Class of May ’68 pragmatic Socialists

Press, 19 June 1986, Page 11

Class of May ’68 pragmatic Socialists

By

LESLIE CRAWFORD,

of Reuter (through NZPA) Madrid In the short space of a decade Spain’s governing Socialists have exchanged the clenched fists of clandestine opposition for the sober realities of power. The Socialists and their opponents are preparing for a General Election on Sunday. At the last election, in 1982, the triumph of the Socialist Prime Minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, ushered in a new generation of political leaders and signalled a final break with the country’s Francoist past. The landslide win gave the Socialists 202 seats in the 350-seat Cortes (Lower House) against the main Rightist opposition Popular Coalition’s 106. Opinion polls indicate that Mr Gonzalez will win again on Sunday although he might lose his absolute majority. : The new young leaders are known as the generation of May ’6B. Students who braved tear gas and truncheons in the twilight of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, they now run the country from plush offices and travel with police escorts. Although the Socialist Workers’ Party (P.5.0.E.) can claim a heritage more than a century old, the party created by a tightly knit group that took over when Mr Gonzalez was elected as secretary-general in 1974 is a far cry from the Marxist party founded by Pablo Iglesias in 1879. “P.S.O.E. is a modern party in the sense of its absence of ideology, its emphasis on realism,” said Jose Miguel Salinas, Economy Minister of the regional government of Andalusia. “If we have learned anything in the four years in office, it is to shed a certain political naivete and to make fewer promiS6S.” Although the P.S.O.E. still refers to itself as a “workers’ party,” its cautious economic policies and emphasis on gradual social reform reflect its largely middledlass membership, fearful of radical change. The vast majority of its 167,000 members are aged between 35 and 45 and became active on the Left of Spanish politics only relatively recently. “A card-carrying member dating back to the last years of (Franco) is considered a veteran in the P.S.O.E. ranks,” a Socialist politician joked in Madrid. So many Government economists are graduates from Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, and other English or American universities that it is said they prefer to conduct their meetings in English. Under their tutelage Spain has adopted tough monetary and fiscal policies that have won the approval of the Spanish business community. They have developed a good rapport with the Spanish economic elite through such well-con-nected people as Mariano Rubio, governor of the Bank of Spain, and the former Finance Minister Miguel Boyer. The Socialists’ relations with Spain’s liberal press are also very close, though sometimes stormy. Juan Luis Cebrian, 42-year-old editor of the leading daily, “El Pais,” is a former class-mate and

lifelong friend of the Government’s spokesman Javier Solana. "We are the same age, we were friends who fought against the Franco regime, together we pressed for the introduction of reforms during the transition,” Mr Cebrian said. He strongly denies that the paper has been soft on the Socialists: "We have not campaigned on P.S.O.E.’s behalf. We have continued to report critically in the way we began in 1976.” Mr Gonzalez, seeking re-election at the age of 44, acquired unprecedented authority when he came to power. P.S.O.E. not only has an absolute majority in Parliament, but also controls 10 of the 17 regional governments, two-thirds of the country’s city councils, and the largest trade union. “When the Socialists came to power they gained all the power,” a former Government economist said. "Never has an elected Government in Spain been in such complete control over the life of the nation.” Their success, which appears to have ensured them a second term in office, can be attributed at least in part to P.S.O.E.’s youthful leadership, untainted by a Francoist past, in a country eager for change. The typical profile for a member of the youthful group of Socialist leaders would be a pragmatic, hardworking, affable, handsome man in his 40s, preferably an expert in labour law. The picture fits not only Mr Gonzalez but his deputy, Alfonso Guerra, an inseparable companion from the days of clandestine militancy in their native Seville, and many of his senior Government aides. Other political figures looming large in Spanish politics are about 20 years older than Mr Gonzalez. Manuel Fraga, who heads the main Rightist opposition, is 63. Critics of the Socialists say that what has taken place with P.S.O.E.’s advent to power is not only a generational change, but their accommodation within the establishment as Spain’s new political aristocracy. The Communist leader, Gerardo Iglesias, and a former Centrist Prime Minister, the Duke of Suarez, join voices in accusing the Socialists of arrogance in office and indifference to the plight of Spain’s three million unemployed. “Spain has no credible Right-wing opposition because the Socialists have usurped their programme,” Mr Iglesias told a Communist rally in Madrid.