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(#litres_trial_promo) The wedding itself was on a level of extravagance that would have taxed any European royal family. Guards of honour, military bands, and hundreds of guests including all members of the cabinet, the diplomatic corps and a glittering array of aristocrats, took part in a full-scale State occasion.
The Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, the Chinese revolution and outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 had increased Franco’s value in the eyes of the Western powers. On the other hand, the regime had suffered considerable domestic erosion as a result of the recent massive strikes in Barcelona and the Basque Country in March and April. Feeling that the scale of domestic opposition might have made Franco open to negotiation, on 10 July 1951, Don Juan wrote him a letter that would have enormous repercussions both for himself and his son. In it, he managed to squander years of sacrifice and opposition to the regime yet gain nothing in return. Franco was outraged by Don Juan’s comments about the ‘attrition’ inflicted on the regime by the strikes. Having blamed the strikes on foreign agitators, the Caudillo was even more annoyed by Don Juan’s suggestion that they were the consequence of the economic situation and government corruption. Franco had no interest whatsoever in Don Juan’s offer of a negotiated transition as a route that would allow him to consolidate his work within the stability of a monarchy that could unite all Spaniards. Don Juan’s letter achieved the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, it merely stimulated the venom of Franco, because it criticized his regime and insisted on the need for national reconciliation – an idea that was anathema to the Caudillo. On the other, Don Juan was abandoning his past championship of a democratic monarchy and accepting the Movimiento. Despite the unctuous intervention of Danvila, Franco rudely delayed replying for two months. His long letter on 14 September 1951 was both disdainful and cruel.
Franco simply ignored the offer of negotiation within the Movimiento, expressing in the most patronizing terms his outrage that Don Juan had dared to criticize him. The scale of insult was breathtaking. Accusing Don Juan of ‘ignorance of the Spanish situation’, and dismissing his comments on the economy as ‘inane’, the Caudillo brushed aside his criticisms of the conditions in Spain with self-satisfied references to the ‘indisputable triumph of Spain’s policy in the international media’. He claimed that he had selflessly committed Spain to the idea of monarchy, but built in safeguards against the dangers of hereditary monarchy throwing up an incapable heir: ‘Precisely because I consider the monarchical institution to be tied to our history and the best way to secure the revival and the greatness of our Fatherland, even though I was under no obligation to do so, I set the nation down that road and I recommended that Spain be constituted as a monarchy in the great plebiscite in which the nation unanimously endorsed the fundamental laws of the Fatherland. However, in so doing, I needed to guarantee the Spanish nation that the possible deficiencies of individuals would never bring about crises in our institutions as happened twice in the past’ – references to the collapse of the monarchy on 11 February 1873 and 14 April 1931.
Having claimed that the Ley de Sucesión elevated the institution of monarchy above the defects of the hereditary principle (that is to say, by leaving the choice of king in his hands), Franco went on, rather bizarrely, to suggest that there was no support for the monarchy in Spain and claimed that the only reason there was any hope for a monarchical future was because the Spanish people had listened, as he put it, to ‘the authoritative voice of he who gloriously led them in the Crusade and dexterously steered Spain through the stormy seas of the universal revolution in which we live’. Don Juan had referred to his efforts to join the Nationalist forces during the Civil War. Franco loftily scorned the idea that this constituted ‘identification with the Movimiento’. His outrage was evident in the statement that: ‘You are mistaken in thinking that the regime needs to seek a way out since it actually represents the stable way out of centuries of decadence. What other regime could have survived the harsh test of two wars and the international plot to which Spain was subjected?’
Regarding Don Juan’s allusion to ‘the historic laws of succession’, Franco rejected the hereditary principle, stating that the Ley de Sucesión made no a priori assumptions about ‘the dynasty or line with the best rights’. He went on to inform Don Juan of his hope that, ‘when the time comes, if it were in the interests of our Fatherland or even of the monarchy itself, you would follow the patriot path of renunciation, of which your august father gave an example when he abdicated his rights in favour of Your Highness, just as the King of Belgium has done recently or as the King of England did’. He raised this matter because, ‘a large number of Spanish monarchists, in the light of how your public acts are repelling great swathes of the country and undermining your good name, recognizing that the monarchy can come back only through the will of the Movimiento, begin to see in your renunciation in favour of your son a way, when the right time comes, of helping me perhaps to declare in favour of your dynasty, of your branch, when the dynastic problem is finally resolved.’ Thus, after this devastating bombshell – that even if Don Juan were to abdicate, there would be no guarantees for Juan Carlos – he made it quite clear that his concern was simply the continuity of the regime after his death. That being the case, the Lausanne Manifesto and subsequent evidence of Don Juan’s democratic proclivities had eliminated him as a possible successor.
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Utterly mortified by this letter, Don Juan cut off all communication with Franco for the next three years. During this time, the Caudillo decided on a strategy of encouraging the emergence of rivals to Juan Carlos and his father. This was to intensify the pressure on Don Juan, generally muddy the waters and diminish Falangist fears of an eventual Borbón restoration. In October 1952, through his Ambassador in Paris, the Conde de Casa Rojas, Franco approached Don Jaime, who, three years earlier, had reneged on his 1933 decision to renounce his rights to the throne. Franco had no difficulty in persuading the still impecunious Don Jaime that his son and heir, Alfonso de Borbón y Dampierre, should be educated in Spain, under the regime’s supervision. Don Jaime was enticed by the prospect of permanent freedom from debt through regular financial support from the regime as well as by the possibility of re-establishing his own, or at least his son’s, claim to the throne. Initially, Alfonso had no inclination to do what his father wished. His mother, Emmanuela Dampierre, had been estranged from his father long before they formally separated in 1946. Alfonso and his brother Gonzalo had been brought up by their mother, which effectively meant a life in boarding schools. Alfonso in particular resented his father. Nevertheless, he was even more deeply resentful at his penniless position, and in 1954 the now 18-year-old Don Alfonso finally accepted the plan and enrolled for a law degree at the Jesuit University of Deusto, in Bilbao.
