The Game Goes On

Rarely did any baby ever have such a baptism. The sacramental salt for the ceremony came from Andalusia--a symbol, said the baby's father, of that region's graciousness and warmth. The water was flown in from the River Jordan. The minister was the Archbishop of Madrid, and the guests included members of three royal families (Greece, Bulgaria and Spain), two Spanish Cabinet ministers and Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Thus last week, in the 20-room Zarzuela Palace on the outskirts of Madrid, Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso y Todos los Santos de Borbon, who might by the 21st century sit on the Spanish throne, was freed from the bonds of original sin.

The baptism turned out to be quite a bash--and with good reason. Felipe is the first son of Prince Juan Carlos and Princess Sophie (whose brother is the exiled King Constantine of Greece) and the first heir to the throne to be born in Spain since the monarchy fell in 1931. For the Borbons--the Spanish branch of the Bourbons--it was a heady occasion indeed. The baby's great-grandmother, 80-year-old Dowager Queen Victoria Eugenia, ended 37 years of exile (most of it self-imposed) to fly in from Nice for the baptism. His grandfather, Don Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, 54, the pretender to the throne, interrupted a Caribbean cruise to be on hand. Also present was Sophie's mother, Queen Frederika of Greece. But the one that Spain was watching the closest of all was its own Caudillo Franco, who is now 75.

Predictions from Trivia. Spaniards have turned Franco's long refusal to name his successor into a national guessing game. Its object is to predict--by attributing great significance to acts of meaningless trivia--when, if ever, Franco will restore the monarchy, and to whom, if anyone, he will give the crown. Franco plays the game, too, by scattering contradictory clues, and last week he was playing it with obvious relish. He allowed Spain's monarchists to organize a mass rally to greet Queen Victoria Eugenia at the airport, but restricted TV coverage to a 17-second film strip. He himself declined to meet the plane but sent his Air Force Minister. When he showed up for the baptism, he agreed to observe royal protocol by allowing Pretender Don Juan to wait for him inside (instead of outside) the palace. How about that?

Nothing, of course, that Franco did or did not do last week shed any real light on the succession. Don Juan, as son of the late King Alfonso XIII, is still the official pretender and conducts himself like a man who expects to be king. He receives advice from a shadow cabinet of royal councilors, holds audiences in his villa at the Portuguese resort town of Estoril and is attended at all times by a grandee of Spain. Last week the monarchist crowds in Madrid even dared chant a forbidden cry: "Long live King Juan!"

Olympic Prince. Franco, on the other hand, seems to favor Juan Carlos, who is now 30, lives in Madrid and is much more tractable than his father. At Franco's behest, the handsome Prince has been getting a full course in the government of Spain. He holds commissions from all three Spanish military academies and is now making the rounds of all Cabinet ministries, learning the ropes in long sessions with each minister. Juan Carlos also sees Franco from time to time, and the Spanish press is sometimes allowed to portray him as a popular hero. An avid sportsman, the Prince expects to be a member of Spain's Olympic sailing team at the helm of his own Dragon class boat.

Despite the official favoritism, Juan Carlos does not expect to be Spain's next king. His father, he insists, is the rightful king, and he will never take his place as long as Don Juan is alive. And then, of course, there is the matter of whether anyone will be king. There is nothing in Spain's supposedly monarchial constitution to prevent Franco--or the administrators of the government he leaves behind--from naming a permanent regent instead of a king.

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