GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4945, 21 January 1937, Page 6

GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN

! FIERY RIVALRIES. WHEN MADRID HAS FALLEN. I went to the headquarters of the Spanish Nationalists at Burgos, and came away deeply impressed, as every dispassionate observer must be, by the manner in which Spaniards of all parties have sunk their differences in the present rising against the Government of Madrid, writes Valentine Williams in the Daily Telegraph. Spain in all her history can have seen nothing like this union between Basque and Navarrese, Carlist and Constitutional Monarchist, Falangista (Fascist) and Liberal Republican, clerical and free-thinker. "Viva Espana! Arriba Espana! Por Dios y por la Patria!"—the cries ring fullthroated from hearts that never before have beaten in such complete accord. This does not alter the fact that with the fall of Madrid the most delicate and dangerous stage of the Nationalist movement will be entered upon. -Bitter enmities, century-old animosities, have been shelved, but they must inevitably break out anew when, with the crushing of Communism, the moment arrives to decide upon the future form of goverment of the country. Fascism or Monarchy? Unquestionably there will be a military dictatorship to start with; but into what will it ultimately develop? Into an absolute monarchy, as the Carlists desire; a constitutional monarchy, the aim of those who look to the restoration'of ex-King Alfonso's dynasty; a Fascist State, as the Falangistas are resolved to establish? Will Franco, like the Cid, restore a King? Or will he be a Horthy? Or a Mussolini?

I might have asked him the question when we met at Burgos the other day. But questions which in the nature of things can carry no immediate reply expose the inquirer to the risk of incurring the familiar Asquithian rebuff. Since "wait and see" is no answer, I refrained. But, as some index of the trend of feelings, in the inner circles of the Nationalists, I may mention a statement emanating from a well-informed quarter at Burgos that, up to the moment of the unexpected death of the Carlist Pretender in a motor car accident in Austria, a day or two before General Franco was invested with the full direction of the movement, it had been intended to proclaim him "Chief of the State" (on the Italian Fascist pattern, "Capo di Stato"), but that this title was altered at the last minute to "Chief of the Government of the State."

It is clear that this modification of status left the way open for a successor to Franco if and when a change of rule or ruler is decreed. Under what pressure the change was made I am unable to say. The circumstances suggest that it was at the prompting of the Carlists of Navarra, the most united, resolute, and most essentially Spanish of all the parties lined up against the Reds.

A day of two after Don Alfonso Carlos, the aged Carlist Pretender, died, I encountered on the arrowstraight highway running from Victoria to Burgos a procession of cars. Twin flags flanked each radiator, red-and-yellow, red-and-black, furled and bound with crepe, and there was a glimpse of scarlet berets, yellowtasselled, such as Carlists wear, as the. cortege whizzed past—it was the Supreme Carlist Council, headed for Burgos to proclaim to its followers its adoption of Prince Zavier of bon-Parma, the dead Pretender's nephew and the ex-Empress Zita's brother, as the new dynastic chief. The men of Navarra are squareheaded, tough. Navarra has never been subdued. The "Tradicionalistas," or, more colloquially, the "Requetes," as they are called in Spain, have preserved through the ages their own manners and customs, even their own laws, notably those of succession. It was the proclamation of the Republic in Madrid in 1931 which revived the Carlist agitation, dormant for more than half a century, and in Navarra the present rising has its inception—at Pamplona, the capital, under General Mola, in July. Prince and Don Juan. "We ask nothing," declares the Carlist leader, the stalwart Manuel Fal Conde, a man of the people, shrewd and vigorous and in the prime of life. "What we are doing is for Spain and religion." None the less, when the death of Don Alfonso Carlos without male issue seemed the providential 'settlement of the question which for a century has torn the heart of Spain, the Carlist Junta lost no time in recognising Prince Xavier, whom the Pretender had designated as his successor, irrespective of the fact that the Prince, descending through the female line, should, by the Carlist's own contentions, be debarred from the throne by the Salic Law, the fons et origo of the whole Carlist question.

The Carlists are committed by tradition to the absolute monarchy, antiLiberal and anti-parliamentary. They swing much further to the Right than the Monarchists, likewise very strong in the Nationalist ranks, who, while discarding ex-King Alfonso, would like to see his third son, Don Juan, Prince of Austuris, brought to the throne.

