Michael Coy
ON June 15, 1977, the people of Spain went to the polls.
In Britain, Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister and Lucille by Kenny Rogers was top of the pops.
Manchester United had just won the FA Cup, beating Liverpool in the final.
But what was happening in Spain was not routine. It was special.
General Franco had died a year-and-a-half earlier, bringing to a close a four-decade dictatorship. Democracy was returning.
This was the first free vote since 1936.
No-one was quite sure how the election would go.
Fourteen political parties competed, many of them cobbled together for this election, but there were four big, stable groupings.
The ‘AP’ (now extinct) was the Francoist party. Many observers thought they would win, and their leader (Manuel Fraga) would become Prime Minister. In fact, they were almost wiped out, winning only 16 seats.
Communism was a major political force at the time, and the PCE had many followers who had fought against Franco in the Civil War. As things turned out, the voters rejected them: they obtained 20 seats.
Today’s Labour Party in Spain is known as the PSOE, and in 1977 it had a young and charismatic leader, Felipe Gonzalez. The PSOE came very close to victory with 118 seats, but it wasn’t quite good enough.
UCD won the most seats. It no longer exists today, but it was the ‘centre’ party of the time. The leader was Adolfo Suarez, widely recognised as the most able politician of his generation.
UCD came out of the election with 165 seats, and a third of the overall vote. Suarez was 11 seats short of a majority.
His first task was to provide a constitution by which the country could be run.
Suarez knew that he could rely on his allies, the PSOE, to support him, but a major problem presented itself – what to do about the Catalans and the Basques?
These two ethnic groups had long been arguing for homelands of their own – indeed, their ‘separatism’ had been one of the causes of the Civil War.
In the 1970s, the struggle turned violent (this was exactly the time when, in the British Isles, the Irish Republican Army was conducting its ‘armed struggle’ against Westminster).
Franco had suppressed the Catalans and the Basques ruthlessly, but now – with Franco gone – they were sure to demand their independence.
Suarez knew that he couldn’t agree to separatism for minorities.
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If these two groups could have their freedom, why not Andalucia? Why not the Canary Islands?
He didn’t want to be remembered as the man who dismantled Spain.
His solution was an ingenious one.
Dividing the nation into seventeen ‘autonomous communities’, Suarez played on local loyalties in order to preserve the nation.
Under the Suarez plan, Catalunya and the Basque Provinces would be semi-independent, exactly like Madrid and Galicia.
We still have the system today.
Its big selling-point was, it ‘devolved’ important powers onto the new communities. Andalucia, for example, runs its own health service and education system.
As a sweetener, the Basques and the Catalans were given their own police forces.
If you walk around central Barcelona, you will see mossos de esquadra, specifically Catalan police.
It worked. The two most ‘fissile’ regions – the most likely to break away – opted to remain.
Suarez’ remarkable achievement came, however, at a price.
Imagine a 22-year-old woman, living in Malaga city, who obtains a medical degree.
She wants to be an obstetrician. Now she must study for the oposiciones, the exams which – if she passes – will entitle her to apply for a government job.
That’s fine if she stays in Andalucía. But if she falls in love with a young man from Extremadura, and decides to move to Badajoz, her oposiciones will not be recognised.
Even worse, Spain has a long tradition of ‘chorizos’: corrupt politicians who know how to live off public money. Adding a new layer of administration created endless rip-off opportunities for the chorizos.
Still, as Churchill once remarked, democracy is the worst possible system of government – except for all the others.
Though it’s sometimes messy and inconvenient, most of us – Spanish and British – count our blessings. We live in a free society.
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