Brother-in-Law's Round

Five months ago the "Nationalists" won the Spanish Civil War. They were as strange a mixture as can be found in a Catalan bouillabaisse: Bourbon Generals and aristocrats, plutocrats, devout and royalist Carlist Requetes, radical Fascist Falangists, Moors, Germans, Italians.

Since then all except the Moors have fought each other like cats in a bag. It was evident that Generalissimo Francisco Franco's attempt to keep the peace between these yowling groups was certain to fail. His ambitious brother-in-law Ramon Serrano Suner, Minister of the Interior, was using his increasing power to build a radical Fascist Spain, an annex to Axis foreign policy. The businessmen, Royalists and officers who wanted neutrality and a return to the good old days got together in another alley and sharpened their claws.

Last month the long-awaited showdown began. General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano whose radio broadcast was a nightly comic turn during the War, made a speech declaring that the Army, which had done the fighting, should also do the ruling--not gun-shy, upstart politicians (like Senor Serrano Suner). The brash General was promptly removed from his command of the South. Also dismissed was Juan Yaguee, pudding-faced idol of the Moroccan corps. If the purge of Army malcontents had been completed it would have meant the expulsion of Rebel heroes like Generals Solchaga, Moscardo and Aranda.

Last week Senor Serrano Suner won another round when Generalissimo Franco shook up the Cabinet and the Falange, now the only legal political organization in Spain. Already Minister of the Interior, Serrano Suner became president of the policy-making Falangist Council and acquired the portfolios of Public Order, Sanitation and Health. His most potent rival within the Falange, anti-Italian, conservative Raimundo Fernandez Cuesta, lost his jobs as Secretary of the Falange and Minister of Agriculture. An even more important scalp was that of Foreign Minister General Count Francisco Gomez Jordana, formerly the strongest Cabinet spokesman of the old Army point of view. The anti-Axis Army, in short, would in future have to confine its remarks to the parade ground, and leave control of Spanish foreign policy to the upstart politicians.

While dealing out posts to his brother-in-law, the Generalissimo did not altogether forget himself. By subordinating the power of the Council of Ministers in cases of emergency he liberalized his power to rule by decree and abolished the office of Vice President. When the purge was over there were only two anti-Serrano Generals in the Cabinet, and they were in non-policy-making positions. Generals Jose Varela and Juan Yaguee were made Ministers of War and Air, where El Caudillo can keep an eye on them.

Senor Serrano had won a great victory. But with the politically minded Army excluded from power, food scarce, millions of unreconstructed Republicans, and recovery lagging, observers last week wondered how long his minority of a minority could force individualist Spain into a strait-jacket rule.

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