Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
The Prince’s uncle, Don Jaime, endeavoured to derive political advantage from the tragedy. His first reaction had been to send a message of sympathy. However, on 17 April 1956 when the Italian newspaper II Settimo Giorno published an account of the accident which pointed the finger at Juan Carlos, he told his secretary Ramón de Alderete: ‘I am distraught to see the tragedy of Estoril dealt with in this way by a journalist who has been used in good faith, because I refuse to doubt the veracity of my unfortunate nephew’s version, as published by my brother. In this situation, and in my position as head of the Borbón family, I can only deeply disagree with the stance of my brother Juan who, in order to prevent future speculation, has neither demanded the opening of an official enquiry into the accident nor called for an autopsy on the body of my nephew, as is normal in such cases.’ These words were reproduced in the French press, presumably via Alderete and with the permission of Don Jaime.
Given that neither Don Juan nor Juan Carlos responded to Don Jaime’s demand, on 16 January 1957, he took the matter further and gave his secretary the following letter:
‘Reuil-Malmaison 16–1–1957.
Dear Ramón,
Several friends have recently confirmed that it was my nephew Juan Carlos who accidentally killed his brother Alfonso. This confirms something of which I have been certain ever since my brother Juan failed to sue those who had spoken publicly of this terrible situation. It obliges me to ask that you request in my name, when you feel that the time is right, that the appropriate national or international courts undertake a judicial enquiry in order to clarify officially the circumstances of the death of my nephew Alfonso (RIP). I demand that this judicial enquiry take place because it is my duty as Head of the House of Borbón, and because I cannot accept that someone who is incapable of accepting his own responsibilities should aspire to the throne of Spain. With a warm embrace.
Jaime de Borbón.’27
There is no evidence to suggest that Alderete acted on the letter or, if he did, that a court showed an interest in the case. Nevertheless, the combination of insensitivity and ambition demonstrated by Don Jaime was breathtaking.
The Madrid authorities were shaken by the news of the accident. Rumours started to circulate in the capital to the effect that Juan Carlos had been so overcome by grief that he was thinking of renouncing his rights to the throne and joining a friary as penance. In fact, as his father had ordered, Juan Carlos was back in Zaragoza within 48 hours of the accident. Franco’s relative silence on this issue was eloquent. Commenting on the tragedy to one of Don Juan’s supporters, he said with a total lack of sympathy ‘people do not like princes who are out of luck’. It was a recurrent theme. Two years later, he explained why he did not favour press references to Alfonsito: )‘The memory could cast shadows over his brother for the accident and make simple folk dwell on the bad luck of the family when people like their Princes to have lucky stars.’28 Perhaps most cruelly of all, within a year of the accident, Franco had permitted the Ministry of Education to sanction the publication and use in secondary schools of a textbook entitled La moral católica (Catholic Morality) which used the incident to explore the limits of personal culpability.29 Years later, Don Juan himself related that, when they met in 1960, Franco had justified keeping him off the throne by saying that the Borbón family was doomed: ‘Just look at yourself, Your Highness: two haemophiliac brothers; another deaf and dumb; one daughter blind; one son shot dead. Such an accumulation of disasters in a single family is not something that could possibly appeal to the Spanish people.’30
Franco’s lack of sympathy was a reflection of his hostility to Don Juan, of his own lack of humanity and perhaps too of the fact that, in March 1956, he was cooling on the idea of a monarchist succession. The scale of Falangist discontent that had been evident since the meeting at Las Cabezas seems to have led to him mulling over the mutual dependence between Caudillo and single party. This was manifested in the cabinet reshuffle of 16 February 1956. The liberal Christian Democrat Minister of Education, Joaquín Ruiz Giménez, was dropped, a punishment for his failure to control unrest in the universities. He was replaced by a conservative Falangist academic, Jesús Rubio García-Mina. Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, the Secretary-General of the Movimiento, was also removed for his failure to control Falangist indiscipline. He had been engaged in preparations to tighten up the Francoist laws lest any future king try to free himself from the ideals of the Movimiento. He was replaced by the sycophantic Falangist zealot, José Luis de Arrese. Alarmingly, for both Don Juan and for those who were looking forward to the eventual creation of a Francoist monarchy, the Caudillo commissioned Arrese to take over the programme of constitutional preparations for the post-Franco future.31
Arrese took his commission to be the preparation of an entirely Falangist future for the regime – one that would have no room for Don Juan nor even for Juan Carlos. The enthusiasm with which he went about his ambitious task would soon provoke a significant polarization of the Francoist coalition. Franco’s cabinet changes were ill-considered reactions to a deep-rooted split at the heart of his coalition. The Ley de Sucesión had been a cunning way of neutralizing regime monarchists and outmanoeuvring Don Juan. However, the prospect of a future monarchy, even a Francoist one, alienated the Falange. And Franco had few options but to cling to the Falange. If the Falange were weakened, the Caudillo’s fate would lie less in his own hands than in those of the senior Army officers who wanted an earlier rather than a later restoration of the monarchy. The situation required a complex balancing act and Arrese was more human cannonball than tightrope walker. The violent protests of Falangist students in February 1956 had been a symptom of a long death agony rather than of youthful vitality. With his mind elsewhere, occupied by the inexorable rise of Moroccan nationalism, and thus underestimating the seriousness of the crisis, Franco had responded instinctively by reasserting Falangist pre-eminence within his coalition. He was not controlling events but letting himself be driven by them.32
Some months earlier, prominent Falangists had presented Franco with a memorandum demanding the swift implementation of their ‘unfinished revolution’. It was effectively a blueprint for a more totalitarian one-party State structure with no place for the monarchy of Don Juan.33 Franco now seemed to be giving the green light for his new Secretary-General to implement the memorandum’s recommendations. Arrese’s plans were seen by Traditionalists, monarchists and Catholics as a totalitarian scheme which would block even limited pluralism under a restored monarchy.34
With the help of Rafael Calvo Serer, the Conde de Ruiseñada, at the time Don Juan’s representative in Spain, elaborated a scheme to block Arrese’s plans by hastening the restoration of the monarchy. Ruiseñada was equally devoted to both Don Juan and to Franco. For some time, he had been in contact with General Juan Bautista Sánchez, the Captain-General of Barcelona, an austere and eminently decent man who was appalled at what he saw as the corruption of the regime. Now, the so-called ‘Operación Ruiseñada’ envisaged a bloodless, negotiated pronunciamiento, rather like that of General Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923. The lead would be taken by the Barcelona garrison, with the agreement of the other Captains-General, and Franco would be persuaded to withdraw from active politics to the decorative position of ‘regent’. While the restoration of the monarchy was implemented, day-to-day running of the government would be assumed by Bautista Sánchez. The involvement of Bautista Sánchez – the most respected professional in the Armed Forces – helped secure the support of other monarchist generals against Arrese. Don Juan had considerable doubts as to whether this wildly optimistic scheme had any hopes of success but, concerned by Arrese’s plans, agreed to let it go ahead.35
Needless to say, Franco’s intelligence services, which bugged most of Don Juan’s