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Meanwhile, Juan Carlos continued his education at Miramar. He was often homesick and looked forward to his holidays at Estoril. He admitted later to biting his nails as a result of his anxieties. Nevertheless, his four years at Miramar seem to have been reasonably contented ones. Originally, it was assumed that he would share a room with his brother but, because of the natural sibling rivalries between a 12-year-old and his younger brother, they ended up being separated, and Jaime Carvajal moved in with Juan Carlos. The routine at Miramar was harsh. The children had little time to themselves. They were woken each day at 7.30 a.m. with the ringing of a bell and required to go straight into the garden in order to hoist the flag. This was followed by mass and a sermon from Miramar’s chaplain. Only then would the boys have breakfast and begin their morning classes. At the end of the morning, there was a short break before lunch. Lessons resumed at 4 p.m., until another brief break in the evening, followed by supper and study time. Discipline was strict. On one occasion, when he had been given lines for some infraction, he said to the maths teacher, Carlos Santamaría, ‘When I’m King, I’m going to get so-and-so’ (a reference to the teacher who had punished him). ‘Not you. I’ll make you Chancellor of the Exchequer.’ The Prince had no doubts that one day he would succeed his father on the throne.
Aurora Gómez Delgado remembered Juan Carlos as an affable extrovert, who had his ups and downs like any ordinary boy, but who adapted easily to Miramar and was definitely not a ‘difficult child’. When Juan Carlos was free from other obligations, he indulged his passion for photography or played chess. He enjoyed playing football and got into quarrels like other boys, but he was also very conscious of his status: ‘He knew perfectly well that he was there in order to learn his profession.’ In fact, Juan Carlos was, according to his French teacher, capable of showing an unusual degree of self-restraint when necessary, never allowing himself to cry in public. Juan Carlos also manifested a keen desire to talk to people of all walks of life, a taste that he was able to indulge during the weekend outings. None of the children at Miramar had much pocket money, and Juan Carlos was no exception. On occasions, the young Prince would write letters taking advantage of both the horizontal and the vertical space, so as to save paper.
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In a 1995 interview, Juan Carlos’s mother suggested that Juan Carlos and his brother Alfonsito had always got on well. However, it is noteworthy that neither Juan Carlos himself nor those, like his French teacher, who recorded their memories of Miramar, had anything to say about the relationship during their time together there.
(#litres_trial_promo) Aurora Gómez Delgado was however very aware of the deep attachment that Juan Carlos felt towards his mother. She telephoned him often from Estoril. When he was told that she was on the line, he would run down the corridor shouting, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Of Juan Carlos’s relationship with his father at this time, the French teacher hinted at its stiff formality when she said only that, ‘In addition to giving him fatherly advice, he behaved towards him as a friend.’ There seems to have been a regular correspondence with his parents throughout his stay. The tone was loving if rather formal. Curiously those from Don Juan were somewhat more affectionate, ending, typically, ‘Until the next, my beloved sons, with a big hug from your loving father,’ or, ‘With greetings to your teachers and classmates, and a hug for Alfonsito, and another for you with the love and affection of your father Juan.’ Those from his mother were slightly more stilted – ‘Goodbye, beloved children, hoping to see you soon, if God wills. A big hug from your Mummy who blesses you both. María.’
(#litres_trial_promo) All things considered, Juan Carlos’s four years at Miramar were relatively happy ones marred only by separation from his family and by attacks on his father in the press.
Franco had always given vent to his antipathy towards Don Juan through his total control of the Spanish press. Arriba and other Movimiento newspapers were free to make regular insinuations that the monarchists were disloyal to the regime. In January 1954, the hostility reached new heights. In December 1953, Don Juan’s close friend and second cousin, Lord Mountbatten, at the time Admiral of the NATO Mediterranean fleet, had invited him to observe from the flagship major manoeuvres planned for January 1954. As an honorary Royal Navy officer, Don Juan was keen to accept. On the other hand, with tension growing between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar, he feared that the Movimiento press would distort the reasons for his presence and link anti-monarchist with anti-British propaganda. In the event, on the advice of Gil Robles, who reminded him that this was a NATO operation, he decided to attend. As had been expected, a hostile press campaign was unleashed in which the NATO dimension was totally ignored. The manoeuvres were presented as a threatening gesture by British naval forces and it was implied that Don Juan was selling out to London over Gibraltar. ‘Don Juan de Borbón in the Royal Navy. The French press reveals that Don Juan de Borbón has arrived in Malta where he has boarded the twelve-thousand-ton cruiser HMS Glasgow, from which he will follow the English manoeuvres in the Mediterranean. Don Juan de Borbón has been an honorary lieutenant in the Royal Navy since 1936.’ This ‘news item’ was accompanied by an editorial which described the manoeuvres as an outrageous provocation intended to remind the people of Spain that: ‘Gibraltar is the thorn that has kept blood flowing since the iniquitous theft of 1704.’ The pupils at Miramar followed the entire affair in the press. Juan Carlos was inevitably distressed and, for a time, it appeared as if the school might have to be closed down.
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By the summer of 1954, Juan Carlos had completed his secondary education. Shortly afterwards, Don Juan received two assessments of the boy’s character. The first was sent by Jesús Pabón y Suárez de Urbina, the distinguished monarchist historian who had chaired the board (tribunal) before which the Prince faced his oral examinations. The second came from the Conde de Fontanar, a close friend of Don Juan and a man free of personal political ambition. As father of Jaime Carvajal, the Prince’s room-mate at Miramar, and having frequently welcomed the Prince as a guest in his home, he knew Juan Carlos well. The contrasts between these reports were illuminating. Pabón wrote: ‘The impression that Juan Carlos produces and leaves behind him is of being, fundamentally, kind.’ Fontanar went into more detail, describing the Prince as: ‘generous, affectionate, biddable, kindly, unassuming, incapable of bearing a grudge, likeable, courageous, good-looking and with an aptitude for physical exercises’. Fontanar also underlined the fact that the Prince ‘treats ordinary folk with simple affability’. Pabón noted Juan Carlos’s ‘genuine lack of pretence’.
Having seen Juan Carlos only in this formal setting, as a teacher examining him, Pabón naturally noted his nervousness and insecurity, and photographs of the boy from this period substantiate the professor’s conclusions. Pabón wrote: ‘The Prince is naturally shy and, like all shy people, he over-compensates for his shyness by reacting with a certain vehemence and even violence in his expressions, his gestures or his words.’ Pabón saw the Prince’s younger brother Alfonsito as being altogether more uninhibited and spontaneous, partly because of his great natural intelligence and also because he did not live weighed down by responsibilities. For Pabón, the cure for Juan Carlos lay in the acquisition of greater self-confidence. That, of course, was something in which his father could play a part, but Don Juan had a tendency to be critical and off-hand with his son.
