SPAIN: VOTERS SAY 'S

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Spain's first government after Franco's death in November 1975 was headed by Carlos Arias Navarro, then 66, an old Franquista war horse who was despised by the left as the "Butcher of Malaga" for his role as Franco's military prosecutor during the civil war. While Arias consistently talked about "reform without haste but without pause," it soon became apparent that the pace was to be glacial. With a dangerous political impasse building and fears of labor unrest in the air, the King sacked Arias last July and appointed Suárez Premier. The selection was a surprise: Suárez was virtually unknown to the public, even though he had been a versatile bureaucrat in the Franco regime for most of his professional life.

Born in the small Castilian town of Cebreros, 60 miles west of Madrid, Suárez earned law degrees at the universities of Salamanca and Madrid. In 1950 he entered the political arena as an aide to the provincial governor of Avila. He next went to work for the National Movement, Franco's single-state party, and in quick succession became one of the few elected members of the Cortes, civil governor of Segovia province, director-general of the state-run radio and television network and chairman of Entursa, Spain's national tourism corporation. Although in 1975 Suárez had founded his own political association, the Democratic Union of the Spanish People, he entered the Arias government as head of the National Movement, a post of ministerial rank.

His mandate in that job, as it turned out, was to dismantle the party.

As soon as he was appointed Premier, Sáarez and the King agreed on their goal: reforma sin ruptura, or reform without a break. Their aim was to preserve some sort of legitimacy while using the instruments of the dictatorship to force drastic political reorientation.

Not a month passed without its own crisis. Asked recently which had been the most dramatic month since his appointment last summer, Suarez grinned, "July, August, September, October . . ." He has often compared his job to that of a tightrope walker, adding ruefully that "someone is always oiling the rope." The dangers were real enough. There were extremist threats from both left and right, the pull and tug of regional-autonomy demands, a grave economic crisis and the risk that the "Bunker," the old political and economic establishment, might move against the King and the government.