WI: Carrero Blanco survives his assasination

Spain wouldn't get an edge in the space race then. Now with all seriousness, I've read such scenario in a book called "Virtual History of Spain" from which the authors extracted a series of conclusions. First, on the day of his assassination Carrero Blanco was going to a meeting to discuss the so-called "Association Law" which IOTL Arias Navarro passed on January 1975. This law wasn't particulary relevant, but maybe it would get a quicker implementation. Blanco would continue to act as president of the government until Franco's death in November 1975. Blanco was more of a Francoist than Navarro, so the regime would have been harsher between 1973 and 1975 and with Blanco as an unifying force the pro-Francoist elements wouldn't decompose as hard as they did IOTL. Overall, the feeling after Franco's death would be that Blanco would be a second Franco.

However Carrero Blanco stayed as president mainly because of his affection to Franco, stating that "I can't leave this man, it would be a desertion". Blanco was on his 70's already and was pretty tired from all the work he had to do as president. After Franco's death, Juan Carlos was crowned as king. The political views of Juan Carlos and Carrero Blanco were quite opposed, with Juan Carlos wanting to restore democracy and a parliamentary system while Blanco firmly opposed any kind of democratic reform. However Juan Carlos was the commander in chief of all armed forces, and thus would be avobe Blanco both militarily and politically. Eventually Carrero Blanco would have to step back and renounce the government, no matter he opposed the king or not.
 
Well, the easy way to cheat on this would be if Franco chose someone else as his successor. For example, the successor to the Carlist throne (OTOH, though, Carlos Hugo's strange ideas could also potentially send Spain back on the road towards democracy, which is something Franco doesn't want - so ex-nay on that idea).
 
You have to keep in mind that Carrero lacked the support of the armed forces (he had been sitting behind a desk for too long), Falange was not too keen on him and had little friends among the remaining "families" of the Francoist structure of power, so, had he survived, its tenure of power wouldn't have been an easy on, specially with Spain's difficult economic situation and the social turmoil.
 
Probably this wouldn't change much. Juan Carlos was already appointed as successor of Franco. So king JCI might just fire Blanco and restore democracy altough probably it would happen bit later.
 
As far as I know, Carrero Blanco had some kind of respect towards JC, so he wouldn't dare to go against his wishes. After all, JC was Franco's successor, chosen by the dictator himself.

It would hardly change much, but it could create a lot of bad blood among the democratic opposition.
 
Top