For Fontanar, the problems with the Prince lay elsewhere. He had had far greater opportunity to observe the boy in his own home alongside his own son Jaime, who was academically outstanding. Like other observers of the schoolboy in Fribourg and at Las Jarillas, Fontanar perceived a degree of indiscipline – which may well have reflected a natural strength of character or a minor rebellion against the constant separations from his family. Contrary to the pious reflections of his teachers (made when Juan Carlos was King), Fontanar noted that the Prince had no interest in culture and read little, not even the press. At times, he complained, the boy seemed thoughtless, selfish and superficial. Accordingly, for Fontanar, what was required was to imbue him with a greater sense of duty.
(#litres_trial_promo) Time and the boy’s circumstances would take care of that.
The completion of the Prince’s secondary education raised the question of where he would be sent next, since both Don Juan and Franco saw the decision as a weapon in their ongoing trial of strength. Already in the spring, Don Juan had discussed with Gil Robles the possibility of sending Juan Carlos to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Convinced that he had to differentiate the line of the monarchy from that of the Franco regime, Don Juan sent Gil Robles to Louvain in May to prepare the way.
(#litres_trial_promo) Nevertheless, as Pedro Sainz Rodríguez pointed out, and Don Juan knew only too well, if acceptable terms could be negotiated, it made more sense for the Prince to be educated in Spain. Sainz Rodríguez advised Don Juan that Franco needed the Prince in Spain and could be manoeuvred into paying a price – a publicly acknowledged interview that would strengthen the image of the crown inside Spain. Thus advised, Don Juan threw down the gauntlet in a note sent to Franco on 16 June 1954. In it, he informed the Caudillo of his decision to send his son to Louvain. Juan Carlos later told his authorized biographer, the monarchist playboy José Luis de Vilallonga, that Don Juan was also toying with the idea of sending him to the University of Bologna.
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Coincidentally, when Don Juan’s letter reached him, Franco was already engaged in composing a memorandum in which he outlined an elaborate scheme for the Prince’s future education. Through the pompous language and cynical remarks could be discerned elements of common ground. Ignoring the fact that he was secretly encouraging the claim to the throne of Don Jaime and his son, Franco wrote that Juan Carlos: ‘must prepare himself to be able, when the time comes, to deal with the duties and responsibilities involved in the leadership of a nation’. He claimed to be offering Don Juan a recipe for success based on ‘thoughtful reflection on the conditions in which a Prince should be educated and the baggage of knowledge that is required today by the ruler of a nation if he is to awaken the respect, the trust and the love of the people that must sustain him’. His letter left no doubt that, if Juan Carlos were not educated in Spain and within the ambience of the Movimiento, he would never be allowed to ascend the throne. Moreover, various cruel asides about those who would probably never reign and about the ‘shipwreck of the monarchy’ made it clear that Don Juan did not figure in Franco’s plans.
The Caudillo’s scheme for the Prince’s education was expressed in his inimitably grandiloquent and florid style. First, his philosophic and moral education would be assured by ensuring that he had at his side ‘a pious, prudent person devoid of ambition’. Then, the Caudillo announced that for discipline and the moulding of his character, there could be ‘nothing more patriotic, pedagogic and exemplary than his formation as a soldier in a military establishment’. This would mean a two-year period at the Zaragoza military academy, followed by shorter six-month periods in the Air Force and Navy academies. Then there would be two years at university studying politics and economics followed by three months each at the Schools of Agronomy, Industrial Engineering and Mining. This lengthy programme was to be adorned by regular contact with the Caudillo himself. Interestingly, he stated that: ‘I consider it important that the people get used to seeing the Prince next to the Caudillo.’ The letter was followed by a detailed – and revealing – summary of those aspects of the curriculum that Franco considered crucial. Needless to say, there was considerable stress on Franco’s own interpretation of Spanish history and on the principles of the Movimiento.
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Don Juan’s letter of 16 June arrived before this lengthy missive was sent and Franco therefore added a substantial postscript. Hurried and repetitive, its hectoring and threatening tone suggested that Don Juan’s dart had hit its target. The constantly reiterated themes were that sending Juan Carlos abroad was not ‘convenient’ – presumably for Franco – and would cause a bad effect (for Don Juan). It was increasingly obvious in Franco’s communications with Don Juan that, in the Caudillo’s mind, what was at stake was not whether Don Juan should come to the throne but only whether Juan Carlos might do so. The unmistakable threat was directed against Juan Carlos. By implication, Don Juan had no future: ‘You don’t seem to appreciate the national mood and the damage that will be done to the political future of the Prince if he is removed from being educated within the thinking of the Movimiento.’
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While this correspondence was wending its way between Portugal and Spain, Juan Carlos and his brother Alfonso had gone to Madrid for the end-of-year examinations which led to Pabón’s report. With the permission of Don Juan, they made a courtesy visit to El Pardo on 22 June to thank Franco for facilitating their time in Spain. The Caudillo ordered that the occasion be given massive publicity in the press. According to a French journalist, at the next cabinet meeting, Franco announced that: ‘The two most important events in the history of Spain since 1939 are the signature of the agreements with the United States and the visit that the Infantes made me on 22 June.’ He went on to comment that, ‘One day Juan Carlos will be called upon to assume high responsibilities in the life of Spain.’
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Although urged by Gil Robles to send his son to Louvain, Don Juan was reluctant to see him educated outside Spain. However, he needed a bargaining chip in order to ensure that, if it was to be in Spain, it would be more on his terms than those of the Caudillo. Despite the outrageous way in which it simply brushed aside Don Juan’s rights as father of Juan Carlos, much of what Franco suggested made good sense for the education of a future King of Spain. The danger was, as Sainz Rodríguez pointed out, that, ‘the Prince will be definitively distanced from Your Majesty and will end up having a Franco-Falangist education.’ However, the emphasis on the principles of the Movimiento aside, much of Franco’s plan accorded with what Don Juan had in mind. In any case, as Pabón commented, ‘to fight the bull, you have to stay in Spain.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Nevertheless, Don Juan took his time replying, letting it be known that Franco’s proposals were being submitted to the members of his Privy Council – a body containing several individuals whom Franco loathed. Most of those consulted realized that Franco’s plan for the Prince signified the end of Don Juan’s hopes of ever gaining the throne. Some, including Gil Robles and General Antonio Aranda, voted in favour of rejecting Franco’s proposal, but the majority were in favour. This process was completed by the end of July. However, Don Juan waited until 23 September 1954 before responding to Franco. He used the excuse that he had been on a cruise of the Greek Islands organized by Queen Frederica of Greece. As a publicity stunt to foster tourism in Greece, she had arranged to bring together the younger generation of several European royal families. Don Juan’s letter was sent from Tangier where Juan Carlos had just had an emergency appendectomy.
