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King Juan Carlos: El Motor del Cambio
| Article
# : |
18855 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
1,571 Words |
| Author
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Stanley G. Payne
Stanley G. Payne is Hilldale Professor of History at the
University of Wisconsin. He has authored several studies of
Spanish history. |
In an era when crowned heads were presumed to be on the road to extinction, Juan Carlos I stepped forward as the decisive leader of the first successful democratization of Spanish government. He has correctly been identified as el motor del cambio, "the engine of change" that transformed Spain from a right-wing dictatorship into a federalist democracy that in certain respects is more democratic than centralized France. No other monarch in twentieth-century Europe has had so progressive an impact on his people.
Juan Carlos is the grandson of Alfonso XIII, who ruled Spain from 1902 to 1931, until overthrown by the short-lived republic (1931 to 1936). Juan Carlos' father, Don Juan, was Alfonso's third son, but the elder brother both renounced their claims to the succession--one in order to marry a commoner, the next because he was a deaf-mute--leaving Don Juan the legitimate heir to the Spanish throne after his father died in exile in 1941.
During the traumatic civil war of 1936-39, the royal family supported General Franco's nationalists. This was due first to the fact that Franco privately expressed his fidelity to the monarchist principle, but equally to the fact that it had little alternative in a fully polarized revolutionary conflict between Left and Right. Moreover, during the period of Axis ascendancy in Europe between 1936 and 1942, the young Don Juan's head was turned by theories of authoritarian nationalism, and he appeared ready to accept the "installation" of an authoritarian monarchy rather than to seek the restoration of constitutional monarchy. After the close of 1942, however, Don Juan underwent a political conversion to liberal principles, and for the rest of his life would champion constitutional and parliamentary monarchy.
For many years this made little difference, since General Franco was determined to hold fast to complete political authority so long as he lived. After 1945 he and the pretender Don Juan became bitter rivals. Nonetheless, Franco was more of a traditionalist than a fascist, and he soon recognized the need to strengthen his regime by legitimizing it through traditional institutions. In 1947 the Spanish regime was officially transformed into a monarchist state--approved by popular plebiscite--with Franco holding the position of regent for life and the power to designate his own successor as the next king of Spain. So long as Don Juan championed constitutional monarchy, there could be no agreement with Franco. In 1948, Franco therefore began to concentrate his attention on the pretender's son, 10-year-old Prince Juan Carlos, whom he proposed in effect to educate inside Spain in his own
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