Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
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he stayed at the Ritz where he received many visitors. At some points of the parade, Juan Carlos was applauded. However, at the Plaza de Colón, a group of Falangists and supporters of the Carlist pretender Don Javier, having arrived from the nearby headquarters of the Falange in the Calle Alcalá, began to insult the Prince and shout ‘We don’t want idiot kings.’ The police stood by without interfering. In order to diminish the hostility of the Falange, in late May 1959, Juan Carlos laid a laurel wreath in Alicante on the spot where José Antonio Primo de Rivera had been executed on 20 November 1936. It was to no avail. The Movimiento daily, Pueblo, criticized him for not visiting the historic sites of Francoism with greater frequency.95
On 12 December 1959, Juan Carlos’s military training came to an end and he was given the rank of Lieutenant in all three armed services. At the official ceremony at the Zaragoza military academy, the new Minister for the Army, Lieutenant-General Antonio Barroso, in a speech that he had previously submitted for Franco’s approval, paid a special tribute to Juan Carlos and to Queen Victoria Eugenia. Underlining the importance of the occasion for Juan Carlos’s future, Barroso significantly spoke of how ‘your fidelity, patriotism, sacrifice and hard work will compensate you for other sorrows and troubles’.96 It is not clear whether this was a specific reference to the death of his brother or a more general comment on the situation of a young man separated from his family.
Juan Carlos was now 22 and he had matured during his time in the academies although his tastes were exactly what might have been expected in any young man of his age, particularly an aristocrat – girls, dancing, jazz and sports cars. One of his instructors told Benjamin Welles, a correspondent of the New York Times, ‘He is no older than his actual age.’97 Nevertheless, Franco was happy with the progress made by Juan Carlos but ever more distrustful of his father. He told Pacón in early 1960: ‘Don Juan is beyond redemption and with every passing day he’s more untrustworthy.’ When Pacón tried to explain that the Pretender’s objective was a monarchy that would unite all Spaniards, Franco exploded. ‘Don Juan ought to understand that for things to stay as they were during the Second Republic, there was no need for the bloody Civil War … It’s a pity that Don Juan is so badly advised and is still set on the idea of a liberal monarchy. He is a very pleasant person but politically he goes along with the last person to offer him advice … In the event of Don Juan not being able to govern because of his liberalism or for some other reason, much effort has gone into the education of his son, Prince Juan Carlos, who by dint of his effort and commitment has achieved the three stars of an officer in the three services and now is ready to go to university.’98
It is curious that while in public, Franco seemed to favour the cause of other pretenders, such as Don Jaime and his son, and the Carlists; in private, he had reduced the choice essentially to one between Don Juan and Juan Carlos. Although he harboured no hope of Don Juan accepting the principles of the Movimiento, he had little doubt in the case of Juan Carlos. The other candidates served both as reserves but also as a way of exerting pressure on Don Juan and his son. Franco’s growing fondness for Juan Carlos was leading him to assume that he could rely on Don Juan to abdicate in favour of his son. It was a vain expectation. Don Juan wrote to Franco on 16 October 1959, reporting on an interview with General de Gaulle, in which they had discussed the future of Spain. He wrote: ‘I believe that if one day, this situation were to be addressed using the present legal arrangements, it is to be hoped that a conflict will not be provoked by a rash attempt arbitrarily to alter the natural order of the succession which both the Príncipe de Asturias and myself are determined to uphold.’99 The issue of Juan Carlos’s university education was now about to bedevil even more the relationship between his father and the Caudillo.
Don Juan had originally planned for Juan Carlos to go to the prestigious University of Salamanca. This project apparently enjoyed the approval of Franco. For more than a year, the Prince’s tutor, General Martínez Campos, had been making preparations to this end. He had discussed it with the Minister of Education, Jesús Rubio García-Mina, and the Secretary-General of the Movimiento, José Solís Ruiz. He had also been to Salamanca, for talks with the rector of the university, José Bertrán de Heredia. He had found suitable accommodation and had vetted possible teachers. Then, suddenly, without warning, Don Juan began to have doubts about his Salamanca project in late 1959. On 17 December, General Martínez Campos had travelled to Estoril to make the final arrangements. On the following day, there ensued a tense interview at Villa Giralda. The general began with a report on Juan Carlos’s visit to El Pardo on 15 December. Apparently, after Franco had chatted to the Prince about what awaited him in Salamanca, he had told him that, once he was established at the university, he hoped to see him more often. Don Juan reacted by saying that he was thinking of changing his mind about sending his son to Salamanca. A furious Martínez Campos expostulated that any change in the arrangements at this late stage – after Juan Carlos had received his commissions in the three services – would be infinitely damaging for the prestige of Don Juan and of the monarchist cause. He was appalled that it might now look that he had lied in order to ensure that Juan Carlos received his commissions. He insisted that he would not leave Estoril until the issue was settled one way or the other.
On 19 December, the day after this disagreeable encounter, there was an informal meeting of several of Don Juan’s Privy Council. One after another, the Marqués Juan Ignacio de Luca de Tena, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez and others spoke against the idea of the Prince being educated at Salamanca, implying that it was a dangerous place, full of foreign students and left-wing professors.100 This was most vehemently the view of the Opus Dei members, Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora and Florentino Pérez Embid. Fernández de la Mora and Sainz Rodríguez proposed that Juan Carlos be tutored at the palace of Miramar, in San Sebastián, by teachers drawn from several universities. Martínez Campos pointed out that Salamanca had been chosen for its historic traditions and for its position midway between Madrid and Estoril. He explained that his meticulous preparations – including the nomination of military aides to accompany the Prince – obviated all of the problems now being anticipated. He was mortified when, with a silent Don Juan looking on, the others furiously dismissed his arguments. At this humiliating evidence of his declining influence over Don Juan, he resigned. This occasioned considerable distress for Juan Carlos, who had become increasingly attached to his severe tutor. Over the next three days, the Prince made great efforts to persuade him to withdraw his resignation, as did his father. However, the fiercely proud Martínez Campos was not prepared to accept an improvised scheme dreamed up by Sainz Rodríguez, Pérez Embid and Fernández de la Mora.
Martínez Campos pointed out the dangers inherent in what Don Juan was doing – after all, Juan Carlos was an officer in the Spanish forces and Franco could post him wherever he liked, including Salamanca. Don Juan responded by asking him to accept the formal nomination of head of the Prince’s household, effectively the job that he had done for the previous five years. Concerned above all for his own dignity, Martínez Campos categorically refused to overturn his own plan and then supervise the implementation of the scheme of three men for whom he had little or no respect. He claimed that Don Juan’s vacillations would constitute irreparable damage to the image of the monarchy within the Army and in Spain in general. Furthermore, he argued that Franco would see this as evidence that Don Juan was ‘easily swayed by outside influences and pressures’. Don Juan ignored these warnings and gave him an envelope sealed with wax to take to El Pardo. It contained a letter to Franco explaining his change of mind. On the evening of 23 December 1959, General Martínez Campos took the overnight train to Madrid. On the following morning, he went directly from the station to El Pardo. Franco received him cordially and commented only that he was not surprised, ‘bearing in mind those who were always in Estoril. But, if he received the news with a shrug, his closest collaborators were in no doubt that he was mightily displeased.101
The entire episode provided further proof that Juan Carlos was little more than a shuttlecock