2023-12-19 19:02:36
Assassinations generate a shock in society, an enormous imprint on the imagination when we see kings, presidents and great men who seemed untouchable collapse, but that does not mean that history would have been very different from how it really was without them. Julius Caesar was assassinated when the Roman Republic It was broken and the empire was inevitable; The death of Calvo Sotelo advanced the conflict in Spain by a few days, although plans for a military coup had already existed for months, and of course John F. Kennedyidealized only after his fall, swam in a United States that was going to resist tooth and nail to social changes regardless of who governed them.
The same can be said in the case of Luis Carrero Blanco, whose death ETA and its propagandists continue to sing about as the trigger for a disturbance in the regime that changed everything in the face of the Transition, a period that some historians consider began that same year. day with the disappearance of the strong man of Francoism and the only one capable of preventing the arrival of Democracy.
The historian Guillermo Gortázar denies the major and also the minor: «ETA had zero effect with the murder in the Transition. For the simple reason that the key to the Transition was in the appointment of the president of Congress and the Cortes after the cessation of Rodríguez Valcárcel, who was none other than Torcuato Fernández Miranda, a man of Carrero’s greatest confidence. With all certainty, the admiral would not have raised any objection to this movement and we can say that dealing with Arias Navarro was more difficult for the King.
Carrero Blanco was a very discreet politician, with few political stridencies and less desire for prominence. He represents the current of technocrats who were in clear retreat at that time and who accepted, like Franco himself, that the regime had come to an end. «Strictly speaking, the key ‘death’ for the beginning of the Transition was that of Franco because, with him, the regime died, a personal dictatorship that was immediately replaced by a limited Monarchy that, in just one year, with the Political Reform Lawit now becomes a parliamentary and democratic Monarchy,” explains Robert Villahistorian and professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University, who also considers Carrero key to the monarchical succession.
«A lot of emphasis is placed on Carrero’s personality and the most retarded features of his ideas. However, he was also a pragmatic man and was the architect of the evolution of Francoism towards a technocratic and developmental authoritarianism,” says this historian specialized in crises, bankruptcies and transitions of democracies.
«Arias Navarro, unlike Carrero, was not in tune with the Prince, who was very clear about the future of Spain after Franco’s death»
Although his replacement, Carlos Arias Navarro, was a man who had a more political and less technocratic vision, Carrero, who on the day he was murdered was going to proceed with the processing of the law to reform political associations, was much more attached to the King, to Torcuato Fernández-Miranda and succession plans. «Arias Navarro, unlike Carrero, was not in tune with the Prince, who was very clear about the future of Spain after Franco’s death. For the new president, he was a kind of young man who had to be managed and set times, something that would have been different with Carrero,” says Gortázar.
Different face, same outcome
The man who would announce Franco’s death to all of Spain with glassy eyes put into practice a timid reformist project, with open-minded bets such as the appointment of Pío Cabanillas as Minister of Information and Tourism and other maneuvers that caused him many difficulties with both the Franco regime. like Juan Carlos himself, who imagined another road map and another captain for the future of Spain. “Both knew that there were going to be political changes and that the future of the regime was a parliamentary monarchy. I am convinced that Carrero, like Arias, would have resigned after six months because they were neither at the intensity nor at the speed that the King intended. Neither of them could accept or direct an intense reform, even if they knew it was inevitable,” says the Basque historian.
Alberto Reig Tapia, on the other hand, defends that Admiral Carrero, whom he considers to be as hardline as Arias Navarro, would have tried to maneuver or face the circumstances with as much force and as little success as the rest of the immobilists, so that would have ended up failing and isolated like those most loyal to Franco. «No matter how much he obeyed the will of the King, his loyalty could not be like that of Carrero with Franco, which was blind and absolute. At that time it was said that if Franco ordered him to jump out of the window, he would climb onto the windowsill without question and shout “Long live Franco, Up Spain!” “He would jump without blinking… Would he have served Juan Carlos as he did with Franco?” asks the professor of Rovira i Virgili University.
Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco is sworn in as President of the Government. ABC
It is also a myth that the United States had any interest in Carrero disappearing from the political map: “Quite the contrary, he was, within the Franco regime, one of the most convinced of the necessity of maintaining Spain’s alliance with the United States.” Joined. He could bet on reviewing the treaties and negotiating hard to seek a better deal for Spain, but he was against reaching a breakup, compared to other more daring ministers. In Washington they knew perfectly well that Carrero and his team represented the most pro-American sector of the Franco regime. The involvement of the CIA in his murder is unfounded even as a conspiracy theory,” says Villa, for whom the alleged help that ETA received falls more within the Soviet disinformation tactics that were used in the Cold War to always divert negative attention directed at Americans.
Reig Tapia agrees that there is a lack of evidence to support this ‘comic’: “The famous interview at the Mindanao hotel between an ETA member belonging to the commando that murdered Carrero and who was later executed in the same way as the man has not yet been clarified. admiral, with an unknown character and on which Kissinger’s alleged intervention has been staged. With this reservation made, there is absolutely nothing to support this conspiracy theory. US-Spain relations at that time were excellent. Why would Kissinger get involved in such a high-risk operation? He didn’t need it.
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