SPAIN: AFTER FRANCO: HOPE AND FEAR

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That is not necessarily the view of the Spanish Communist Party—probably the best organized of Spain's illegal political groups. From its four-room Paris headquarters-in-exile, Party Secretary-General Santiago Carrillo keeps in touch with an estimated 12,000 active members in Spain by couriers and a constantly changing network of "safe" telephones. Carrillo has repeatedly voiced his opposition to Juan Carlos. "The Prince is, in effect, the son of Franco," the Secretary recently told TIME Chief European Correspondent William Rademaekers. "All Franco's structures will have to disappear, including Juan Carlos. If the people decide they want a monarch, then he will be Don Juan"—Juan Carlos' father, who has been living in exile in Portugal.

Even the Communists do not demand an immediate radicalization of Spanish society. Unlike Portugal's hard-lining Stalinist party boss, Alvaro Cunhal, Carrillo claims that he favors a democratic, pluralistic state that would permit basic freedoms. The Communists are in a good position to push their program: they have heavily infiltrated the legal trade union movement, the clandestine comisiones obreras and groups of lawyers, doctors and engineers.

The Communists will oppose any government that does not include members of the Junta Democrática, an organization founded last year that supposedly represents centrist and leftist groups but is probably a Communist front. If the new regime fails to bring the Socialists into the government, the Communists may also try to woo them into an opposition national-front movement. "If Juan Carlos does not offer change and change quickly," warned a party official last week in Madrid, "he will be consigning himself to oblivion." From Paris, Carrillo was blunter, vowing "a wave of terror that will lead to a new civil war" if the hard-line rightists retain control of the government.

Spain's extremists, however, are likely to beat the Communists to the punch. The Basque terrorists have already vowed to continue their struggle "until we achieve our goals" of a semi-autonomous state in the provinces of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa. The Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Patriotic Front (FRAP), a tiny (200 member) Marxist urban-guerrilla organization, will probably continue its campaign of selected shootings and bombings aimed at disrupting public order.

Any movement by the new government toward a liberalization of the Spanish political system would almost certainly enrage much of the rightist Establishment that has been reaping most of the political benefits of Franco's long reign. As the only party through which the factions backing the regime have been allowed to function, the Movimiento Nacional has dominated nearly every organized activity in the country, from farmers' associations to sports groups. The Movimiento's secretary, currently José Solis Ruiz, even has an automatic seat in the Cabinet. He is expected to emerge as a key critic of the new regime if it moves toward liberalization too rapidly for the right. Also likely to protest reforms is the leadership of the sindicales, the official labor unions that are sure to lose their privileged position if free unions are permitted.