Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
Читать онлайн книгу.
rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">126 The Caudillo’s sincerity was revealed in May by a series of lengthy articles printed in Arriba, the principal Falangist newspaper. In laughably naïve terms, they blamed freemasonry for all the ills of Spain over the previous 200 years and managed to insinuate that the British royal family was responsible. Don Juan could hardly miss the implication for himself. The articles were signed by ‘Jakin-Booz’, a variant of Franco’s own pseudonym. At the beginning of the 1950s, writing as ‘Jakim Boor’, the Caudillo had written a series of articles and a book denouncing freemasonry as an evil conspiracy with Communism. On the instructions of the Ministry of Information and Tourism, this new series of articles was republished in full by the entire Spanish press. It was believed that this time the author was Admiral Carrero Blanco. An official of the Ministry told a British diplomat that, as a follow-up to accusations that Don Juan was a freemason, these articles were intended to stress the royal origins of freemasonry and bring the monarchy into disrepute.127
The Spanish edition of Life magazine for 13 June 1960 carried an article on Don Juan in which he was quoted as saying that whatever form the restored monarchy might take, it would not be a dictatorship. Franco had thereupon communicated to Don Juan his displeasure at being called a dictator. Distribution of the magazine had been held up by the censors in Spain and Don Juan had been obliged to write and point out that he had merely stated that he himself would not be a dictator. Besides, he asked, how else could one describe Franco’s form of government? Don Juan believed that Franco eventually agreed to its release only because this was the first thing he had ever asked of him. However, according to the account given to the British Embassy by Benjamin Welles, Franco had said that if Don Juan wanted to commit political suicide, he did not see why he should do anything to stop him by holding up the article.128 In October, Franco showed Don Juan what he really thought. The Marqués de Luca de Tena, owner of ABC, gave a lecture to a monarchist club in Seville in which he extolled the Ley de Sucesión and the Franco regime. However, because he had pointed out that monarchists must accept the hereditary principle, saying: ‘A king is king because he is the son of his father’ and that, ‘if a king comes, the only possible king is Don Juan III,’ a report of the lecture in ABC was banned.129
In the early autumn of 1960, in his capacity as president of Don Juan’s Privy Council, José María Pemán asked Franco to reveal his plans with regard to the succession. The Caudillo replied that he would be succeeded by the ‘traditional monarchy’, whose ‘incumbent’ he told Pemán with a straight face was Don Juan. He described him as ‘a good man, a gentleman and a patriot’. Compounding this farrago of deception, he denied that Don Juan had been eliminated and claimed that the thought of choosing Juan Carlos instead had never crossed his mind. He said that the Prince, ‘because of his age, is an unknown quantity’. In any case, he then went on to reveal that he had no intention of proclaiming the monarchy for a very long time: ‘My health is good and I can still be useful to my Fatherland.’130
CHAPTER FOUR A Life Under Surveillance 1960–1966
In October 1960, Franco received a perceptive report on Juan Carlos from one of his intelligence agents in Portugal. Commenting on the Prince’s presence at the celebration of his parents’ silver wedding anniversary, he wrote: ‘It is certainly the case that Juan Carlos seems more mature by the day, despite the patience and the humility that he has to put on in front of his father. Don Juan treats him harshly, even more so when there is someone present, and is constantly saying “your place is behind me”. It produces discord. The split probably won’t come because there’ll be a marriage and with it a new house, a new life and distance from his father who has got him tightly bound, like the feet of young Chinese girls in iron shoes. At the moment, and we know this from several sources, Juan Carlos is keen to get back to Spain and is fed up with his father and with his grandmother Doña Victoria Eugenia, whose company he finds every day more irksome. Marriage then is a political solution, a device so that the cord doesn’t break altogether.’ Franco must have been delighted to read that: ‘Juan Carlos feels happy only when he is away from Villa Giralda and with his Spanish friends. He has two personalities, one serious, sad and submissive towards his father, and the other when he is out of Don Juan’s sight, among his friends.’1
At the time, it was strongly rumoured that the announcement of his engagement to María Gabriella di Savoia was imminent. The persistence of these rumours provoked frequent denials from Estoril. In early January 1961, as part of this process, Don Juan gave a long interview to Il Giornale d’Italia
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.