THE NATIONS: Embarrassing Fact

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But for the final plunge, he pleaded, Spain was too poor and unprepared. Germany must first send more wheat to feed the hungry Spaniards and guns to reduce Gibraltar. When the Axis crashed, he cleared from his desk in El Prado the autographed portraits of Hitler and Mussolini. He orated: "Falangism is not fascism . . . [but] a special mode of life. . . ."

Now that the Nazi and Fascist pillars of Franco's regime have crumbled, what sustains him?

One prop is the army, abetted by five kinds of security police. Traditionally conservative and monarchist, the army has been preened and pampered by the Generalissimo. Seven hundred thousand strong, it is the biggest in continental western Europe. With officers who have impatiently pressed for a monarchical restoration, the Generalissimo has played a cagey game. He, too, is pledged to bring back a king. But by judicious transfers of outstanding monarchists like General Alfredo Kindelan (first to the Canaries, then to house confinement in Madrid) and on his record in keeping the army out of World War II's losing camp, he has thus far persuaded the generals to let him decide the time for a restoration. Meanwhile, he enjoys the old Bourbon palaces, hunts and fishes in the old Bourbon parks. When his wife entertains at tea, a butler in white gloves serves Señora Franco first, then doffs the gloves to pour for the guests.

Spain's totalitarian party, the Falange, of which Franco is Caudillo (leader), is another prop. After seven years, it has a strong influence over Spanish youth and a stranglehold on the nation's totally regimented, venally exploited economy. The Falange's mass base is weak (5% to 10% of the population), but most big landowners and businessmen, who live in dread of a mass uprising, give it their allegiance.

The Church has no love for the Falange, its rival in education and ideology. It still goes along with Franco but would prefer Gil Robles, an anti-Franco exile in Lisbon, or some other conservative, if a change could be achieved without bloodshed. Two weeks ago Enrique Cardinal Pla y Deniel, who, as bishop of Salamanca, had helped Franco mightily during the civil war, explained his present position toward the Spanish regime. "During Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, I proclaimed that the Church is above politics. I repeated it during the Republic. I said it again for the first time in many years in my Pastoral last May." Asked to enlarge on this statement, Pla y Deniel merely shrugged and laughed.

But, at the moment, the Generalissimo's greatest strength lies in the apathy of Spain's people. Overwhelmingly they despise the Generalissimo and his regime. Overwhelmingly they prefer it to another civil war.

Franco's Weakness. The Generalissimo's greatest weakness is the state of his nation. Under his totalitarian order, Spain's old and decadent worlds of wealth and want are spinning ever farther apart. Life in Madrid is a pattern in extremes. The capital has Europe's most elegant and epicurean restaurants; among the best is the one operated by the famed German restaurateur Otto Horcher, who used to serve Nazi bigwigs in Berlin, Vienna and Paris. Store windows on the Gran Via display nylons, furs, silks, satins, perfumes.