AFTER FRANCO: HOPE AND FEAR

As advancing age began taking its inexorable toll, Francisco Franco periodically pledged to his countrymen that he would rule Spain only "as long as God gives me life and a clear mind." It was apparent last week that the pledge was soon to come due, despite the determination with which the 82-year-old Generalissimo clung to the absolute power he had been wielding for nearly four decades. Severely weakened by a series of heart attacks, Western Europe's last dictator at week's end was barely hanging on to life. As the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church were administered, his family gathered at El Pardo Palace, his countrymen waited expectantly for word of the inevitable, and officials prepared for a three-day national mourning period.

The death of Franco will end an epoch for both Spain and Europe. Long the Continent's most reviled pariah, Franco was a haunting, living reminder that the West had failed to act decisively during the Spanish Civil War, when the forces of Communism, Fascism and democracy confronted each other in what turned out to be a dress rehearsal for World War II. In the postwar years, Franco confounded his numerous critics by taming a naturally rebellious nation that had spawned anarchy and by bringing Spanish society into the modern industrial age (see following story). Yet, like most dictators, he did not know when to quit. Most of his countrymen thus accept his demise as long overdue. Only among the faithful—the Civil War veterans, the rightist youth, the shopkeepers who long ago rallied to the Falange—is there a genuine outpouring of emotion for the man who has been the only leader that 70% of Spain's 35 million people ever knew.

Yet there is also apprehension that the old hatreds bred in the bloody Civil War, unresolved ethnic and geographic differences, and the bitterness of the years of selective repression may rise to the surface. For more than a decade Spain has been obsessed with the question: After Franco, what? It is now about to find out.

Technically, at least, Franco answered that with the 1947 Law of Succession, which declares Spain a monarchy; later he decreed that within eight days of his death his power would devolve upon Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, 37 (see box page 26), who as King of Spain will ascend the throne vacated 44 years ago by his grandfather, Alfonso XIII. Yet few observers expect the inexperienced, untested Prince to be able to control the political forces that will certainly be unleashed by Franco's departure.

Franco's final crisis came quickly and unexpectedly. A month ago Franco—with Juan Carlos at his side—had appeared on the Royal Palace balcony to accept the homage of a mass rally in Madrid's Plaza de Oriente and he seemed vigorous for a man of his years (TIME, Oct. 13). Then, in the midst of an Oct. 17 Cabinet meeting at El Pardo Palace, his official residence outside Madrid, he announced that he was feeling queasy and excused himself from the room. The next morning Spain was swept by rumors about the state of his health.