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Onetime Ambassador to Peru and the Vatican, he has a burning desire to join Spain to the rest of Europe. He works closely with U.S. Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, but his relations with the British are somewhat strained: he is determined to win back Gibraltar, once even wrote a violently anti-British book entitled Spain's Claim.
≫ Manuel Fraga Iribarne, 43, Minister of Information and Tourism. Ambitious, hard-driving Fraga lives in an apartment on the top floor of his ministry, puts in a 14-hour day six days a week.
Half his time is spent traveling around Spain, dedicating new hotels and other wise promoting new tourist lures; the other half is devoted to overseeing the Spanish press, which, until the long-discussed press law takes effect, still takes its orders from the government.
≫ Laureano López Rodó, 45, Planning Minister and development boss. So soft-spoken that he appears almost self-effacing, López Rodó is known as Franco's eminence grise — partly because everything about him, including his hair, suit, socks, tie and personality, seems grey. The appearance is deceiving. Son of a Catalan industrialist, he spent much of the civil war as an under ground Nationalist agent (code number: 711) in Republican Barcelona, went on to become Spain's youngest law professor, at 25, and an international authority on public administration. He is an avid tennis player, is up at 6:45 each morning and in his office at 8. Brilliant and tireless, he has a corps of loyal followers who have come to occupy top positions throughout the Franco government, including the young Minister of Industry Gregorio López Bravo.
Opus Dei. López Rodó and López Bravo are two of the most prominent among the rising lights who share membership in a remarkable and growing religious organization known as Opus Dei.
Founded by a Spanish priest named Josemaría Escrivá in 1928, Sociedad Sacerdotal de la Santa Cruz y del Opus Dei is an "association of Catholic faithful" that seeks to fill a vacuum that Spain's Catholic Church had long neglected: the lack of a means for developing an aggressive, dedicated, militant laity. Escrivá wanted to create, much as Ignatius Loyola had done with his Society of Jesus in the 16th century, spiritual shock troops to rekindle the true spirit of Christianity within the church. But instead of retiring into monasteries, he felt, men with a secular calling as well as a sacred one should be able to follow both at once. The solution: in addition to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, a man would pledge to God all his professional talents.
It made a good mix. Tens of thousands of Spaniards from all walks of life have taken solace from Opus' sessions by reading more about God and the church, by simple communal association, and by studying the things that interest them—whether business administration, bullfighting, coal mining or early English literature. Opus Dei operates a sophisticated commerce school in Barcelona, an