Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy. Paul Preston
of Don Juan’s advisers, like Ruiseñada, believed that a rapprochement with Franco was the only route to the throne. Ruiseñada himself died in mysterious circumstances in France on 23 April 1958. His death in a sleeper compartment of a stationary train in the railway station of Tours, coming a year after the demise of his fellow conspirator Bautista Sánchez gave rise to suspicions of foul play. However, the death was almost certainly the result of natural causes.76 Other monarchists thought that the growing unpopularity of the regime should incline the Pretender to keep his distance. In fact, their hopes were entirely misplaced. Every time that Franco spoke to his cousin Pacón about Don Juan, it was to lament his liberal connections. He muttered that if Don Juan were to accept the postulates of the Movimiento without reservations, there would be no legal impediment. However, it was clear that Franco had no confidence in Don Juan ever doing so. In early June 1958, he said to Pacón: ‘I’m already 65 and it’s only natural that I should prepare my own succession, since something might happen to me. For this, the only possible princes are Don Juan and Don Juan Carlos who are, in that order, the legal heirs. It’s such a pity about Don Juan’s English education, which is of course so liberal.’ He would reveal his lack of trust in Don Juan even more clearly in mid-March 1959 when telling Pacón that Don Juan, ‘is entirely in the hands of the enemies of the regime who want to wipe out the Crusade and the sweeping victory that we won’.77
In May 1958, while the 20-year-old Juan Carlos was still completing his course as a naval cadet, he sailed as a midshipman in the Spanish Navy’s sailing ship, the Juan Sebastián Elcano. It was to cross the Atlantic, putting in at several US ports. At the same time, Don Juan was engaged in a dangerous adventure. In an effort to put behind him the tragedy of Alfonsito, he had decided to sail the Atlantic in his yacht, the Saltillo, following the route of Christopher Columbus. When he reached Funchal in Madeira, he was awaited by Fernando María Castiella, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Castiella had been sent by Franco to persuade Don Juan to abandon the voyage.78 It is likely that this was motivated less by concerns for Don Juan’s safety than by fears that a successful journey might increase his prestige.
At the time, the Spanish Ambassador to the United States was José María de Areilza, the one-time Falangist who had only very recently become a partisan of Don Juan. As recently as 1955, Areilza had written to Franco protesting at the presence in Spain of Juan Carlos as a ‘Trojan horse’ whose presence delighted ‘all the reds and separatists’.79 Now, newly converted to liberalism, he informed the authorities in Washington of the fact that the Prince was aboard the training ship and alerted the American press. The Embassy was showered with invitations for the Prince in Washington, New York and elsewhere. Serious damage to the storm-battered Saltillo gave Areilza the excuse needed to arrange to have Don Juan picked up by the US coastguard and brought to the Embassy. Once Don Juan was installed there, Areilza was able to incorporate him into the various events arranged for Juan Carlos. The Ambassador requested permission from Franco to receive Don Juan and his son at the Spanish Embassy. However, to the delight of the Americans and the embarrassment of Madrid, Areilza went beyond his instructions and the presence of the two members of the Spanish royal family was converted almost into a State visit. There were much-publicized visits to the Library of Congress, the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery, to West Point and, in New York, to Cardinal Spellman’s residence, to the Metropolitan Opera, and to the offices of the New York Times.80
While Juan Carlos and Don Juan were in the United States, López Rodó was continuing to beaver away at his plan for the post-Franco monarchy. The first fruit of his work as head of Carrero Blanco’s secretariat of the Presidencia was the Ley de Principios del Movimiento (Declaration of the Fundamental Principles of the Movimiento). The text was presented to the Cortes by Franco himself on 17 May 1958. It was clear that López Rodó had worked on the gradual reform to which he had referred in his conversations with Ruiseñada and Don Juan. The twelve principles were an innocuously vague and high-minded statement of the regime’s Catholicism and commitment to social justice, but within them could be discerned the formal decoupling of the regime from Falangism. The seventh principle stated that: ‘The political form of the Spanish State, within the immutable principles of the Movimiento Nacional and the Ley de Sucesión and the other fundamental laws, is the traditional, Catholic, social and representative monarchy.’81 The biggest obstacle to Don Juan, or his son, ever accepting the idea of a monarchy tied to the regime was the Falange. Now it was shifting slightly. Of the Movimiento Nacional understood as being the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS, central to schemes such as that of Arrese, there was nothing in Franco’s speech.
The text made it appear as if Franco was edging towards the idea of a monarchical restoration, and many monarchists eagerly interpreted the speech in those terms. So soon after Arrese’s aborted plans, this constituted a puzzling u-turn that can be explained largely in terms of López Rodó’s influence. Franco had left the drafting of his speech to Carrero Blanco and he in turn had left it to López Rodó. Either because he had not fully digested its implications, or else because they simply did not bother him, he had not discussed the text in cabinet before making the speech. In the Cortes, several ministers had revealed their dismay at its apparent departure from Falangism by ostentatiously failing to applaud. After a lengthy conversation with Franco in the wake of the speech, Pacón reached the conclusion that none of this mattered, since it was clear that Franco had no intention of leaving power before death or incapacity obliged him to do so. Pacón asked him if he excluded Don Juan as a possible successor in such a case. Franco replied: ‘The designation of a King is the task of the Consejo del Reino but I certainly don’t exclude him. If Don Juan accepts the principles of the Movimiento unreservedly, there is no legal reason to exclude him.’ That Pacón had got it right was revealed on 6 June 1958, when Franco made Agustín Muñoz Grandes Chief of the General Staff replacing Juan Vigón. Muñoz Grandes was to ensure that the Caudillo’s wishes would be carried out if he died or were incapacitated. The appointment made it unequivocally clear that Franco had no intention of handing over to any successor before that time.82
The promulgation of the Ley de Principios del Movimiento had taken place while Juan Carlos and his father were in New York. After their visit was over, Don Juan made the hazardous trip back across the Atlantic in the Saltillo. On reaching the Portuguese port of Cascáis on 24 June, several dozen enthusiastic Spanish monarchists were waiting to congratulate him on his remarkable maritime exploits. On the quayside, Franco’s new Ambassador to Portugal, José Ibáñez Martín, was jostled. When a Portuguese journalist asked the name of the man who had replaced Nicolás Franco in the Lisbon Embassy, several voices replied in unison ‘sinvergüenza’ (scoundrel). As Don Juan posed for photographers, the Ambassador tried to insinuate himself into the frame. Ibáñez Martín was seized and dragged to one side by an ardent young monarchist who had to be restrained from throwing him into the water. When Ibáñez Martín protested to Don Juan, he was ignored. At the reception held afterwards, there was booing when someone announced that a delegation of Procuradores from the Cortes planned to ask Don Juan to accept the Ley de Principios del Movimiento. In his speech, Don Juan declared: ‘I won’t return as Franco’s puppet. I will be King of all Spaniards.’ He told the dissident General Heli Rolando de Telia that only prudence prevented him making a full public break with Franco. Full reports on the various incidents soon reached the Caudillo.83
Even without these declarations, the Caudillo now had yet another reason for resenting Don Juan. Franco always claimed that his real vocation was in the Navy. Only ten years earlier, on 12 October 1948, at the monastery of La Rábida where Christopher Columbus kept vigil on the night before setting out from Palos de Moguer on his historic voyage, Franco had awarded himself the title of Gran Almirante de Castilla (Lord High Admiral of Castile). Considering himself