Guardian diario
15 June 1977
By Peter Hillmore
After much excitement, violence and debate, Spain goes to the polls today. But it is not as simple as that sentence suggests. Among the legacies that come when you don’t have democratic elections in a country for 41 years is a chaotic and hastily organised system of casting the vote. It is a system for democracy created by royal decree, based on a very modified system of proportional representation.
The voting cards have been sent to the 23 million people on the electoral roll, not by the local town hall but by the individual parties. When you consider just how many parties there are and how many candidates are standing (over 6,000 for the whole country), it is no wonder that the dulce de crema has hit the fan as far as the postal authorities are concerned. The rightwing parties have thoughtfully even gone as far as to fill in the forms for its voters, to make things easier.
Editorial: Spain strides the road to freedom
17 June 1977
Calmly but in their millions, the Spaniards have rejected the fascist past without embracing the opposite extreme. With their first step into a democratic future they chose to be governed – not just immediately but apparently for a long time to come – by one of two moderate parties, Mr Suárez’s Democratic Union of the Centre or Mr González’s Socialist Workers’ Party. What was still unsure late last night was how close Mr Suárez would come to an absolute majority. What was certain was that his party and Mr González’s would dominate the new lower chamber of the Cortes, that Franco’s heirs led by Manuel Fraga have dwindled to a tiny band of nostalgics, that the recently legalised Communist party has done about as well as (and no better than) had been expected, and that the real extremists are now virtually invisible. Spain has buried her past under a mountain of voting slips. No other democracy can now forebear to cheer.
The great gain is the emergence of two large parties, each of which must represent a wide cross-section of the population. Unlike the Portuguese, the Spaniards have succeeded at the first attempt in laying the foundations for the most effective sort of consensus politics in which two big groupings, each capable of governing, can vie with one another for office. Whatever the outcome of cabinet-making to come, there now exists in Spain the enduring possibility of the democratic alternation of governments. This is a healthy state not given to all democracies, and the Spaniards have achieved it without a false start.
The new government, which Mr Suárez will almost certainly lead, will not have an easy time. No government which is responsible to an elected parliament ought to have an easy time in any case. But now that the elections are over, Spaniards will have to take stock of those other realities of life which are less heady than the simple democratic experience. There are the claims of the Basques and the Catalans to regional autonomy – claims which Franco suppressed as soon as he could and which have strong roots in history. There is the economic situation which, if Spain is to join the EEC – now or presently – appears to be precarious.
Modern Spain is an industrial country, but an infirm one. A high proportion of Spanish industry is run by multinationals who have so far seldom had it so good in any other country. There is a comparatively low level of wages; there has been a large measure of freedom from trade union pressure and from government controls, protected home market, and the certainty that Franco (and his police) would usually be on the company’s side. Most of these advantages may change now that Spain is democratic and especially if Spain joins the EEC. Nor can Spain necessarily count on an increased, CAP-inflated income from exporting food. The French seem determined to change the CAP so as to avoid being priced out of their own market in a Community enlarged by the admission of Greece and Spain.
But the great experience of Wednesday should hearten all Spaniards. They have regained the freedom for which many of their fathers died, and they have done it peaceably – thanks partly to their own patience and intelligence, partly to Mr Suárez’s skill in his difficult position as an interim prime minister, and partly to the king’s good sense. In less than two years, the Spaniards have won their freedom back without violence, without taking vengeance on their former oppressors, and without following false gods.
