Spain: Toward a Change

SPAIN

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The end of the Franco era in Spain is near. Just how near no one can say, for the dictator has proved himself immensely durable. Almost a quarter of a century has passed since El Caudillo defeated the Republicans in Spain's bloody Civil War and built his stern, stable military regime in the proud, suffering land. Today, he seems as confident as ever that the regime can go on forever. But all the signs dispute him. There is in Spain a ferment and unrest that signals change ahead.

The fourth bomb in a week exploded in a Madrid street last week, testifying to the increasing boldness of anti-Franco plotters. Bright-colored opposition handbills showed up on tables in cafes, on street corners, plastered to walls and telephone poles in side streets of a dozen cities. More than a hundred unhappy Spanish politicians boldly gathered 900 miles away in West Germany to talk earnestly of the freedom that Franco fears. Workers gathered in town squares to whisper in awe and pride of the only successful strike in the history of Franco Spain, won by the stubborn Asturias coal miners.

"Franco will fall within five to six months," says Julio Just, a prominent exile leader living in Paris. "This is the beginning of the last chapter in the history of the Franco regime,'' agrees Jesus Prados Arrarte, chief economist of Spain's Central Bank, who recently fled the country. To some extent, this was typical exiles' talk; no one really expected imminent revolution in Spain. Nevertheless, it all testified to the rising expectation that El Caudillo. at 69, cannot last much longer. Everybody in Spain is waiting to see who will succeed him.

Patient Stoic. The man with the best chance and with most at stake in the outcome is a 6-ft. 3-in. blueblood who has not lived in Spain for 31 years. He is Don Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, 49, Count of Barcelona and Pretender to the Spanish throne, which he and his monarchist supporters are certain will be restored when Franco goes. Until that happens, he can only wait restlessly in self-imposed exile at Estoril, Portugal's glittering resort, or take the handsome yacht Saltillo for endless cruises in the Mediterranean—an embodiment of his country's impatience, and a symbol of the Spanish past that is desperately trying to move into modern Europe.

Don Juan is no princely puppet. In Estoril, he works hard each morning at his rambling Villa Giralda. digesting reports on developments in Spain, receiving visitors, answering mail, plowing through the newspapers flown in from London.

Paris and Rome. He keeps in constant touch with the 43-man Consejo Privado, his privy council in Spain, which already has drafted a plan for a constitutional monarchy against the day when Don Juan may take the throne.

Even during the cruises, mail and radio reports flow out to the yacht. Last week, heading slowly back to Estoril from a trip through the Mediterranean, he paused briefly off Gibraltar to confer with two leaders of his council. He also stopped at Cartagena as guest of the local naval commander.

Theoretically, Don Juan can return to Spain any time he wants to. but he takes care to make his visits brief and casual.

Although Spain was declared a monarchy in Franco's 1947 Law of Succession, Spain's dictator has made no move to implement it. It has been