It was during the cruise, while on board a Greek destroyer, that Juan Carlos met his future wife, Sofia, the daughter of King Paul and Queen Frederica. Nothing came of this first meeting. Years later, Juan Carlos would relate how, the first time they met, the 15-year-old Sofia told him that she was learning judo. On hearing this, Juan Carlos said jokingly, ‘That won’t be much use to you, will it?’ at which point she replied, ‘Is that what you think? Give me your hand,’ and proceeded to throw him to the floor.
(#litres_trial_promo) While sailing back from the cruise, Juan Carlos began to complain of stomach pains, which turned out to be appendicitis. Without his mother’s prompt reaction, he might have suffered a possibly fatal peritonitis. Whilst the crew insisted on keeping the Prince warm, Doña María de las Mercedes, who had been trained as a nurse, remembered that, in the case of appendicitis, the affected area had to be kept cold with ice cubes. Don Juan’s yacht, the Saltillo, put in at Tangier, where Juan Carlos was operated on at the Red Cross hospital by Alfonso de la Peña, a renowned Spanish surgeon who, luckily, happened to be in the town when they arrived.
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In the letter to Franco written in Tangier, Don Juan referred to himself ‘as a father conscious of his duty’. This was a clear indication of his annoyance at Franco’s attempt to usurp his role. His pique was evident too in the way that he deliberately ‘misunderstood’ Franco’s scheme. With a dig at Franco’s status, he expressed his satisfaction that: ‘The view of Your Excellency, who is currently responsible for the government of Spain, agrees, essentially, with my own that it is entirely fitting that Don Juan Carlos receive a Spanish, religious and military education.’ By deliberately sidestepping any reference to the Prince’s education within the principles of the Movimiento, Don Juan was provoking the Caudillo. Franco pointedly delayed more than two months before replying. It seems never to have occurred to him that he would not be able to bend Don Juan to his will. On 2 October, he confidently told his cousin Pacón, head of his military household, ‘Don Juan Carlos will be prepared for entry into the Zaragoza academy; and even though he won’t have to undergo examinations, he should have some idea in mathematics, so as to be able to carry out his studies there on a reasonable basis.’
(#litres_trial_promo) In the event, the young Prince would not get off so lightly.
The delay in resolving Juan Carlos’s immediate future hardly mattered since, in the wake of his operation, he was in no fit state to be sent anywhere and spent the winter of 1954 convalescing in Estoril. Nevertheless, Gil Robles was appalled to learn that, while awaiting the reply to his letter of 23 September, Don Juan had permitted negotiations with the Caudillo to continue through the mediation of the Conde de los Andes, the recently appointed head of Don Juan’s household. However, these talks would take place in the shadow of other events, and unexpectedly their eventual fruit would be the Caudillo’s agreement to a private meeting with Don Juan to discuss the details of the Prince’s education in Spain.
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Behind his apparent confidence, Franco still had concerns about monarchist opposition. Already, in February 1954, he had received a visit from several generals, including the influential Captain-General of Barcelona, Juan Bautista Sánchez. To his outrage, the generals touched on the forbidden subject of his eventual death and politely asked if he had made arrangements for the monarchist succession thereafter.
(#litres_trial_promo) Then, while still contemplating Don Juan’s letter of 23 September, Franco was alarmed to be informed that the coming out of Don Juan’s eldest daughter, the Infanta María Pilar, had given rise to 15,000 applications for passports from Spanish monarchists who wished to travel to Portugal to pay homage to the royal family. Franco’s oft-repeated claims that there were no monarchists in Spain were severely dented. Twelve thousand applications were refused but 3,000 monarchists made the journey to Estoril for the celebrations held on 14 and 15 October. Along with the cars of aristocrats and senior Army officers there were also charabancs packed with significant numbers of the more modest middle classes.
The Caudillo’s brother Nicolás, the Spanish Ambassador to Portugal, was present at the spectacular ball given at the Hotel do Parque in Estoril, at which the great Amalia Rodrigues sang traditional Portuguese fados. He reported back to El Pardo about the warmth and spontaneous enthusiasm that had greeted the words of Don Juan when he spoke of his hope of seeing a Spain in which all were equal before the law and referred to ‘the Catholic monarchy which is above any transitory circumstances’. Nicolás probably did not mention that he had clapped furiously when Don Juan took to the dance floor with his daughter or that his wife, Isabel Pasqual del Pobil, had eagerly joined in the shouts of ‘¡Viva el Rey!’ Carmen Polo was quick to express her disgust to her husband when this was reported back to her.
(#litres_trial_promo) Franco’s fury was directed against the aristocratic guests, and he talked of removing the privilege of a diplomatic passport enjoyed by the highest ranking nobility, the grandes de España, ‘because they use it to conspire against the regime’.
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The strength of the monarchist challenge was further brought home to Franco in the course of limited municipal ‘elections’ held in Madrid on 21 November 1954, the first since the Civil War. They were presented by the regime as genuine elections because one third of the municipal councillors would be ‘elected’ by an electorate of ‘heads of families’ and married women over the age of 30. Enthusiastically supported by the newspaper ABC, there were four monarchists up against the four Movimiento candidates put up by the regime. The monarchists were harassed and intimidated by Falangist thugs and by the police. The Movimiento press network mounted a huge propaganda campaign that presented these elections as a kind of referendum. The entire issue was seriously mishandled, exposing as it did the farce of Franco’s claim that all Spaniards were part of the Movimiento. Monarchist publicity material was destroyed and voting urns were spirited away to prevent scrutiny of the count. Inevitably, official results gave a substantial victory to the Falangist candidates. It was clear that there had been official falsification and the monarchists claimed to have received over 60 per cent of the vote.
