Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
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or ‘¡Viva Don ]uan III!’ were heard from monarchists present. Falangists then showered the hall with leaflets ridiculing Juan Carlos and the police had to be called to put a stop to the fight that erupted. The Prince also faced the increasingly overt hostility of the then Minister for the Army, General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, whose sympathies lay with the Falange. Later on that spring, young Falangists roamed the streets of Madrid shouting: ‘We don’t want idiot kings!’ Juan Carlos was also booed while he was giving out the prizes at some horse trials, and, in the summer, he was insulted during a visit to a Falangist summer camp.75
The noises coming from Falangists were the dying agony of a wounded beast. In reality, their organization could not have been more domesticated. On 19 June 1955, the Secretary-General of the Movimiento, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, declared in a speech made in Bilbao that to ensure the survival of the regime after Franco’s death, judicial, political and institutional guarantees would be necessary. The role of the Movimiento would be to sustain the monarchy that succeeded Franco and to keep it on the straight and narrow path of Francoism. It was the formal recognition by the Falange of the inevitability of a monarchical succession.76 For their part, the monarchists had to accept that the monarchy would be restored only within the Movimiento. To hammer this home, Franco exploited the anxiety of the sycophantic Julio Danvila, the most Francoist of Don Juan’s advisers, to further the establishment of a Francoist monarchy. At Franco’s behest, the willing Danvila concocted the text of an ‘interview’ with Don Juan in which he apparently gave royal approval to Fernández Cuesta’s speech. Franco agreed the text, which Danvila then took to Estoril where an indignant Don Juan refused to agree to its publication. Danvila then told the Caudillo that the Pretender had accepted the ‘interview’, at which point Franco amended the text to bring it even more into line with his own thinking and obliged ABC and Ya to publish it on 24 June 1955. Although outraged, Don Juan did not protest, since a public break between himself and Franco would have encouraged the anti-monarchical machinations of the extremist elements of the Falange. It might also have led to the termination of Juan Carlos’s education in Spain.77
Franco was unconcerned about the Falangist rejection of his apparent choice of conservative monarchism as the future of the regime. At the November 1955 rally in El Escorial to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the Falange’s founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Franco rekindled Falangist anxieties about his Las Cabezas meeting with Don Juan and the presence of Juan Carlos in Spain. He had arrived for the ceremony in the uniform of a Captain-General instead of the usual black uniform and blue shirt of the Jefe Nacional (National Chief of the Movimiento). There was some nervous shuffling in the ranks of the assembled Falangists. As Franco walked across the square towards his car, a voice called out: ‘We want no idiot kings.’ It has also been alleged that a cry of ‘Franco traitor’ was heard. There were other minor incidents reflecting Falangist discontent with the complacency of the regime that Franco dismissed as of little consequence.78
The constant running down of the Borbón monarchy, together with Franco’s assumption of royal airs, deeply annoyed Don Juan and his family. This was reflected in the indiscreet comments of Alfonso de Borbón, the second son of Don Juan. When he was 14 years old, Alfonsito was wont to refer to Franco as ‘the dwarf or ‘the toad’. He said, ‘That fellow won’t leave. He has to be kicked out … Having to visit him makes me vomit and la Señora, always showing her teeth, kills my appetite.’ It was an indication both of Don Juan’s deteriorating relations with Franco and the fact that Alfonsito was such a favourite that his outbursts were tolerated and praised. Not many years before, Don Juan had smacked his daughter Margarita for repeating a joke about Franco. Things had changed and there can be little doubt that critical remarks about Franco or his wife would quickly have been relayed to El Pardo by the many monarchist visitors who maintained a dual ‘loyalty’.79
CHAPTER THREE The Tribulations of a Young Soldier 1955–1960
Despite Franco’s readiness to excuse Juan Carlos the entry examinations for the Zaragoza military academy, General Martínez Campos insisted that he undergo the test just like any other prospective cadet. Having passed, Juan Carlos joined the academy in December 1955. As his companions from the academy would later recall, the exams were very difficult and they believed that, although the Prince was usually treated like any other candidate by the examiners, the mathematics test he sat must have been easier than the one they took: indeed, Juan Carlos would soon be shown to be well below average in this subject.1
Although Juan Carlos, in his public declarations at least, would later recall his years as a cadet with nostalgic fondness, his time at the military academies did not always go smoothly. When he took his oath of loyalty to the colours on 15 December 1955, the ceremony was chaired by the brusque General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, the Minister for the Army, who was much more inclined to the Falangist than to the monarchist cause. Accordingly, in his speech, he made no mention of the Prince.2 In addition, Juan Carlos was saddened on this occasion by the fact that Franco had not permitted his father to attend the ceremony.3 On 10 December, Don Juan wrote to him, reminding him of the tremendous responsibilities he would be undertaking when he swore his loyalty to Spain: ‘15 December will be a great day because it is the day on which you will knowingly consecrate the rest of your life to the service of Spain.’ Juan Carlos sent his father a telegram: ‘Before the flag I have promised Spain to be a perfect soldier and with tremendous feeling I swear to you that I will fulfil that oath.’4
It was Juan Carlos’s fervent wish to be allowed to get on with life as an ordinary cadet. ‘You can avoid a lot of problems by getting lost in the crowd.’ That was rendered impossible because the campaign against Don Juan in the Movimiento press remained intense during this period. Juan Carlos found these constant attacks on his father upsetting. Some of his fellow cadets would derive a malicious pleasure from quoting the insinuations of the press. On several occasions, Juan Carlos was sufficiently provoked by remarks that his father was a freemason or a bad patriot (for serving in the Royal Navy) to get involved in fights. These were organized furtively in the stables at night, possibly even with the complicity of the teaching staff. When Juan Carlos eventually complained to Franco about the media’s attacks on his father, the Caudillo replied, with his habitual cynicism, that the Spanish press was independent and that he had no influence over it. He stated that, ‘it was impossible to do anything, since the press was free to express its opinions.’ As Juan Carlos commented, ‘it was such an outrageous lie that all I could do was laugh.’
Recounting this later, Juan Carlos was rather benevolent with regard to Franco. Reflecting on the fact that the Caudillo saw in Don Juan a dangerous liberal, he commented, ‘When my father said “I want to be King of all Spaniards,” Franco must have translated this as “I want to be King of the victors and of the vanquished.”’ This puzzled Juan Carlos, because of the fact that Franco knew full well that Don Juan had tried to join the Nationalist forces against the ‘reds’. Referring to the cunning letter with which Franco had refused Don Juan’s offer, Juan Carlos commented rather uncritically, ‘On that occasion, the General wrote my father a very beautiful letter to thank him for his gesture. In it, he told him that his life was too precious for the future of Spain and that he forbade him to risk it at the battle front. Why was my father’s life precious if not because he was the heir to the crown? But, what can you say … that was the General for you. At times, putting up with him was very difficult. But, as you know, I had totally convinced myself that to achieve my objectives I had to put up with a lot. The objective was worth the trouble.’ The objective was the re-establishment