2023-07-11 08:04:44
The ‘what will they say’ cost Francisco Franco. In 1942, in an attempt to give his dictatorship a patina of democracy, he established the Cortes by law on July 17. Although with reservations; the first, to keep the right to name the bulk of the attorneys who would structure them. Partly candid, in February 1943 he handpicked a range of royalists for office. He wanted to spread that feeling that a restoration of the King had arrived; but it was just that, a mirage. That exploded in his face on June 15, when several of these politicians, together with many other Spanish nobles and magnates, sent him a letter demanding that he abandon power and make way for the legitimate heir to the throne. Almost nothing.
big signatories
And little mindundis had the signatories; rather they were notables of politics and jurisprudence. The most important had names and surnames with tradition: Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, the XVII Duke of Alba. Franco was not caught by surprise. Since the end of the Civil War, the dictator knew his political ups and downs and his monarchical desires; but, since they didn’t beat him to the rogue, he kept him in office in a very Galician way to take advantage of his close contact with Winston Churchill. As collected by Juan Fernández-Miranda and Jesús Calero in ‘Don Juan against Franco. The secret papers of the regime’, he received periodic reports about his conspiracies in favor of Don Juan. He knew what was there.
The truth is that the duke, then ambassador of Spain in London, did not try too hard to hide his monarchical tendencies. After several turbulences in an already tense relationship, Alba criticized the dictator countless times behind the scenes – “The little general… I know whose foot he limps from” – and, on one occasion, even brought foreign correspondents together in the London city to inform them that his passport had been withdrawn so that he would not travel to a meeting with Don Juan. “It is the first time in five hundred years that a Duke of Alba cannot answer the call of a king,” he reported, stung. That his name appeared among those 27 heroes was not a novelty for the Generalissimo.
Nor was Franco surprised that among those nobles, magnates and heroes was Alfonso Garcia Valdesecas, one of the founders of the Spanish Falange together with José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The truth is that the guy could not complain, since the dictator had appointed him national counselor in 1937 and undersecretary of National Education after the formation of the first National Government in Burgos. However, his relationship with Alfonso XIII in Rome he convinced him that, after the Civil War, the best thing to do was for Spain to plunge headlong into a Monarchy.
Criticism of the dictatorship
It is said that courteousness does not take away courage, and the letter from the Franco regime’s gyrfalcons was no less. In the heat of a formula as chivalrous as it was obligatory – “excellent sir” – they wrested their sword from the dictatorship. Although they did not begin with a direct to the jaw, but with the classic dialectical circumlocutions intended to reduce tension: «Those who subscribe, attorneys for the Cortes, would believe they were failing in a duty that the law imposes on them, if at this serious moment in life of Spain did not convey to Your Excellency their thoughts in order to organize the political regime of our country”. And they added that they had preferred to send him a personal letter than process a bill and create chaos in the country.
The Duke of Alba is recognized as one of the great figures of the Spanish 20th century ABC
From there, to the point. The first thing that the attorneys put forward was that the dictatorship had been efficient for a while in alleviating the misfortunes that had occurred after the end of the Civil War, but that it was time to put it aside: “It is not possible to effectively carry out the work entrusted to the Cortes, without resolving the essential problem of the definition and ordering of the fundamental institutions of the State. This would be indispensable at any time in history. Only in transitory periods, a personal regime, without a precise institutional definition, can constitute a link between different situations».
Without time to breathe, they listed the first criticisms of the dictatorship: «Personal regimes cannot be prolonged without serious risk. Due to the insecurity that they determine in the public spirit, due to the uncertainty that is a necessary consequence of the inevitable physical contingencies in every human person».
Let the Monarchy come
Each one clings to his particular burning nail; that of those heroes was the Second World War. After the setbacks of Erwin Rommel’s ‘Afrika Korps’ and the Allied landing in Sicily, the fall of the Nazi eagle began to be suspected in the distance. The magnates, they said, smelled the end of the conflict and, as a consequence, advised Franco to make way for a new and more solid regime. If the Americans and British won, or so they suspected, they would punish the dictatorships with the economic whip:
«The end of the world war threatens to shake with its fatal repercussions the life of the peoples. It is essential that, when this occurs, Spain is not in a constituent period and that a definitive regime, in accordance with the Spanish tradition, and adapted to the circumstances of the present moment, opposes an insurmountable dyke to the ravages of external or internal factors of dissolution and revolt. For this, it is essential that the fundamental base of the political regime of Spain has been concretized and solidly established: the supreme power of the State.
What was that ‘definitive regime’ that those heroes of Francoism yearned for? Simple: «The definitive constitution of Spain must be based on the secular regime that forged its unity and its historical greatness: the Traditional Catholic Monarchy». It was urgent, or so they wielded a thousand and one times throughout the text, to make the change at full speed. And for two reasons. The first, to achieve “moral unity among the Spaniards”; the second, “to inspire confidence abroad that Spain will collaborate effectively in the organization of the new order that will prevail in the world when peace arrives.” Because yes, they were also convinced that the dictatorship would be set aside at the political level when the cannons stopped thundering and the MG-42 machine guns rattling.
The German ambassador presents his credentials to Franco at the Palacio de Oriente during 1943 ABC
The 27 maintained that, “if the regime that, at the end of the war, is established in our Homeland meets these two essential characteristics, Spain, by itself, in Intelligence with Portugal and in conjunction with the Spanish-American nations”, could play a role of the first order in various fields. From the restoration of devastated Europe, to the organization of the future world. Externally, they did not deny that the coming years were going to be hard; in part, due to the bad situation of the colonies in Africa, where our country governed several territories. However, they understood that the “necessary policy of neutrality” could only be perfectly orchestrated by the Monarchy.
Nor did they deny the internal challenges: «As for our internal situation, this raises the problem of the political evolution of our regime, on the one hand, with characters of urgent convenience; on the other, with the means to carry it out in conditions of tranquility and self-determination free from all external pressure or suggestion”. Needless to say, the request was to no avail. This “respectful motion inspired by the desire and hope” that Franco would complete “his highest historical mission of his” only further inflamed a dictator who saw too many ghosts around him.
The origin of the change
It is difficult to find the germ that motivated the monarchists to rise up, in a more or less scandalous way, against Franco. Although there are some figures linked to that trend since the end of the Civil War. The main one was, as recorded by Juan Fernández-Miranda and Jesús Calero in ‘Don Juan against Franco. The secret papers of the regime’, Alfredo Kindelán. The military was a firm defender of handing over power to Ferrol, but only temporarily and as a means to reinstate the Royal Family in the country. This officer went on to explain that “some two hundred thousand Spanish monarchists hate Franco and want him to leave power without delay” in an interview with the ‘International News Service’.
The historian Luis E. Togores, for his part, affirms in ‘Franco in front of Hitler. The untold history of Spain during the Second World War’, that “the clique of advisers and monarchists that surrounded the pretender began to work to try to return the Bourbons to Spain” at the very moment that the Third Reich assaulted Poland . In his words, both they and a series of generals from the national side with the same political ideas tried to convince the dictator to abandon power in favor of Don Juan de Borbón. To do this, they even considered getting closer to Germany in exchange for their army expelling the Caudillo from command.
From then on the road was long, the hard work and the royalists who joined this cause in the shadows, many more. In the 1940s, one of the cornerstones around which all the conspirators revolved was Eugenio Vegas Latapié, a defender of Don Juan willing to do almost anything to wrest control from Franco. Renowned military men lined up to his sound during the Civil War such as Juan Yagüe –famous for directing the defenses on the Ebro front–, Agustín Muñoz Grandes –commander of the Blue Division– or, among many others, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano .
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