SPAIN: Man in a Sweat

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But when Francisco was six years old the Spanish Navy sailed out on its brave, hopeless campaign against the upstart Yanqui tinpots and presently ceased to be a going concern. Having no warships to speak of, the Spanish Government decided to shut the Naval Academy down; 14-year-old Francisco went instead to the military academy in the Alcazar of Toledo. If he had followed his planned career he might have been a captain or admiral by 1936, when rebel naval officers were heaved over the sides of their warships by Loyalist crews.

As it was, Cadet Franco got his Army commission at 17, served with distinction in the endless Riff campaigns, got to be a major at 23 and the youngest general in a standard European army at 32. His fortunes sagged for a time under the Spanish Republic, then brightened when a Rightist Government came into power in 1935 and his friend, War Minister Jose Maria Gil Robles (now exiled leader of the Catholic CEDA) made him Chief of Staff.

Franco had been an expert in Moroccan warfare. He knew all the admirable qualities of the Moorish trooper, who requires only to be paid, fed and told to kill. In 1934 he gave Spain an innovation in the class struggle by importing Moors to put down an uprising by Socialist Asturian miners. Later he brought the Moors in again to fight the milicianos of the Republic. To this day Moors, picturesque in their white, blue and red burnooses, make up his personal bodyguard.

The Popular Front Government which came to power in February 1936 did not dare keep Franco in Madrid, but assigned him a responsible outpost command, the Canary Islands. He soon began plotting with other generals; as his part of the July revolt, flew to Morocco to take charge of the rebel troops there. Franco expected the whole show to be over in a week or ten days, scarcely dreamed of becoming the top leader.

Dilemma and End? One of Franco's several mistakes during his rebellion was not military but political. Franco apparently reasoned that one reason for the failure of Primo de Rivera's earlier military dictatorship was that the government lacked any real popular basis. To cure that, while the war was still in progress he adopted the Falange Party, approved by Hitler and Mussolini.

Since Franco's victory the Falange has become intensely unpopular with virtually all other Spanish groups. A favorite Madred café joke runs that the Falange has unified all Spain—in hatred of the Falange.

Now the Falange is the only party on which Franco can depend. Yet it is exactly the party which will strive most vigorously to block any monarchist deal he might hope to offer the ascendant democracies. All this must be bitter drink for Franco, a proud man, who has himself assumed much of the panoply of royalty in Madrid. He appears at public functions surrounded by an entourage of aides and has a lordly way of refusing to see foreign ambassadors in person. Madrid gossips have long whispered that Franco dreams of founding a dynasty of his own. He might, they murmur, marry off his young daughter, Carmencita, to the Duke of Veragua, scion of a famous bull-raising family and descendant of Christopher Columbus.