Spain: The Awakening Land

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agricultural school in Gerona, a retreat for bullfighters in Asturias, a workers' training center in Madrid, and Spain's only "free" (i.e., nongovernment) university, in Pamplona. Last year 15,000 Spaniards attended its theology seminars, 12,000 spent their vacations in its centers of "spiritual retirement," and 20,000 children enrolled in its 143 summer camps. Driven to a fervor that is positively un-Spanish, Opus Dei members have risen to control of one of Spain's largest banks, many newspapers and magazines, a news agency, a jazz club—and to more than a dozen positions of real power within the Franco government.

Public Warning. Success has won Opus many enemies. It is attacked by old-guard Falangists as "liberal," by campus radicals as "reactionary," by labor leaders as an "economic elite." It is often accused of plotting to seize power after Franco dies, and Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel, abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Franco's Valley of the Fallen civil-war monument, recently warned it in a newspaper article to stop "playing politics."

There is no real evidence that Opus Dei has political aims. If some of its members hold top positions in the Franco government, others, such as Christian Democrat Florentine Pérez Embid and Liberal Monarchist Rafael Calvo Serer, are prominent opponents of the regime. Says Monsignor Escrivá: "Opus Dei will always include all tendencies that the Christian conscience will allow."

It is for precisely that reason that Opus Dei has become such an important factor in Spanish politics. Its members are climbing in every significant political movement except the extreme left. They can be expected to hold positions of authority in whatever government eventually succeeds Franco.

Confusing Answer. What will succeed Franco? Spaniards wish they knew. No one expects a return to civil war. "There are too many committed interests ready to stand in the way of radical upheaval," says a shrewd observer of the Spanish scene. But there is bound to be change; the mystery is, what kind. The official answer is that the machin ery for the transition and continuity of the regime already exists, outlined in six "fundamental laws" that date back to 1947—the closest thing Spain has to a constitution. But the laws are confusing, vague, overlapping and even contradictory.

Since Spain is officially a "kingdom without a king," Franco's successor will presumably be a king—who, according to the fundamental laws, must be an "acceptable" Catholic Spanish male who is of royal blood, is at least 30 years old and swears "loyalty to the principles" of the Franco regime. But how much power the king would have and what kind of government he would preside over are open questions. And if the Cabinet, together with the 13-man Council of the Realm, so decides, it can declare all the royal can didates unacceptable and name a regent instead.

To Spanish monarchists, Franco's only legitimate successor would be Don Juan de Borbón y Battenberg, the strapping 52-year-old son of the late King Alfonso XIII. Don Juan's official title is Count of Barcelona, but monarchists already call him King Juan III,* and in his sprawling white villa at the Portuguese resort town of Estoril, he