juan Carlos. This time, he had no friends to accompany him. In his austerely furnished room, the only personal items were some family photographs, a tiny triptych of Christ and a luminous statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Martínez Campos established an inflexible routine that left the boy little spare time. The Prince was woken at 7.45 a.m. and had three-quarters of an hour in which to wash, hear mass in the chapel, have breakfast and glance at the newspapers. The hour from 8.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. was devoted to private study. At 9.30 a.m., accompanied by his maths tutor, Álvaro Fontanals Barón, the Prince would set off for his classes at the naval orphans’ college in Madrid where he followed a rigid timetable until 1.15 p.m. After lunch at the palace, there would be golf or horse-riding in the Casa de Campo until 5.00 p.m. Back at the palace, there would be more study until 9.00 p.m. at which time Juan Carlos was allowed an hour for letter-writing or telephone calls.
He had little free time since classes were held even on Saturdays and Father Aguilar often visited to impart religious and moral education. Other time was consumed by visits from distinguished academics who gave prepared talks on their specialities. The only glimmer of jollity in the otherwise stultifying atmosphere derived from the fact that a young friend, Miguel Primo de Rivera y Urquijo, the nephew of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, lived nearby and thus became the Prince’s frequent companion. It was to develop into a lifelong friendship. At the time, it helped relieve the tedium of the regular lunch and dinner visits from important figures in the Church, the Falange, and the business world – including the head of the Opus Dei, Padre Josémaría Escrivá de Balaguer. This austere routine was rarely stimulating – indeed, if anything, it was utterly suffocating – for an adolescent. Asked by the diplomat José Antonio Giménez-Arnau how he felt about his loneliness and the absence from his family, Juan Carlos replied sadly, ‘If not resigned, I’m at least used to it. Just imagine! When I was six, I spent two years separated from my parents when they were first in Estoril. There was no choice.’ Giménez-Arnau had been commissioned to write a feature article on the Prince. When it was published, Juan Carlos wrote him an informal note of thanks. The unaffected warmth and openness of the 17-year-old Prince’s note guaranteed the lifelong loyalty of its recipient.71
Occasionally, the Prince was taken to El Pardo where the Caudillo subjected him to interminable history lessons about the mistakes made by various kings of Spain. He also gave him sententious advice about the need to avoid aristocrats and courtiers. Believing that the Prince was extremely pleased and grateful, Franco decided to see him at least once a month, ‘to chat with him and carry on instilling my ideas in him’. The Caudillo was delighted by the severity of Martínez Campos who reported to him on 5 March 1955. When the Prince had begun to tutear (use the intimate ‘tú’ form of address to) Major Valenzuela, the general had energetically forbidden it. He had refused the Prince permission to go to Lisbon for the wedding of one of the daughters of the ex-King Umberto of Italy, informing Don Juan that it would constitute an unacceptable interruption of the boy’s studies. He insisted on speaking English with Juan Carlos. He also made every effort to ensure that no particular one of the Prince’s friendships came to take priority over the others. That Martínez Campos felt it necessary to report to Franco gives some indication of the ambience in which the Prince was being educated. He was permitted, on occasions, to invite friends to lunch. Once, he was visited by the beautiful Princess María Gabriella di Savoia, King Umberto’s other daughter, a friend and fellow-exile from Portugal, who later became his girlfriend. The Prince was usually short of cash, later recalling how Major Cotoner had to buy him a suit for the occasion.72
The tendency to high spirits that had characterized Juan Carlos as a schoolboy did not desert him despite his austere surroundings. One of the teaching staff, the Air Force Major Emilio García Conde, had a Mercedes that the Prince loved to drive, even though he did not possess a driving licence. One day, on a trip to the headquarters of the Sección Femenina (the women’s section of the Falange) at the Castillo de la Mota in the province of Valladolid, he had a minor accident involving a cyclist. Major García Conde resolved the problem by giving the cyclist some banknotes to get his wheel fixed and buy a new pair of trousers. After nearly being eaten alive by the enthusiastic women of the Sección Femenina, Juan Carlos and his party retired to lunch in a restaurant. The Prince delightedly recounted the bicycle incident and was astonished when Martínez Campos furiously ordered García Conde to find the cyclist, get the money back and oblige the unfortunate young man to report the incident to the Civil Guard. He was worried that if the young man was seriously injured, it would look as if the Prince was involved in corruptly trying to cover up his own involvement. He insisted that Juan Carlos return to Madrid in his car.73
General Martínez Campos’s loyalty and deference to the Caudillo prevented him from complaining about the fact that Franco, partly to please the Falange and partly to bring the monarchists to heel, had encouraged criticism of Don Juan in the press. In consequence, as the general knew full well, hostility to the monarchy soon began to be directed against Juan Carlos. At the beginning of February 1955, the Mayor of Madrid wrote to Franco’s cousin, Pacón. In response to the scattering of Falangist leaflets bearing the inscription ‘We want no king!’, the Mayor asked how it was possible, if Franco wanted Juan Carlos educated in Spain, that the regime’s single party should be engaged in insulting the Prince. When Pacón mentioned this to the Caudillo, he brushed it aside as ‘student antics’. However, the rumblings came from much higher in the Falange, including Pilar Primo de Rivera, the head of the Sección Femenina. Nevertheless, Franco brushed aside further reports about anti-monarchist activities from such dignitaries as the Captain-General of Valencia. The mutter-ings continued and, eventually, on 26 February, the Caudillo felt obliged to inform a concerned cabinet that ‘a King would be nominated only if there were a Prince ready for the task’.74
Juan Carlos’s presence in Spain and its possible implications were highlighted by the publication in ABC on 15 April 1955 of his interview with José Antonio Giménez-Arnau – the first press interview published since his arrival in Spain in 1948. A few days later, violence broke out between Falangists and monarchists at the end of a lecture on European monarchies given by Roberto Cantalupo, once Mussolini’s Ambassador to Franco, at the Madrid Ateneo, the capital’s leading liberal intellectual centre. In response to Cantalupo’s enthusiastic advocacy of monarchy, Rafael