TLIAW: Memorias de nuestros padres

So you're shamelessly copying Goldstein and Dr. Strangelove?

Yes. But I have a fancy header!!

Do you really think a black-and-white cluttered header makes up for jumping on the bandwagon and then stealing the internal monologue thingy?

... I will also make shiny maps

Sure, whatever... so what's this about?

It's a Spanish TLIAW

Yes, we both can read Spanish, but what's it about?

You'll see, but it's Spanish because it's been made with Spanish picaresca and with Spanish time measurement

So you have no clue when this will be finished?

Nope

So then why a week?

To save my ass in case I said it was a TLIAD and because "Timeline In A Week Or So" (TLIAWOS) is too long

And once again, what is it about?

Je moeder. Which is also mine, so scratch that. It's about a very different Spain, one in which one of the two theories of 'Hispanicists' of the 70s comes true

Which is?

Well, it does not involve a civil war but it does involve around Rodolfo Llopis

Who?

Look it up

Alright, so... let's get cracking?

Yep...

... And before I forget, I promise a cookie to the person who recognises all five hidden images and particularly all 3 cultural references​

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Extract from " 'Partidos do poder': The Southern European response to lower class mobilisation. Similarities and differences" by Rui de Carvalho

Southern European countries share a series of political similarities as a result of parallel political developments: The establishment of fascist or pseudo-fascist regime, with a varying duration, from 6 years in Greece to the almost half a century of Portugal’s Estado Novo, later being supplanted – either by violent means, like in Italy, or peaceful ones as in Spain – by a democratic regime. Unlike their northern European counterparts, the various Southern European democracies gravitated towards a two-party system with one particular singularity: The right-wing of the spectrum is united yet far from homogeneous.

This can be appreciated in the Spanish UCD, the Portuguese PPD and the Italian DC. All three parties cannot be considered by any measure as cohesive units. Instead, they are parties of governance, with considerable internal friction between the many political factions and their leaders (barón in Spanish, leader di corrente in Italian) limiting the power of the party’s executive organs. This friction is the result of the very nature of this parties: An anti-left wing device defending traditional values, private property and social order against a powerful or hegemonic national left-wing.

In this respect, Portugal diverges from Italy and Spain, as unlike either of them it is not the presence of a large and dominant Communist Party on the left which resulted in the creation of the PPD, but rather the permanent parliamentary left-wing majorities with the combination of PS, BE and PCP. The PPD’s heterogeneity in representing the bourgeois is a key part of its programme as it allows it to come to power thanks to a combination of the electoral system and the division between the various left-wing forces.

Spain and Italy, however feature some very different characteristics. Both countries boasted - if that is the correct term - considerable political polarisation between these heterogeneous bourgeois broad-tent parties and a left-wing dominated by a powerful and well-organised Communist Party that had managed to shackle itself from Moscow without losing Soviet funding and maintaining an ideologically well-developed position, as seen with the development of Eurocommunism. Nevertheless, after 1991, both Communist parties […] These developments, however, go beyond the scope of this paper.

The Spanish UCD, which stands for “Unión de Centro Democrático” (Union of the Democratic Centre), like the other two parties analysed, can boast a lively internal political debate dominated by various factions, either ideological or territorial, although these are usually intertwined. Each faction tends to be a leader, who is represented at the National Executive. These leaders, called barones (or baronesas for female ones) can either be important parliamentarians (and rarely, senators) or the leaders of a regional federation of the Union. The main currents present in the party, in no particular order, are the post-Suarists, centrists, neoliberals, social liberals, social democrats, traditional conservatives, Christian democrats, liberal conservatives and various autonomists, in particular conservative Galicianists and Catalanists.

As a result of this internal diversity, the Spanish Prime Ministers pay close attention to the UCD's internal conflict, always close to the surface, in particular when dealing with thorny issues that provoke controversy within, such as the legalisation of abortion in 1992 or the various debates about the territorial organisation of the State and the degree of devolution to be granted to Spain's autonomous regions. These crises can and have brought down governments from within. This is particularly interesting as constitutionally, the Spanish Prime Minister is a strong chief executive. As a result, Prime Ministers try to distance themselves from party politics and rely on the party's Secretary or the Minister of Presidency - the liaison between Government and Parliament as well as with the party - to deal with party issues. This does not mean that the Prime Minister is immune, and although it would be hard to carry out a no-confidence vote, the barones have provoked a few 'voluntary resignations' during the uninterrupted rule of the UCD until [year omitted]. This was the case of Miguel Boyer's government, for instance.

