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The economic miracle also created a new middle class that began to murmur about the need for social freedoms and political privileges to accompany the economic advances. Franco, determined to maintain firm control over all aspects of Spanish life, would not sanction such reforms and indeed did not understand the need for them. Students demonstrated for educational reforms at universities in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Santiago, Valencia and Seville and doggedly battled police who sought to stop them. Liberal priests and moderate bishops changed the Roman Catholic Church from a staunch supporter of the regime to an independent and often critical force for change. Increasingly rebellious workers defied the government-run syndicates that controlled labor and attempted to set up their own unions. Basque extremists, seeking political, linguistic and cultural freedom for their section of northern Spain, carried on an unremitting campaign of terror that, in addition to the assassination of Carrero Blanco, has included the systematic murder of security police.
The Caudillo spent his last years in public life trying to keep a lid on Spain's seething political cauldron. The nation's conservatives reacted nervously not only to the death of Admiral Carrero Blanco but to events in neighboring Portugal. In the wake of the Lisbon coup, the army, the dreaded militia known as the Guardia Civil and the Cabinet were safely installed in conservative hands.
Franco had no faith that his mercurial people might possibly learn how to govern themselves. Ultimately, the kind of apolitical serenity that he wanted for Spain has proved to be an unattainable ideal. Nonetheless, it is a tribute of sorts to his dictatorial skills that he was able to maintain a façade of peace for so long.