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Around the Table. The government is making much of its bills to grant religious freedom and end censorship. Both, if passed, will be a step in the right direction, but both have been bogged down in ministries and parliamentary committees for more than three years, and there seems to be little hope that they will soon become law. Neither measure is all that radical. The religion bill, pushed by Foreign Minister Fernando Maria Castiella to wipe away the image of religious intolerance that has hurt Spain since the Inquisition, would permit the nation's tiny non-Catholic minority (5,000 Jews and 30,000 Protestants) to build their own houses of worship—which, in practice, they are already doing. The press bill, drawn up by Franco's hard-sell Information Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, would supposedly allow publishers to choose their own editors, end prepublication censorship. But it would still hold editors criminally responsible for anything the regime decided was offensive.
Franco has been too wise to try to stop Spaniards from talking. "Free speech is abundant," says a confirmed Francophobe, "and it is a right we exercise to the fullest." One of Spain's most cherished institutions, in fact, is the tertulia, an informal club of a dozen or so men who gather around the same marble-topped table in the same cafe every week and, over endless cups of cafes solos and glasses of water, tear the regime apart. Such traditional hangouts as Madrid's Café Gijón will have a dozen or more tertulias going at the same time, their participants eagerly trading opinions, rumors and jokes about everything from women to bullfighting, but most often about Franco himself. In one recent cafe joke, Franco asks his seven-year-old grandson what he wants to be when he grows up. "The Caudillo of Spain, just like you, Grandfather," answers the boy. "Don't be ridiculous," huffs Franco. "There's only room for one Caudillo at a time."
Golden Eggs. Every boom brings its dislocation, and Spain's pell-mell rush to industrialize is no exception. The flood of workers to the cities has sharply cut farm production, forcing Spain to import food. Government spending to feed the development plan has brought a new round of inflation at home, and a horrendous $2 billion trade deficit abroad—too much even for tourist dollars to make up for. Many economists fear that Spain is trying to do too much too quickly. "Our economy is the goose that lays the golden egg," warns Ullastres. "If you try to get four golden eggs at once, you're going to make the goose sick. If you try to get more, you'll kill it."
What Spain desperately needs in order to keep its economy expanding is membership in the European Common Market. Twice rejected even for associate membership, Spain is afraid it may be cut off from its biggest and closest trading partner. Italy has already tried to restrict Common Market imports of Spanish oranges, and although the Italians have so far been