(#litres_trial_promo) At first, Franco was happy to believe that the municipal elections constituted an outpouring of popular acclaim for him. However, a stream of complaints from prominent monarchists and a threat of resignation from Antonio Iturmendi, the traditionalist Minister of Justice, made even the Caudillo begin to doubt the official interpretation of events. He was shocked when General Juan Vigón, now Chief of the General Staff, but still a fervent monarchist, told him that military intelligence services had discovered that the bulk of the Madrid garrison had voted for the monarchist candidates. He was appalled to hear Vigón stating that: ‘The regime lost the elections of 21 November.’ This indication that support was gathering for Don Juan compelled Franco to take action.
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Instructions were sent to Nicolás Franco in Lisbon to inform Don Juan that he was now ready to meet him. Since Franco had never had any doubts about the kind of education that he wanted for the Prince, there was, from his point of view, no need for a meeting. The boy’s personal needs were of no concern to him. His surprising agreement to meet the Pretender was merely a reaction to growing evidence of the strength of monarchist feeling within Spain. The encounter was to be no more than a propaganda stunt to neutralize that feeling. He had no intention of making any concessions. In his much delayed reply of 2 December 1954 to Don Juan’s September letter, Franco wrote in dismissive terms, limiting the agenda for the meeting. He made it clear that Juan Carlos had to be educated according to the principles of the Movimiento in order to be in tune with ‘the generations that were forged in the heat of our Crusade’. This was a matter on which, according to Franco, there could be no misunderstanding. If the Prince were not to be educated in this way, it would be better for him to go abroad, since: ‘the monarchy is not viable outside the Movimiento.’ Altogether better would be for the Prince to be educated in Spain under Franco’s vigilance.
It was an irony – and one that Franco was anxious to conceal from Don Juan – that the neutralization of the monarchists and the consolidation of his own plans for the succession were probably now his greatest concern. Hitherto, his most effective weapon in silencing Don Juan had been to conjure up successive revivals of the Falange. This also served to strengthen his argument to Don Juan that, as Caudillo, he could tolerate no restoration of the line that fell in 1931, but rather only the installation of a Falangist monarchy. However, the unexpected success of the monarchists in the Madrid ‘elections’ showed that the Falange was increasingly anachronistic while the monarchist option seemed more in tune with the outside world. The policies of autarchic self-sufficiency favoured by both Franco and the Falange had brought Spain to the verge of economic disaster. At the very least, it would be prudent to convince the royalists among his own supporters of his own good faith as a monarchist – hence the meeting. Don Juan and his supporters might believe that they would be discussing ways of hastening a restoration but Franco’s letter showed again that he would hand over power only on his death or total incapacity and then only to a king who was committed to the unconditional maintenance of the dictatorship.
It was clear that Franco saw the education of Juan Carlos as the preparation of precisely such a king. That did not necessarily mean that there was certainty as to the Prince’s eventual succession to the throne. Apart from encouraging the claim of Don Jaime and his sons, Franco now had another candidate nearer home. On 9 December, his first grandson had been born and his sycophantic son-in-law, Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiu, suggested changing the baby’s name by reversing his matronymic and patronymic. The formal agreement by a servile Cortes on 15 December to his name being Francisco Franco Martínez-Bordiu made the new arrival a potential heir to his grandfather. Alarm spread in monarchist circles that Franco planned to establish his own dynasty.
(#litres_trial_promo) This was exacerbated when the Conde de los Andes reported on the harshness of Franco’s tone during their negotiations on the agenda to be discussed in the forthcoming meeting between the Caudillo and Don Juan. Outlining his own plan for the Prince’s education, he had told the astonished count that: ‘If Don Juan does not accept such an education for his son, or his son does not agree to it, the Prince should not return to Spain and that will mean that he has renounced the throne and that I will consider myself free of any understanding with him.’ Pacón noted in his diary that a meeting was utterly pointless because he knew that nothing would make Franco deviate from the plan that he had laid out. He bluntly told Pacón, ‘If Don Juan wants his son ever to reign in Spain, he must submit to my wishes, which are for his own good and for that of the fatherland, by entrusting the boy’s education to me. It must be without interference from anyone and handed over only to people that I trust totally.’
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Don Juan set off for Spain by car on 28 December 1954. Franco left El Pardo at 8 a.m. on the next morning in a Cadillac and with a convoy of guards. Both were headed for a halfway point between Madrid and Lisbon – Navalmoral de la Mata in the province of Cáceres in Extremadura. Arriving in Spain that evening was an emotional moment for Don Juan, the first time that he had set foot in his homeland since his failed attempt to join the Nationalist forces in 1936. The meeting – at Las Cabezas, the estate of the Conde de Ruiseñada, Juan Claudio Güell, the Pretender’s new representative in Spain – lasted from 11.20 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. with a late lunch break. At the steps of the mansion, the ever-affable Don Juan greeted Franco cordially and had created a relaxed atmosphere by the time that they sat before a roaring fire. He felt confident, telling Franco that he had received thousands of messages of support from Spain including telegrams from four Lieutenant-Generals. However, such references to the current debate on the monarchist succession went over Franco’s head as relating to a far distant and theoretical future. This became clear when he began to talk of the possibility of separating the functions of Head of State and Head of Government. He would do so only, he said, when his health gave out, or he ‘disappeared’ or because the good of the regime, with the evolution of time, required it, ‘but, as long as I have good health, I don’t see any advantages in change’.
Franco was clearly at his ease, talking without pause or even a sip of water, and he proceeded to give Don Juan an interminable, rambling history lesson. Don Juan commented later that it was like listening to an obsessive grandfather boasting about his past. In fact, Franco’s reminiscences about his own military exploits could be seen as a sly attempt to humiliate Don Juan, who had not been allowed to fight in the Civil War. Efforts by Don Juan to get a word in edgeways and turn the discussion to the timing of the transition to the monarchy and the terms of the post-Franco future met with a frosty response. Franco did not hesitate to criticize many prominent monarchists as drunks and gamblers, accusing Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, about whom he had the most neurotic delusions, of being a freemason. When Don Juan praised Sainz Rodríguez as a faithful counsellor, in whom he had complete confidence, Franco replied, ‘I have never trusted anyone.’
