Seeking to Appease the Generals

By John Nielsen

"Perhaps the real transition to democracy begins now"

The menace has crystallized in a single, indelible video-tape image replayed again and again on countless TV sets throughout Spain: Guardia Civil Lieut. Colonel Antonio Tejero Molina standing in the Cortes last Feb. 23, holding the Spanish government, and the nation, at gunpoint. Tejero and his fellow military conspirators in the coup attempt were soon arrested, and Spain's young democracy survived its gravest challenge.

But now many Spaniards are beginning to wonder just who won that fateful encounter. Far from being totally discredited after the coup, the country's ultra-conservative armed forces--unchanged and unbending since Francisco Franco's day--seem hardly affected. "Zero percent of the people here believe that the putsch failed," says a moderate politician in Madrid. "Some think it is still going on, and many believe it actually succeeded."

Unquestionably, the aborted coup attempt has transformed Spanish politics. Old issues--institutional reform, regional autonomy--have been swept aside for the time being; the balance of power among the parties has shifted. The government has launched an investigation into the coup conspiracy, but almost no one in Madrid expects major purges to follow. However dubious its loyalties, the army is too powerful to be punished and shunted out of political life. Instead, Spain's wary civilian leaders are seeking to pacify the generals, giving them, in effect, a silent veto in many areas of national policy. "We now have three chambers in the Cortes," laments a prominent Socialist legislator, "the Congress, the Senate and the joint chiefs of the general staff."

Nowhere is the army's continued influence more evident than in the Basque country, where the separatist group ETA is waging a bloody terrorist war. During his 4 1/2 years in office, former Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez resisted military pressure to allow the army into what he and many others viewed as a police problem.

All that changed, however, less than a month after the aborted coup when ETA gunmen killed two army colonels. Suarez's successor, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, felt compelled to grant the army and navy limited, border-patrolling duty in the Basque region--a first step, critics charge, toward a new cycle of violence and repression whose main victim could be democratic government in Spain.

This month the bishops of the Basque cities of Bilbao, San Sebastian and Vitoria said as much in a pastoral letter that warned of the "coercive pressures" of the military on individual liberty. The three prelates condemned ETA's continuing terrorism, but they also cautioned that the military's new role in the Basque country could eventually pose a threat to democracy. "When the armed forces set themselves up as judge over the democratic process and feel tempted to intervene," they wrote, "this constitutes a serious danger rather than a genuine defense of the interests of the people."

The letter embarrassed the government. The Defense Ministry called the statement "spine-chilling and depressing," and Calvo-Sotelo even summoned the papal nuncio, Archbishop Antonio Innocenti, to enlist his aid in silencing the bishops. Innocenti declined. Although the letter accurately reflected widespread fears in Spain, it contradicted the image of calm, steady helmsmanship that Calvo-Sotelo has sought to project since the attempted coup. But the army's brooding presence is undeniable--and, in at least temporarily stifling political debate, it may have lengthened Calvo-Sotelo's lease on office.

That is because the Socialists--once the leading contenders to form the next government--now seem unable to mount effective opposition. Before the coup, the Socialists had hoped to increase their vote substantially in the next elections, expected in 1982, at the expense of the ruling Union of the Democratic Center. They had hoped to woo away the U.C.D.'s fickle liberal wing and form a broad majority coalition. This now seems unlikely, since it would split the U.C.D. and thus endanger the entire party system--a prospect that, in the wake of the coup attempt, chills practically everybody but the military. Part of the problem is Socialist Leader Felipe Gonzalez, who, at 39, is considered too young and untried. "We lost the next general election on the night of Feb. 23," says a senior Socialist strategist. "The middle classes won't vote for Felipe now. They don't think he'll last two months with the military."

Prosecuting the coup leaders will probably change little. Currently, 29 officers are being held on charges of "armed rebellion"; conviction carries a 30-to 40-year sentence. According to leading lawyers in Madrid, however, most will be tried for the lesser crime of disobedience, mainly because they have threatened to drag King Juan Carlos into the proceedings by claiming that he had implied his approval of their attempted coup. The one exception is Tejero, whose actions in the Cortes were recorded by television cameras. Yet he too has managed to pull a triumph of sorts from his debacle: he has become a folk hero to Spanish rightists. Hundreds of people visited him in the military prison at Alcala de Henares, northeast of Madrid, forming long lines to pay their respects. The government finally moved him last week to El Ferrol in the distant northwestern region of Galicia, but the streams of admiring callers continued. Indeed, so popular has Tejero become that he is reportedly thinking of running for parliament, even from jail.

But Tejero's political career, the Socialist setback, even the stifling of political debate, all pale beside the Basque problem. Most analysts expect ETA to provoke the army into bloody repression over the coming months, and they expect the generals to respond in character, probably by demanding some form of martial law. The resulting strains may be too much for the civilian government. "Everyone said we would have a difficult time when Franco died," says a senior official in Madrid, "but we have had a relatively comfortable time so far. Perhaps the real transition to democracy begins now." --By John Nielsen.

Reported by Lawrence Malkin/Madrid

With reporting by Lawrence Malkin/Madrid

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