Moderate who frightens the Spanish Right

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 17

Moderate who frightens the Spanish Right

From

ROBERT LOW

in Madrid

Eight years ago a young trade union lawyer from Seville arrived in Paris for the twenty-sixth congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which had been in exile since the Spanish Civil War.

Because of the passion for secrecy which characterised the activities of the old guard of the party, he was known to the congress only by the code name Isidoro. He was chosen as the P.S.O.E.’s new secretary-general and journalists at the Congress began a scramble to find out his real identity. Nobody in Madrid knew who he was either. But they do now. Today, Felipe Gonzalez Marquez, still aged only 40, stands on the threshold of power in Spain. The. country goes to the polls today and the Socialists are well ahead in all the Purveys.

Gonzalez's own standing with the voters well outstrips that of his party's. Two recent polls show that 58 and 47 per cent of all Spaniards think he would make their best leader.

If the Socialists do come to power, it will mark a watershed in Spanish politics — the most decisive break yet with the politics of General Franco and the centrist politicians who have governed since his death. They have, say the Socialists, merely perpetuated the rule of the oligarchy that has run

things since 1939. It is a tribute to Gonzalez’s political skill that he should have brought the Socialists to the verge of government despite the odds against them. During his long dictatorship Franco successfully contrived to label any opposition as Communist hordes who would once more tear the country to pieces if allowed back into power. Moderation, combined with dedication to the job in hand, has been the hallmark of Gonzalez’s personal and political life. He, was born in a suburb of Seville in 1940, the second of four children of the owner of a small but reasonably prosperous dairy. Felipe was the only one of the four to take his studies beyond secondary school. He had the typical Catholic education of any

child of the Franco era, without distinguishing himself scholastically. At the age of 14 he started to suffer from asthma and gave up sport, which led him towards the world of books.

Reading remains his great interest outside politics, and he has nothing but scorn for those Spanish politicians — and there are several, he says — who have never read a book in their lives.

By his mid-teens he had ceased to be a practising Catholic, although he has always been interested in those philosophers and writers who try to reconcile Christianity and Marxism. He suffers none of the virulent anti-clericalism which was once a hallmark of the Spanish Left. He was, however, showing more interest in girls than in studies and was invited to leave his first school by the priests who ran it. His intention was to study literature and become a teacher but his mother preferred a career with more money and prestige and pushed him towards engineering. They eventually settled for law at the University of Seville. There he first became involved in the Christian Democrat political groups that passed for progressive in early 1960 s Spain but he soon gravitated towards a nucleus of Socialist activity being organised by Alfonso Guerra, a slim, bespectacled

youth with an acerbic tongue.

It was the start of a friendship that was to change the face of Left-wing politics in Spain. Guerra is now Gonzalez’s deputy and righthand man and his brilliant organisational abilities have played an essential part in Gonzalez’s political ascent. Gonzalez did not actively enrol in Guerra’s group until he had graduated and spent six months studying economics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. There his political commitment seems to have crystallised. It was influenced on the one hand by the many Latin American students he met and on the other by the miserable lot of the Spanish workers forced to work abroad by the lack of jobs at home.

Back in Seville, he helped to set up a practice specialising in labour law and rapidly developed a reputation for defending workers unfairly sacked by their employers. At the same time he and Guerra set about reorganising the Andalusian remnants of the once-mighty socialistcontrolled General Workers Union.

Gonzalez, Guerra, and their cronies in what was to become known as the "Sev-

ille Mafia” saw from the outset that the P.S.O.E. had to be redefined, reorganised, and readied for the restoration of political parties which they correctly forecast as coming in the mid-19705. That control had to be wrested from the civil war veterans exiled in France who were out of touch with what was happening in Spain. While Guerra stealthily developed their international

’ contacts, the Seville Mafia gradually built up their hold on the party, dislodged the exiles, and sealed victory with Gonzalez’s election as secretary-general in 1974. Gonzalez was thus perfectly placed to take advantage of the new horizons opened by Franco’s death the next year and the subsequent transition to democracy. The P.S.O.E. won 118 out of 350 Congress seats in the 1977 general election and became the undisputed leading opposition party. After defeat in 1979, however, simmering divisions be-

tween Marxists and moderates in the party came to a head. Gonzalez stunned his followers by resigning rather than continue as leader of a party which called itself Marxist. It was a tactical move which ended in his re-election six months later with an overwhelming mandate for the brand of social democracy which has dictated the party’s programme since. In his election campaign he says he will supervise the modernisation of the country, particularly its public administration and social security system, with most of the

extra revenue coming from the elimination of fraud and tax evasion. He knows his room for manoeuvre is limited with the economy in bad shape and the everpresent threat of military rebellion if the Socialists look like going too far. He would like to see Spain play a wider role on the international stage, on which he is already a widely respected figure, and favours a swift reopening of the Gibraltar frontier provided Britain is willing to negotiate on sovereignty.

He greatly admires and treasures the friendship of such European Social Democrats as Willy Brandt (in particular), Bruno Kreisky, and Olof Palme. He has been a vice-president of the Socialist International since 1976.

The charge most often levelled at him is that of naivety and inexperience. The first he sometimes admits to, the second he rejects. Despite his relative youth, he has been in the thick of his country’s political life for 20 years, clandestinely and openly.

He has succeeded in arousing the expectations of a large sector of Spanish society that has felt itself excluded from decision-mak-ing for too long. He may soon have the chance to show whether he can fulfil even a few of them—Copyright. London Observer Service.