Don Juan’s suggestion of the introduction of freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, social justice, trade union freedom and proper political representation merely reinforced Franco’s conviction that he was the puppet of dangerous aristocratic meddlers who were probably freemasons. Through the impenetrable and self-satisfied verbiage glimmered the Caudillo’s message. As he had already informed the Conde de los Andes: if Don Juan did not bow to his demand that Juan Carlos be educated under his tutelage, he would consider it as a renunciation of the throne. The needs, let alone the wishes, of Juan Carlos simply did not enter into the debate. Faced with Franco’s ultimatum, Don Juan thus agreed that his son be educated at the three military academies, at the university and at Franco’s side. However, he made it quite clear that none of this constituted a renunciation of his own rights. With the greatest reluctance, Franco accepted an anodyne joint communiqué whose terms implicitly, if not explicitly, recognized the hereditary rights to the throne of the Borbón dynasty. It was a minor victory for Don Juan that his name should appear alongside that of Franco.
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The joint communiqué aside, Franco had made no real concessions about a future restoration, or rather installation, as he called it. Nevertheless, the theatrical gesture of meeting Don Juan had, for the moment, drawn the sting of the monarchists and gave the impression that progress was being made. In his end of year message on 31 December 1954, he made it quite clear that he had conceded nothing to Don Juan. Using the royal ‘we’, he stressed that the monarchist forms enshrined in the Ley de Sucesión had nothing to do with the monarchy of Alfonso XIII. In the wake of the Las Cabezas meeting, the Caudillo was publicly affirming that he did not renounce his right, enshrined in the Ley de Sucesión, to choose a successor to guarantee the continuity of his authoritarian regime.
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Chatting with Pacón on the same day, Franco claimed that, at Las Cabezas, Don Juan had asked him if he thought it was necessary to abdicate in order that his son should have the right to inherit the throne. The exchange is not recorded in other accounts of the meeting. Indeed, those accounts suggest that what Don Juan actually said was that allowing his son to be educated in Spain did not constitute an abdication of his own rights. However, if it was not just wishful thinking on Franco’s part and Don Juan did ask the question, it could be interpreted as a ploy to force Franco to acknowledge the dynastic rights of the family. If, at Franco’s behest, Don Juan had abdicated in favour of his son, the Caudillo would have been committing himself to choosing Juan Carlos as his successor. It is unlikely that the question of abdication was raised in the precise terms recounted by Franco to his cousin. However the subject was raised, Franco’s reply, at least in his own account to Pacón, was a masterpiece of cunning.
Unwilling to reduce his options, the Caudillo allegedly replied, ‘I do not think that the problem of your abdication needs to be raised today, as we are here to discuss your son’s education, but since you’ve mentioned it, I must tell you that I believe that Your Highness rendered himself incompatible with today’s Spain, because against my advice that Your Highness remain silent and make no declarations, you published a manifesto in which you refused to collaborate with the regime and thus made yourself incompatible with it.’ He went on to talk of his ‘inclination’ to name as his successor a direct heir to Alfonso XIII. However, he also mentioned the strong temptation to nominate a prince from the Traditionalist branch of the family as a reward to the Carlists for their role in the Civil War and their loyalty thereafter. If the conversation took place as he claimed, it revealed his determination both to humiliate Don Juan and to keep open his own options.
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At the point at which Juan Carlos was about to return to Spain to be educated as a possible successor to Franco, his own interests as a human being were being sacrificed for a gamble. Franco could choose between a Carlist, Don Juan, Juan Carlos, Don Jaime or his son Alfonso and, perhaps, even the newborn Francisco Franco Martínez-Bordiu. Neither Juan Carlos nor his father can have been unaware of this. It must have been difficult for Juan Carlos not to feel like a shuttlecock in someone else’s game.
Before setting out for Las Cabezas, Don Juan had written to the Caudillo’s wartime artillery chief, General Carlos Martínez Campos y Serrano (the Duque de la Torre), asking him to be the head of the Prince’s household in Spain and thus charging him with the supervision of his son’s military education. Stiff and austere, the 68-year-old Martínez Campos was known for his dour seriousness, his acute intelligence and his sharp tongue. His marriage had broken down, and by his own admission, he had failed in the education of his own children. Even Franco was moved to comment: ‘God help the boy with that fellow!’
(#litres_trial_promo) Nevertheless, it was a choice that provoked considerable satisfaction at El Pardo. Until recently, Martínez Campos had, after all, been Military Governor of the Canary Islands. The general reported to Franco on 27 December. Pacón noted in his diary: ‘The Duque de la Torre is totally trustworthy and utterly loyal to the Caudillo.’ In fact, this was not entirely true – Martínez Campos was loyal and obedient, but he had considerable reservations about Franco personally and about the way in which he treated Don Juan. Juan Carlos later commented that the Duke ‘didn’t get on’ with Franco. Now, in the course of their conversation, Martínez Campos mentioned Don Juan’s annoyance at the way in which Franco, in laying out his plans for the Prince’s education, had ridden roughshod over his own rights as a father to educate his son. The Caudillo was unmoved, reiterating blithely his view that it was one thing to educate a son, another to train a Prince to reign. He added that, if Don Juan didn’t like it, he could do whatever he liked but would lose the chance of ever seeing his son on the throne.
(#litres_trial_promo) Once more, it was being made crystal clear that the personal interests of the 15-year-old adolescent mattered little in the wider political game being played out.
When General Juan Vigón, Chief of the General Staff and a fervent monarchist, heard of the choice of Martínez Campos and the arrangements for Juan Carlos, he was shocked, exclaiming, ‘It’s the wrong way to go about this! It’s playing politics rather than educating the boy!’
(#litres_trial_promo) Martínez Campos himself was hardly less critical of his own appointment. He remarked to a family friend, ‘This is women’s work.’
(#litres_trial_promo) It is fair to say, therefore, that the selection of this rigid and irritable soldier was based not on any consideration of Juan Carlos’s needs but on the fact that he had enjoyed good relations with Franco. It was typical of Martínez Campos’s style that, once in charge, he would prevent Juan Carlos receiving visits from his beloved old tutor, Eugenio Vegas Latapié. In his eyes, the deeply conservative Vegas Latapié was a subversive.
(#litres_trial_promo) The consequence of the meeting at Las Cabezas, as far as Juan Carlos was concerned, was that, in early 1955, he would be obliged to leave Estoril once more and start preparing for the entrance examinations for the Zaragoza military academy.
