Borrón y cuenta nueva
On Christmas 1969, during the traditional televised Christmas' Eve speech, His Excellency Francisco Franco y Bahadamonte, Caudillo by the Grace of God pronounced those seven mysterious words "todo ha quedado atado, y bien atado" (1). As it turned out, the Regime of the 18th July was not as consolidated as its creator and leader assumed. Indeed, his prophetic words were closer to those of a circus fortune teller than of the Delphic Sibyl.
In 1973, the dictator's right hand, Admiral Carrero Blanco was killed by a little-known - at the time - terrorist group, ETA. His replacement was Carlos Arias Navarro, the previous Interior Minister and a hardliner figure within the Regime, who had started his career as a prosecutor in Málaga by enforcing extremely harsh repressive policies. Because of this, the democratic opposition nicknamed him 'the butcher of Málaga'. However, unlike what was expected of him, Arias Navarro turned out not to be as authoritative nor as orthodox in his Francoism as it was expected. The Presidency of Arias Navarro (1973-1976) was characterised by what is basically two periods: A first, liberalising one in which the President seemed willing to open the regime to some democratising - or at least liberalising - influences, in what the press termed 'el espíritu del 12 de febrero' (the spirit of February 12th); and a second, more orthodox one in which the President dismissed aperturistas (2) from the cabinet and went back on previous promises due to the influence of the Francoist hard-liners and Franco's personal entourage.
Arias Navarro's relationship with the King, following Franco's death on November 20th 1975, was very strained. The Prime Minister ignored the King's ample prerogatives under the Regime's Fundamental Laws and his (lack of a) political project was at odds with the King's liberalising project for Spain as well as with the demands of an increasingly loud civil society, that demanded -and chanted- 'amnesty and liberty'. As the King could not dismiss the Prime Minister, he instead pressured him into resigning, which the weak-willed and worn-out politician did.
After Arias Navarro's dismissal, the position of Prime Minister was up for the grabs, provided the candidate could pass the selection process by the Consejo del Reino (3). The main candidates (of many) were Fraga Iribarne, Areilza, López Rodó or Girón. However, the system, devised by the King's former mentor and President of the Parliament and the Council, Torcuato Fernández Miranda, operated through the elimination of candidates by the various members of the Council in a series of rounds until only 3 candidates were left. This meant that the main candidates were quickly eliminated as they aroused the suspicions of either orthodox or aperturistas in the Council. The final three candidates were low-key politicians, neither too overtly liberalising nor too orthodox. Among them was Adolfo Suárez, whom the King had already decided to have as his Prime Minister.
The selection of Adolfo Suárez caused massive anguish amongst the liberal press and the Spanish left-wing elements at the time. Of Suárez, what little was known was that he had been, for a brief time, Minister Secretary of the National Movement, a post traditionally assigned to bona fide Francoists, like Solís. Many political pundits thought the Monarch had thrown his lot with the continuance of a seemingly doomed regime. They were wrong. The new Prime Minister quickly set to form a new government, in which the Francoist heavyweights refused to participate and was hence formed by many minor politicians from the liberal side of the Francoist regimes. This was what the press coined as gobierno de penenes (4). The new government and especially its leader set out to show the mistake of the press by quickly making clear its liberalising pace resulting in upcoming elections for a constituent assembly in the short-term. No mention was made to the exact position that the Communist Party would have in the new political system about to be opened.
During these months, the government had to deal with the stress of the economic malaise affecting the Spanish economy since 1973, a combination of the oil shock affecting other European economies and the return of thousands of émigrés. Alongside this economic problems, the government also faced the task of combating ETA, whose strategy centred on provoking a military reaction to the democratic trajectory of Spain by focusing their attacks on the soldierly and police strata. In this atmosphere, the government set out to legalise (for the time being) the non-Communist parties by changing the system of party registration, ending censorship, abolishing the Movimiento Nacional and the Sindicato Vertical and applying for EEC membership. In this, Suárez's Kennedy-like approach to television and media relations would be an important element, as it became usual for the Prime Minister to appear on TV to outline his policies, bypassing the illegitimate Francoist parliament. This emphasis on direct communication is, to this day, still an important characteristic of the Suarist and post-Suarist elements within the UCD.
Notes:
(1) Everything is tied and well tied
(2 Aperturista, meaning 'opener' or more literally 'openist' were the liberal wing of the Regime. Usually young men (well young for the geriatric politics of the Regime) and open to liberalisation of the regime. This does not mean all of them were democrats, far from it. Some might have been more liberal than Fraga and still be more autocratic than him.
(3)An otherwise merely advisory body of little use, the Council of the Kingdom (or of the Realm if you prefer a cooler translation), the members of the Council determined the three candidates for the Premiership to be presented before the King for him to pick
(4) Government of non-tenured professors. A government of political amateurs, basically.