SPAIN: VOTERS SAY 'S

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Explained a Communist Party member: "In the countryside, many of the people are nervous. Everyone knows everyone. They are not sure whether the authorities will find out how they voted and what repercussions it might have. It's not the civil war that bothers these people, but the repression that followed it. They are not sure it won't come back." Even in the cities, there were those who remained reluctant to talk about how they would vote. The old reflexes had not quite disappeared.

Apart from a few street fights and scattered bombing incidents, the campaign was peaceful and enthusiastic, carried out by the candidates with gentlemanly regard for the rules of the new game. Socialist González, who favors open-necked shirts and casual jackets, brought American-style campaigning to Spain, jetting about the country to rallies in a chartered plane. Seeking to establish his party as the major alternative, he concentrated his fire on Fraga's Popular Alliance and Suárez's coalition. He charged that 80% of the U.C.D. candidates were interchangeable with those of Fraga's party—like "Pepsi and Coca Cola."

The Communists, led by the savvy Carrillo, had a simple aim: to make the party respectable in a country where it had been outlawed for 38 years. With caveats, they accepted the monarchy and its flag—to the point where wags dubbed them el Real Partido Comunista (the Royal Communist Party). The party's freewheeling rallies, including a giant, rain-soaked election-eve bash outside Madrid for more than 200,000 supporters, dazzled much of Spain. By contrast, Fraga's stodgy Alliance held many of its meetings by invitation only.

As Juan Carlos' appointee with a mandate until 1981, Suárez did not have to run at all. He was afraid, however, that the fractured centrist parties would be trounced as voters turned to more dynamic candidates on both left and right, thus recreating the "two Spains" of old. So he stepped in himself. His lieutenants converted the faltering centrist alliance into a coalition composed of Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, liberals and a number of former Franco officials. Although he promised to resign if the U.C.D. lost, the Premier was sensitive to opposition clamor about the unfair advantage his office might give him. Thus he made only one campaign appearance. But he managed, nonetheless, to get across the message that he would bring change without risk and without trauma.

The vote registered by the U.C.D. was largely a tribute to Suárez's popularity. Backed by the King, he had steered Spain, with hardly a false move, from dictatorship to what should eventually become a full-fledged parliamentary democracy. Moreover, he had managed to do it in less than a year.