The preparations for this began on 5 January 1955, when Martínez Campos telephoned Major Alfonso Armada Comyn, an intelligent aristocratic artillery officer, son of the Marqués de Santa Cruz de Rivadulla, to arrange a clandestine meeting. As they drove through Madrid, Martínez Campos passed him the letter from Don Juan. ‘Congratulations, General,’ said Armada as he handed it back. With a mixture of contempt and indignation, the general spat out: ‘Are you just pretending to be stupid or are you really thick? Do you think it is possible that I would waste time just so you could congratulate me for something that I don’t like, didn’t ask for and is worrying the hell out of me? Can’t you understand that they’ve dropped me in it?’ A chastened Armada replied in a whisper, ‘Then refuse.’ ‘No,’ replied the general, ‘that wouldn’t be right. It’s an honour, an uncomfortable one, full of responsibilities, especially being dumped on me now that I’m old and I was never any good at bringing up my own children. But let’s not waste time. I don’t have to give you explanations. You’re young and have many children. Both you and your wife know palace life and its secrets.’
Martínez Campos’s choice of Armada was understandable and one that would have profound effects throughout Juan Carlos’s life. The young Major Armada’s credentials, both as a monarchist and as a Francoist, were impeccable. Armada’s father had been a childhood friend of Alfonso XIII, as had his father-in-law, the Marqués de Someruelos. As artillery generals, both were friends of Martínez Campos. At the age of 17, Armada had himself fought as a volunteer on the Nationalist side in the Civil War. In July 1941, shortly after graduating from the artillery academy in Segovia, he had joined the División Azul in order to fight alongside the Germans on the Russian front, for which he was awarded the Iron Cross. After completing his studies at the general staff college, he joined the general staff of the Civil Guard. Now, despite efforts to dissuade the general, Armada was overruled and told to report for duty the next day.
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Martínez Campos instructed Major Armada to prepare lists of officers from the various Army corps who might be recruited as teachers for the young Prince. He was also charged with organizing the staff of the Prince’s residence, choosing suitable companions and arranging Juan Carlos’s studies and even leisure-time reading. Martínez Campos cast aside some of Armada’s suggestions and chose others. A daunting team of officers would supervise the boy’s studies. The Prince’s infantry professor was to be Major Joaquín Valenzuela, the Marqués de Valenzuela de Tahuarda, whose father had been killed in Morocco when he was Franco’s immediate predecessor as head of the Spanish Foreign Legion. The teacher in charge of Juan Carlos’s horse-riding, hunting and sporting development was to be the 50-year-old cavalry major Nicolás Cotoner, Conde de Tendilla, and later to be Marqués de Mondéjar. Brother-in-law to the Conde de Ruiseñada, Cotoner was a grande de España who had fought in the Civil War. He was a firm admirer of Franco which meant that he was viewed with some suspicion in Estoril.
(#litres_trial_promo) The chaplain was Father José Manuel Aguilar, a Dominican priest who happened also to be the brother-in-law of Franco’s Minister of Education, the Christian Democrat Joaquín Ruiz Giménez. The history teacher was Ángel López Amo, who had taught Juan Carlos at Las Jarillas. Mathematics was in the hands of a strict naval officer, Lieutenant-Commander Álvaro Fontanals Barón.
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A hint from Martínez Campos had led to the Duque and Duquesa de Montellano graciously putting at the Prince’s disposal their palace in Madrid’s Paseo de la Castellana, where in the 1949–1950 academic year his classmates from Las Jarillas had vainly awaited his return from Estoril. The cost of running the Prince’s establishment was to be met by Carrero Blanco’s Presidencia del Gobierno (the cabinet office). Juan Carlos travelled from Lisbon to Madrid in the company of Martínez Campos on 18 January 1955. This time, there was rather more pomp at his arrival than on his first trip to Spain in November 1948. The Prince travelled by train, in the well-appointed coach in which Franco had made the journey to meet Hitler at Hendaye in October 1940. It is to be supposed that repairs had been effected to the leaks that had blighted Franco’s trip. Juan Carlos was no longer obliged to get off the train on the outskirts of the city. Now, he was met at the Delicias station by the Mayor of the capital, the Conde de Mayalde, by the Captain-General of the region, General Miguel Rodrigo Martínez, and a crowd of several hundred monarchists, most of them aristocrats. His arrival – and unfounded rumours that, at Las Cabezas, Franco had agreed to the return of Alfonso XIII’s mortal remains to Spain – intensified tensions among hardline Falangists. The council of the organization of party veterans, the Vieja Guardia (Old Guard), which attributed to itself responsibility for maintaining the ideological ‘purity’ of the regime, sent a delegation to protest to the Secretary-General of the Movimiento, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta.
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Falangist anger was largely due to the fact that the communiqué issued after the Las Cabezas meeting had immediately sparked off monarchist-inspired rumours that the Caudillo was now actively preparing an early transition to the monarchy. Franco responded quickly to the first mutterings of protest about such a prospect. Within a week of Juan Carlos’s arrival, he gave a widely reproduced interview that dispelled any hopes of his early departure. ‘Although my magistracy is for life,’ he declared pompously, ‘it is to be hoped that there are many years before me, and the immediate interest of the issue is diluted in time.’ Franco was yet again making it clear, to his supporters and to Don Juan, that the monarchy would be a Falangist one in no way resembling that which had fallen in 1931.
(#litres_trial_promo) In the face of potential opposition to what seemed to be the appeasement of Don Juan, Franco was asking the docile Falangist hierarchy to postpone the ‘pending revolution’ even longer in return for a Francoist future under a Francoist king.
(#litres_trial_promo) Accordingly, in February 1955, he authorized the drafting of laws to block loopholes in the Ley de Sucesión and irrevocably shackle any royal successor to the Movimiento. At the same time, to make this more acceptable to his monarchist supporters, the Falangist edges of the Movimiento would be blurred, censorship of the monarchists would be relaxed, and Eugenio Vegas Latapié was reinstated to the Consejo del Reino.
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Within hours of the Prince’s arrival in Madrid, a queue of well-wishers, among them some aristocrats, had gathered outside the Palacio de Montellano. Like Franco, Martínez Campos was determined to ensure that there would be no entourage of courtiers at the palace. The Civil Guards on duty permitted those who came merely to sign the visitors’ book and then leave.
