Holding himself stiffly in his sashed and braided blue uniform, Generalissimo Francisco Franco stepped out onto the balcony of the Royal Palace overlooking Madrid's Plaza de Oriente. Instantly, the human sea of 150,000 faithful down below him thrust right arms forward in salute. Then the crowd launched into Face to the Sun, the anthem of the right-wing Falangist shopkeepers and tradesmen who sided with Franco when he began his bloody struggle for power 39 years ago and have been unswerving in their support of him ever since. Franco spoke only three minutes in his thin, barely audible voice, but that was all he needed. Spain was under assault by "a leftist Masonic conspiracy," he said, and was a victim of politicking "by certain corrupt countries." But no one, he declared, should forget that "to be Spanish is to be something in the world. Arriba, España!" Up with Spain!
Genuine Fealty. Only four other times since the end of World War II had Franco felt the need to call for such a massive show of support. His purpose last week was not so much to intimidate the regime's enemies within Spain as to respond defiantly to the paroxysm of anti-Franco rage that swept Western Europe following Madrid's executions of five terrorists convicted of murdering policemen (TIME, Oct. 6). In this he succeeded. Flanked by his wife Carmen and his heir-designate Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, Western Europe's last remaining dictator was plainly moved by the genuine emotional outpouring of fealty.
Yet the frailty of el Caudillo, who has looked all of his 82 years since he suffered a near-fatal illness in mid-1974, was a dramatic reminder of how much more the regime needs to do to relax its often harsh rule and prepare Spain for a smooth transition into a post-Franco era once the Generalissimo dies or, less likely, steps down. At a time when Spain badly needs closer ties with Western Europe to help sustain its rise to prosperity and ease the coming transition, an all but irrational outburst of anti-Spanish emotions in European capitals has left the country more isolated than at any other time since the 1940s.
The demonstrations that first flared up across Europe continued into last week, often turning violent. Mobs besieged embassies and consulates in about a dozen cities. Flames gutted Spain's mission in Lisbon; a bomb exploded in the garden of the embassy in Ankara. In Rome and Milan, angry mobs set fire to Spanish tourist buses, and assaulted shops with Molotov cocktails. Danes smashed the windows of Spain's embassy and trade mission in Copenhagen. Paris was engulfed by the worst outburst of violence since the 1968 stu dent demonstrations as peaceful marches by leftists disintegrated into full-fledged rioting.