It was Don Juan who, early in the civil war, made his way incognito across the French frontier to Pamplona to enlist in the Nationlist forces. But General Mola was quick to perceive the disrupting effect of the Prince's presence in their midst, and, with all courtesy, sent him back across the frontier. To a Guardia Civil, who recognised him and knelt to kiss his hand, the Prince sadly said, "Hombre, you are luckier than I. At least you have the right to fight for your country." The Monarchist who told me the story in the Cafe Tudanca in Burgos declared: "The whole of Spain is monarchist at heart. The civil war was started by the Falangistas against the Communists, and there are thousands of young men in their ranks who joined the Falange not because they subscribe to Fascist principles, but to fight. Spain rose to grandeur under a king, and under a king she will rise to grandeur again. What we require is a monarchy based on a strong military dictatorship. Don Juan should be proclaimed as soon possible after we reach Madrid." Burgos and all the towns in Nationalist hands flame with the Falange badge a sheaf of five arrows red on black the old anarchist colours. The official title of the Spanish Fascist Party, founded by Antonio Primo de Rivera, the Spanish Dictator's son, is 'The Spanish Phalanx of Nationalist Syndicalist Working Youth." The nomenclature, with its suggestion of trade unionism organised on Nazi lines is significant. Early in the civil war young Primo de Rivera was seized by the Reds and none knows to-day whether he is alive or dead. By this he is an almost legendary hero, and should he ever reappear—the story is that he is in hiding—his prestige would rival that of Franco.

The Falangistas are the most numerous of all the various national militias at the front. A hundred and fifty thousand of them are in the field and 200,000 more are in reserve, waiting to take their places. They wear a uniform cut like a mechanic's overalls, khaki in the line, dark blue out of it, with a red-tasselled forage cap, and they at present are used chiefly in the back areas. At the Falange headquarters at Burgos, with typewriters tapping, motor cyclists roaring up with despatches outside, and hearty youths clumping up and down the stairs, I talked with Manuel Edilla, head of the Spanish Fascists in Primo de Rivera's absence. A pallid, resolute man, more German than Spanish in type, he admitted the indisputable relationship between Spanish Fascism and the Italian and German brands, but claimed that Spanish Fascism imitates neither, but is fundamentally Spanish and that its "Nationalist Syndicalist are peculiarly suited to the exigencies of the Spanish- situation. The Falange aims at the establishment of the totalitarian State, with corporative representation and the abolition of the political party system and all that goes with it, i.e., "inorganic suffrage" and Parliament of the commonly accepted type. The leader refused to say whether the Falangistas are in favour of the restoration of the monarchy. Problems of Basques. Remain the Basques. Madrid has tried to split them by granting autonomy to those among the Basques who still adhere to the established Government. Badges with the arms of the seven Basque provinces, three Spanish, four French, are much worn by Basques among the Nationalists today representing a distant Basque dream of union and independence. The Basques look askance at the Carlists, whose programme for the autonomy of Navarra includes an Atlantic port to be ceded by the Basques. It is not in the least likely that Fx-anco will tolerate any separatist tendencies, even Catalonia, in the new Spain. On the other hand, from conversations I have had with prominent Spaniards during the present year in Portugal, in Spain, and in France, I find it difficult to believe that moderate Republicans, of whom there must be many supporting the Nationalist cause in the present crisis, will reconcile themselves easily to the sacrifice of Liberalism in Spain either to Fascism or the monarchy.

The indications seem to be that Franco is contemplating a State form modelled as closely as possible upon the somewhat paternal dictatorship introduced with such success by Oliviera Salazar in Portugal. This is, at least, the view of one the shrewdest of Spanish politicians, the veteran statesman, Count Romanones, who has a high reputation for political acumen among his fellow-countrymen. When I saw his at St. Jean de Luz, where he has been living since his emergence from Red custody at Saint

Sebastian, the old gentleman utterly

rejected the idea of the restoration of the monarchy. "I have lived and shall die a Monarchist,'' he told me, "but any notion of the revival of the monarchy in Spain is sheer moonshine."

It is for Francisco Franco—the greatest soldier Spain has produced since General Prim, Count Romanones calls him—to decide.