20 Years After

On a mountain 28 miles northwest of Madrid last week assembled the flower of Franco Spain—Cabinet ministers, generals, admirals, all of the nation's four cardinals, 37 of its bishops, six mitered abbots, and the Papal Nuncio. Occasion for this august gathering: the dedication of the Valley of the Fallen, the striking $12 million monument to Spain's Civil War dead that workmen have been hewing out of solid rock since 1941 (TIME color, Jan. 26). By no coincidence, it was also the anniversary of the day in 1939 when the last pockets of Republican resistance collapsed in Madrid. Now, 20 years after he proclaimed himself ruler of Spain, "responsible only to God and history," Generalissimo Francisco Franco, 66, was ready to offer a partial accounting for his stewardship.

"Our victory," said Franco, "was a victory of the unity of the Spanish people." There was, he conceded, some continuing discontent with his regime: "The anti-Spain was beaten and broken, but it is not dead. Periodically, we see it raise its head from abroad and in its arrogance and blindness try to poison and inflame anew the innate curiosity and passion of the young for novelties." But in fact, he said, no real grounds for discontent exist. "The perfection of social rights in our country is a reality. The lead Spain has over other people in this is extraordinary." And economically, "the real fact is that in these 20 years Spain has known an economic development without precedent in its history . . ."

P for Protest. Had he chosen, Franco could have made at least one valid boast. From the political doghouse to which it was banished along with Franco's erstwhile friends, the Nazis and Fascists, Spain is step by step returning to the community of nations. Franco's anti-Communism and his nation's strategic peninsular location have brought him an alliance with the U.S.

But the unity of which the generalissimo is so proud is not as solid as it might be. Despite his plea for "national reconciliation," not one former Republican has yet consented to the reburial of a relative in the Valley of the Fallen. And the discontent that he deprecates is far more than the innate curiosity and passion of the young for novelties. The bulk of Spain's people—including many of Franco's own supporters—are restive. They would like to form political parties other than Franco's moribund Falange, and they already operate underground parties. In the past fortnight the black letter P has appeared on the walls of Barcelona. It stands for protesto, and was put there by Catholics who want the right to organize a public Christian Democratic Party.

In today's Spain it is fashionable to declare how much one hates Franco. Yet, curiously enough, the very people who deride the generalissimo live in terror of his death. Ostensibly, Franco is paving the way for a restoration of Spain's old Bourbon monarchy once he himself disappears from the scene, and virtually all Spaniards, save the Communists, pay lip service to this plan. Yet in Spain's cafés, Franco's followers and foes whisper of the day after his death in another vein. Fearfully, they predict: "Back to the streets with pistols."