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Franco must go, clear the way for restoration of the Spanish monarchy. Monarchist agitation already had gone so far that Franco last June offered the exiled Don Juan, son of the late Alfonso XIII, a half hearted proposition to return, under Franco domination. Don Juan cagily turned the offer down.
Still another British source reported that Franco had received an ultimatum: restore the monarchy within three months, or else. The Army was said to favor the plan as a hedge against loss of jobs and pensions.
Within the Gates. Boiling up at home were:
> The Falange (Phalanx—Spain's official Fascist party, modeled on Fascismo and National Socialism). Its violently pro-German extremists would be the country's Fifth Column if the Nazis pushed in. Franco himself is the Party's titular head.
> Catholic conservatives—who hate and fear the wild men of the Falange.
> Monarchists—a potent force although their top leaders are in exile.
> Traditionalists—also called Carlists, these are fanatical reactionaries who supplied the Requetés, toughest fighters in Franco's ranks during the civil war. Now they violently oppose the political program of the Falange, with which they are technically linked.
Cutting across direct political lines are the Army and the Church. Both are pro-monarchist; in the past the Army has been somewhat anticlerical. The Church is the most powerful traditional influence in Spain. The Army wields immediate physical power and could enforce any decision on which its top generals agreed.
Forgotten Men. Completely suppressed at the moment is at least half of Spain's political potential—the people who voted in the Popular Front Government of 1936, who fought for their Republic, and lost. They are dispersed and disfranchised; thousands of them are imprisoned and some Madrid reports insist that executions are still going on. Politically the group stretches all the way from Basque Catholics to Iberian Anarchists: the regime lumps them together as "reds." All of them hate Franco to death. Many, surprisingly, would play ball with the monarchists, on the theory that with Franco out of the way, it would be possible to send the King packing and restore the Republic.
See Change. Franco's foreign problems are simpler—and tougher. Gone are the winy, intoxicating days of glory directly after the fall of France. Hitler and Mussolini were then Franco's great and fairly good friends. No one could imagine German soldiers entering Spain as anything but welcome guests. (Many of them did, on shopping expeditions to strip food from a half-starved country.)
The Falange had set up its own form of Auslandsdienst to carry the gospel of Hispanidad to the New World and reestablish Spain as the dominant cultural, economic and political influence in Latin America. El Caudillo dreamed of empire. In this exuberant period, there must have been at least a half-dozen occasions when Falange extremists almost carried the day for war, for an imperialist adventure to unify and recreate Spain. But Franco always decided to wait a little longer.