SPANISH PROFESSORS
By Ramén Vé&zquez
Many observers were surprised at the severity of the sentences pronounced August 21 by the Franco regime against the professors prominently involved in the student demonstrations in Spain last spring. Enrique Tierno Galvdn (professor of political law at the University of Salamanca), José Luis Aranguren and Garcfa Calvo (professors of ethics and Latin respectively at the University of Madrid) were expelled for life. Aguilar Navarro and Montero Diaz (professors of international law and ancient history at the University of Madrid) were suspended for two years. All five were interested in “peacefully canalizing" the unrest among the students, as Tierno Galvan stated in an article in the August 25 Le Monde.
It is natural to wonder at the meaning of such measures, To find an answer -« which can only be approximate -- the zigzags of the repressive policy of the Franco regime must be taken into account. The truth is that if a tendency toward softening the repression has undoubtedly been noticeable in recent years, abrupt turns and flagrant contradictions have accompanied the slow and timid (and how!) "liberalization" in this field.
All the Spanish militants are aware of the contradictions in Franco's policy of repression. Examples abound. Typically, in the university sector, students are arrested for distributing leaflets; they are recognized to be members of the Communist party (for example) and nevertheless they are acquitted. This happened in Barcelona last summer, Yet other students accused of the same “crime” are condemned to sentences varying from two to six years in prison and often more,
This...incoherence is ascribed to frictions and struggles within the regime between the "toughs" and the "liberals," whose views triumph in turn. It is certain that differences in views exist within the top circles of the regime, although less on the general line than on the methods to be used and particularly on the rate of applying the line, and hence on whether or not to maintain the policy of the "mano dura" (hard hand) which was the golden rule for more than twenty years. In the case under consideration, the severity and the...incoherence both triumphed. Severity: expulsion for life of three respectable university professors (it should be remembered that to become a professor it is necessary to take a loyalty oath). Incoherence: in con= trast to these sentences, no student has been severely condemned.
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The new readjustment on the ministerial level which took place this summer was likewise a disappointment to some. They hoped for a step forward in the so-called "liberalization" policy, They counted concretely on a separation of powers between the head of the state
and the head of the government. which has been talked about for a long time and which was to constitute a first step toward the progressive effacing of General Franco. Some kind of painless transition.
Nothing like that happened and the present government is, it seems, one of the most homogeneous Spain has had. The position of the Opus Dei is no longer merely important but quite preponderant, The regime appears to be banking everything on its new economic policy -- industrialization, modernization of equipment, more and more complete integration with international capitalism, etc.
There are those who see a flagrant contradiction between this policy of economic expansion (on the scale of Spain) and the preponderance of the Opus Dei within the government. But it is a serious error to take, or feign to take, the Opus Dei for some kind of feudal Mafia, completely incapable of commanding the levers of a modern economy —= or rather the "modernization" of the economy, The truth is that if the men of the Opus Dei are in ministerial seats it is not as representatives of a Catholic sect blindly opposed to any political or social compromise with modern society, but rather as represen-= tatives of the big banks and big capitalist companies, quite directly interested precisely in this neocapitalist policy. In a way they are the key technicians of present-day Spain.
Here is a symptomatic fact: The Honorable Laureano Ldpez Rodo, who was Commissar of the Development Plan, has been made a minister without portfolio in the present government, in charge of supervising all the economic ministries, and, of course, the Plan itself. Don Taureano =~ as he is called -- is a member of the Opus Dei naturally. But more than ten years ago, the Opus Dei, with an acute sense of the interests of big capital in Spain, began preparing its men for the great task of transforming Spain economically. A transformation that will doubtlessly be seasoned with a certain very controlled and excessively moderate "liberalization." It is a question of a transformation initiated from above, in an authoritarian and technological way.
Against disorders and strife, these gentlemen are just as capable of moving with severity as anyone else. However, a new apparent contradiction appeared in the current situation -- the students in the universities of the Opus Dei (there are several in Spain) solidarized with their comrades in their struggle against the Sindicato Espanol Universitario [Spanish Student Union]. But did they not take a position before this in their publications in favor of tradeunion freedom for the workers? This, too, cannot be explained unless one takes into account the present dynamics, the changes that have occurred in the economic field and those in preparation. It cannot be explained unless it is noted that the "unions" -- both those for students as well as for workers -- are still headed by the Falangist bureaucracy which the Opus Dei wishes to sweep aside, inasmuch as today it is only a useless residue for Spanish capitalism,
With regard to the professors expelled for life from the uni-
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versity, it is also necessary to take into account the fact that they publicly and very violently attacked the Opus Dei. A settlement of accounts? It is not excluded.
In any case, it could also be said that the expulsion is a most opportune turn for the political career of a Tierno Galvan, an ultramoderate socialist leader, of an Aguilar Navarro, a "leftist" Christian Democrat leader; likewise =~ although he is less a politi-~ cal figure -~ for a Montero Diaz, who needs to obscure his Falangist past. As for Garcfa Calvo, his is a case apart, since he belongs, it would appear, to no political grouping and he defended the students more courageously than his colleagues, quite simply and quite obstinately because he considered their demands to be just.
Objectively, without entering into an ‘analysis of the personal motives, of the good will or calculations of any of them, the Spanish bourgeoisie requires -- in case of necessity -- several alternative teams to continue its rule and its policy in changing the government. It happens that the immense majority in the new bourgeois opposition who bear the label of "socialist" or Christian Democrat or liberal, were followers of Franco not so long ago. What better way to cause this past to be forgotten, to restore their political virginity, than the one being followed by the regime today? And, in the final analysis, how does the program of this new bourgeois opposition differ essentially from the one being carried out by the Opus Dei? The practical difference can be summed up as follows: The bourgeois opposi-~ tion wants greater freedom of expression and movement...for itself, And, following the example of the "great Western democracies," which it likes to cite, this respectful opposition seeks to replace the party in power without a shake-up, the better to serve the same basic interests,
Having pointed this out, one can nevertheless ask if the government did not blunder in taking these measures against the professors. In fact, a solidarity movement among the students and professors would seem inevitable.
Already, on August 28, José Marfa Valverde, professor of the history of art at the University of Barcelona and a.Catholic poet, announced his decision to resign as a gesture of solidarity. And the students are preparing to resume big demonstrations, taking as a pretext -- pretext is the right word -- the reprisals against the pro-=fessors,.
SPANISH POET