More light will be cast on the various factions in this essay.​

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.

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(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.​

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Extract from "Socialism in Spain: A historical analysis" by Josep Munté

Spanish socialism in the seventies went through a particularly difficult period, with three main groups that vied for supremacy within a reduced electoral space as a result of the powerful presence of the PCE on the left. The traditional party of Spanish socialism, the PSOE - Spanish Socialist Worker's Party - was undergoing a double crisis: As the traditional party of the Spanish working class before the Civil War, the party's limited action or outright inaction against the dictatorship in the post-war period meant its position was lost to the PCE. This was partially compensated by the links established during the 1950s between the PSOE and the other democratic opposition forces, such as the Juanist monarchists resulting in the Contubernio of 1962. By 1975, the PSOE had accepted the possibility of accepting a monarchy and a Concordat if it was the price to pay to bring back democracy to Spain. The second factor was the party's division between the exiles and those members residing in Spain.

The division between the two sectors came to the forefront during the Congress of Toulouse of 1970, the 12th held in exile. In it, the members residing in Spain, known as 'renovadores' attempted to take over the party's apparatus in order to impose a decidedly different break to adjust to what they perceived to be the real situation in Spain as opposed to the overtly ideologised and mythologised vision of Spain held by Rodolfo Llopis and the rest of the exiled leadership of the party. In this, the renovadores failed, as the party revalidated the control of Llopis and the exiled direction over the party's apparatus. Frustrated over the perceived impossibility of the party to change course and adjust to the Spain of 1970 and not the Spain of 1959, the renovadores broke with the party. The new party, the Partido Socialista was formed by the Sevilla group, and received the support of Madrid's PSOE federation. The new party was led by a collective group formed by Felipe González, Alfonso Guerra and Pablo Castellano. The PS, however would soon come to blows due to the division between the right-wing, more moderate and willing to compromise with centrist forces, led by Guerra and González and the left-wing, led by Castellano, ideologically far closer to the PCE.

The third social-democratic force was the Socialist Party of the Interior (PSI), renamed Popular Socialist Party (PSP) in 1974 and which acquired its modern name, Federación de Partidos Socialistas (FPS) in 1977. The PSI/PSP/FPS (henceforward FPS) was founded by Enrique Tierno Galván, academic and former professor in the Complutense University of Madrid until his dismissal in 1962 after which he was barred from teaching. Although all three parties lacked a significant presence in the working class milieu (even at the syndical level, where the UGT had nowhere near the presence of CCOO or USO) the FPS was characterised by practically being a middle-class socialist party. The party's intellectual note and the share of liberal professionals that formed its rank-and-file show a distinctively different party. This is explained by the ideological trajectory of the party's founder. Professor Tierno Galván had started his political career as a part of the 'functionalist group', a centrist, academic group that focused more on how to develop a technocratic and professional approach to politics than on any actual ideological platform. Nevertheless, Tierno Galván had drifted towards the left and the party did not reject Marxism as its ideological core until the 1982 Congress. Furthermore, the party, unlike the PSOE and the PS was not isolated from the other opposition forces and was a key part of the Junta Democrática, the main convergence organism for the opposition during the Transition.

As a result, during the Transition, Suárez and the Socialist International would find three equally valid representatives of social democracy in the country. The three parties vied for preponderance and the funding of the Socialist International and in particular the much sought for support of the German SDP. In this respect the more moderate PS and FPS held a significant advantage over the PSOE, which would end up becoming a satellite party of the PCE in the 1980s until it merged with the party itself in 1988, just in time for the PCE's image, name and ideological rebranding in the post-Cold War environment. The FPS and the PS especially would gravitate towards the government and the UCD. This was helped by the presence of key social-democratic and social liberal factions within the governing coalition such as Fernández Ordoñez and Boyer within the UCD, who insofar as their role as ministers or Prime Minister allowed, sought to accommodate the interests of their ideological bedfellows regarding the government's social and economic policy.

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