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Not far off, the unfilled dugouts of the civil war house the jobless, the ragged, the hungry, the impoverished. On the great estates landless peasants toil for four pesetas (36¢) a day. The black market thrives and bureaucrats and party men take fat cuts.
The Generalissimo has been lavish in his promises to impoverished Spain, niggardly in his achievements. In his way, he seems to understand the importance of modernizing Spain's anachronistic economy. Recently he proclaimed a vague ten-year plan for "national improvements . . . old injustices and abuses will be ended . . . redemption is at hand." To build up a mass base, he is said to be studying the technique of Argentina's Juan Perón.
Franco's Alternatives. On the face of their appeal to "leading" Spaniards, Washington and London seemed to be hoping (and they might secretly be dickering) for an army coup that would force Franco out, pave the way 1) for an orderly return of republican and monarchist exiles into a broadened caretaker government, and 2) for eventual free elections.
In Lisbon Pretender Don Juan, son of Alfonso XIII, still awaited a summons to Madrid. He was in touch with the Caudillo's brother Nicolás, Spain's ambassador to Portugal. But the Caudillo had blown hot & cold on Don Juan. Falangists gibed at his British naval training, called him "the little British sailor in the service of Communism."
In Paris, the exiled Spanish Republican Government still dreamed of returning as the legitimate heir of Spanish sovereignty. Like Paris and Moscow, it wanted more than the Tripartite manifesto. Cried Premier José Girál: "The only solution lies in the breaking of relations with Franco, and the rebirth of the government which represents republican law."
Girál's Government was consulting with the Communists, led by Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) of Civil War fame. It was in contact with the chief Spanish underground, of unassessable political strength, known as the National Alliance of Democratic Forces. But it considered Rightists like Gil Robles as "renegade republicans." It sneered at the monarchists—"a cabal of old women made up almost entirely of political whores and political virgins." Spanish disunity was as tragically great as ever.
Through this constellation of forces Francisco Franco's star was running its course. As to where it would end, a characteristically Spanish story made a characteristically Spanish comment:
On the quay at El Ferrol, where the Caudillo was born, an old man sings to himself: "Francisco, you are done for. Francisco, you are sunk." The police pounce on him. They discover that the culprit is the Caudillo's aged father, who is sure that his son's power & glory are evanescent and will lead him only to ruin in the end.
Unless the democracies found a way to oust Franco without letting the Communists in, the son might prove wiser than the father.
* He also was billed 5.5 billion lire by Mussolini. He never got around to paying this debt to a creditor going out of business.