A Tale of Two Countries (Spain, 1976-1982)

14. Staying alive (1981-1983).
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14. Staying alive (1981-1983).

For six months, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo was a popular prime minister. He was able to achieve a great deal of cooperation with the trade unions. Furthermore, under his tenure the Divorce Law was approved, even if it became a point of contention between the right and the left wing of UCD, and, because of his very conservative writting, was heavily criticised the party's left; he also advocated Spain's proposed entry into NATO as soon as possible, even if this was opposed by a great part of the Suarist faction of his party. In addition to this, the Statute of Galicia was aproved too and elections followed suit. Thus, in October 1981, UCD obtained a sweet victory that came as a blessing after Suárez's resignation, with 34,07% of the votes (1).

However, by late 1981, the internal crisis of UCD resufarced along with the unsolved problems of the country. The weak situation of Calvo-Sotelo within UCD itself and the critical situation of the Spanish politics came to a head in December 1981. The economic situation was still very worrying, with high inflation (15,68% in 1979, 14,56% in 1981) and rising unemployment (9,5% in 1979, 11.8% in 1980, 15% in 1981) in the aftershock of the 1979 oil crisis; also, the troubles of UCD were on daily basis on the main page of the national press.

After Suárez resignation, UCD had faced itself a peculiar situation: The party apparatus, democratically elected, was controlled by the Suarists, who also kept their dominance over the Executive Committee, but not over the Political Committee, where the grandees ruled. In fact, the latter had more power than the former. Furthermore, most of the parliamentary group of UCD was made up by critics of Suárez. And finally, as we have seen, Joaquín Garrigues Walker had become the new president of UCD after defeating the Suarist candidante, Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún. Over this chaos, Calvo Sotelo was to try to govern the country.

To deal with the crisis, Calvo Sotelo selected Juan Antonio García Díez, from the socialdemocratic faction of UCD, who attempted to bring order to the banking sector with a new regulation and opening it to foreign investment, achieveing a moderate degree of success; in addition to this, García Díez introduced a more strict monetery policy to reduce inflation, which had fallen to 12,22% by 1983. With the first Acuerdo Nacional de Empleo (Employment Agreement) of June 1981, the government, the employers and the trade unions agreed on a new policy to promote employment, including an indexation of wages to reduce, again, inflation rates. Furthermore, with Gonzalez's PSOE being less agressive, Calvo Sotelo implemented between 1982 and 1983 an attempt to modernise the energy, shipbuilding and steel industries. This modernisation was to end with the great and traditional enterprises, that were to be replaced with small and medium-sized ones.

However, this was to be done at the cost of considerable social unrest and huge fiscal deficits. Of course, this was to have a huge impact on the General Elections of 1983. Exhausted, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo resigned and was replaced by Landelino Lavilla as the centrist candidate for the premiership. Meawnhile, Garrigues-Walker waited for his time. He was sure that the cost of ruling Spain since 1978 was to be great, and he was not willing to be part of the sacrifice. He had to rebuild and to reinforce UCD. Then time would tell.


(1)
UCD - José Quiroga -
Votes 335 191
Seats 27  
34.07%

AN - Gerardo Fernández Albor
Votes 301 039
Seats 26  
30.52 %

PSdeG-PSOE - Francisco Vázquez Vázquez
Votes 226 456
Seats 17
23.02 %  

PCG-PCE - Anxo Guerreiro
Votes 28 927
Seats 1
2.93 %
 
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Well, after devoting the last chapters to the reunified Spain, in the next installment we'll return to Catalonia, that has been left on its own since chapter 9...
 
15. Pujolian Catalonia (1980-1983)
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15. Pujolian Catalonia (1980-1983)

Catalonia had endured a time of "hispanisation" under the Second Republic, specially in the 1940-1950 period, when the linguistic issue had become a point of contention between the Republican government and the Generalitat. The attacks against the teaching of Catalan led by the Socialist policitians Antonio Fabra y Andrés Ovejero (the latter even asked for the suppresion of the Jocs Florals -1-) reached its peak fo violence in the after war period, when many Spanish politicians asked for the dissolution of the Generalitat, which was acussed of going against the interests of Spain during the war. That Manuel Azaña, president of the Republic from 1936 to 1945, despised Lluis Company, president of the Generalitat from 1934 to 1950, did not help to defuse the tense situation. Azaña even considered to supress the Generalitat but the international situation and the Francoist threat forced Azaña's hand. Azaña's replacement, Diego Martínez Barrio (president of the Republic from 1945 to 1955), also played with the idea, but, ironically, he was forced to rely on the Catalan support between 1947 and 1951, when the PSOE and the PCE were against the government of Álvaro de Albornoz and the Catalan representatives kept the Spanish government in place.

Thus, when Pujol became president of the Catalan government in 1980, one of his main policies was to reinforce the Catalan identity and the Catalan culture, which reinforced the Catalan nationalism among the population, in spite of the opposition of those who were against the "linguistic inmmersion". However, after the decree 2092/1978, which made compulsory the study of the Catalan language in the school, and the Law 7/1983 (2), Pujol and his ministers felt strong enough to state that, without the laws protecting and enhacing the teaching of Catalan in the school, the inlfux of immigrants to Catalonia would seriously jeopardise the Catalan language. This was to become an issue that would return to the Catalan politics in the following decades.

Another of Pujol's big efforts was to create the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (Catalan Corporation of Audiovisual Media) in 1981 (3), that gave way to the Catalan public radio and television service; and the industrial reform, that in many aspects followed what was going on in Spain. Everything seem to be bright for Pujol and Catalonia.

However, something unexpected would change this trend in 1982. When Banca Catalana, the main commercial bank of Catalonia, suffered an unexpected crisis, the scandal touched Pujol, as the bank had been created in 1959 by his father, Florenci Pujol Brugat, Francesc Cabana i Vancells and Jordi Pujol himself. In the turmoil that followed, Pujol was accused of embezzlement and prevarication. Even if he claimed that the whole issue was an "dirty war" operation by the Spanish secret service (4), he was forced, in 1983, to call for General Elections in Catalonia, as we shall see.

(1) Floral Games, a cultural event that followed the Roman Ludi Floreales, that had its roots in the Medieval Floral Games that took place from late XIV century to the XV century and were reintroduced in Catalonia in 1859 by Antoni de Bofarull and Victor Balaguer.
(2) IOTL, this law was passed by the Catalan Parliament with only two votes against it.
(3) IOTL, 1983.
(4) IOTL, Pujol accused Felipe González and his cabinet of playing dirty and that, by attacking him, the Spanish government was attacking Catalonia. Pujol's ego was a constant source of news for the Catalan and Spanish media.
 
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Well, here comes to its end this first "volume" of this Alternative Spanish (and Catalan) history. In the following one (1983-1993), we shall see how the two countries face the 80s and the beginning of the 90s... with some surprises for their main "actors".
 
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