The year and a half spent in the Palacio de Montellano preparing for the entry examination for the Zaragoza military academy would be a hard trial for Juan Carlos. This time, he had no friends to accompany him. In his austerely furnished room, the only personal items were some family photographs, a tiny triptych of Christ and a luminous statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Martínez Campos established an inflexible routine that left the boy little spare time. The Prince was woken at 7.45 a.m. and had three-quarters of an hour in which to wash, hear mass in the chapel, have breakfast and glance at the newspapers. The hour from 8.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. was devoted to private study. At 9.30 a.m., accompanied by his maths tutor, Álvaro Fontanals Barón, the Prince would set off for his classes at the naval orphans’ college in Madrid where he followed a rigid timetable until 1.15 p.m. After lunch at the palace, there would be golf or horse-riding in the Casa de Campo until 5.00 p.m. Back at the palace, there would be more study until 9.00 p.m. at which time Juan Carlos was allowed an hour for letter-writing or telephone calls.
He had little free time since classes were held even on Saturdays and Father Aguilar often visited to impart religious and moral education. Other time was consumed by visits from distinguished academics who gave prepared talks on their specialities. The only glimmer of jollity in the otherwise stultifying atmosphere derived from the fact that a young friend, Miguel Primo de Rivera y Urquijo, the nephew of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, lived nearby and thus became the Prince’s frequent companion. It was to develop into a lifelong friendship. At the time, it helped relieve the tedium of the regular lunch and dinner visits from important figures in the Church, the Falange, and the business world – including the head of the Opus Dei, Padre Josémaría Escrivá de Balaguer. This austere routine was rarely stimulating – indeed, if anything, it was utterly suffocating – for an adolescent. Asked by the diplomat José Antonio Giménez-Arnau how he felt about his loneliness and the absence from his family, Juan Carlos replied sadly, ‘If not resigned, I’m at least used to it. Just imagine! When I was six, I spent two years separated from my parents when they were first in Estoril. There was no choice.’ Giménez-Arnau had been commissioned to write a feature article on the Prince. When it was published, Juan Carlos wrote him an informal note of thanks. The unaffected warmth and openness of the 17-year-old Prince’s note guaranteed the lifelong loyalty of its recipient.
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Occasionally, the Prince was taken to El Pardo where the Caudillo subjected him to interminable history lessons about the mistakes made by various kings of Spain. He also gave him sententious advice about the need to avoid aristocrats and courtiers. Believing that the Prince was extremely pleased and grateful, Franco decided to see him at least once a month, ‘to chat with him and carry on instilling my ideas in him’. The Caudillo was delighted by the severity of Martínez Campos who reported to him on 5 March 1955. When the Prince had begun to tutear (use the intimate ‘tú’ form of address to) Major Valenzuela, the general had energetically forbidden it. He had refused the Prince permission to go to Lisbon for the wedding of one of the daughters of the ex-King Umberto of Italy, informing Don Juan that it would constitute an unacceptable interruption of the boy’s studies. He insisted on speaking English with Juan Carlos. He also made every effort to ensure that no particular one of the Prince’s friendships came to take priority over the others. That Martínez Campos felt it necessary to report to Franco gives some indication of the ambience in which the Prince was being educated. He was permitted, on occasions, to invite friends to lunch. Once, he was visited by the beautiful Princess María Gabriella di Savoia, King Umberto’s other daughter, a friend and fellow-exile from Portugal, who later became his girlfriend. The Prince was usually short of cash, later recalling how Major Cotoner had to buy him a suit for the occasion.
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The tendency to high spirits that had characterized Juan Carlos as a schoolboy did not desert him despite his austere surroundings. One of the teaching staff, the Air Force Major Emilio García Conde, had a Mercedes that the Prince loved to drive, even though he did not possess a driving licence. One day, on a trip to the headquarters of the Sección Femenina (the women’s section of the Falange) at the Castillo de la Mota in the province of Valladolid, he had a minor accident involving a cyclist. Major García Conde resolved the problem by giving the cyclist some banknotes to get his wheel fixed and buy a new pair of trousers. After nearly being eaten alive by the enthusiastic women of the Sección Femenina, Juan Carlos and his party retired to lunch in a restaurant. The Prince delightedly recounted the bicycle incident and was astonished when Martínez Campos furiously ordered García Conde to find the cyclist, get the money back and oblige the unfortunate young man to report the incident to the Civil Guard. He was worried that if the young man was seriously injured, it would look as if the Prince was involved in corruptly trying to cover up his own involvement. He insisted that Juan Carlos return to Madrid in his car.
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General Martínez Campos’s loyalty and deference to the Caudillo prevented him from complaining about the fact that Franco, partly to please the Falange and partly to bring the monarchists to heel, had encouraged criticism of Don Juan in the press. In consequence, as the general knew full well, hostility to the monarchy soon began to be directed against Juan Carlos. At the beginning of February 1955, the Mayor of Madrid wrote to Franco’s cousin, Pacón. In response to the scattering of Falangist leaflets bearing the inscription ‘We want no king!’, the Mayor asked how it was possible, if Franco wanted Juan Carlos educated in Spain, that the regime’s single party should be engaged in insulting the Prince. When Pacón mentioned this to the Caudillo, he brushed it aside as ‘student antics’. However, the rumblings came from much higher in the Falange, including Pilar Primo de Rivera, the head of the Sección Femenina. Nevertheless, Franco brushed aside further reports about anti-monarchist activities from such dignitaries as the Captain-General of Valencia. The mutter-ings continued and, eventually, on 26 February, the Caudillo felt obliged to inform a concerned cabinet that ‘a King would be nominated only if there were a Prince ready for the task’.
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Juan Carlos’s presence in Spain and its possible implications were highlighted by the publication in ABC on 15 April 1955 of his interview with José Antonio Giménez-Arnau – the first press interview published since his arrival in Spain in 1948. A few days later, violence broke out between Falangists and monarchists at the end of a lecture on European monarchies given by Roberto Cantalupo, once Mussolini’s Ambassador to Franco, at the Madrid Ateneo, the capital’s leading liberal intellectual centre. In response to Cantalupo’s enthusiastic advocacy of monarchy, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, a former minister of Franco, cried ‘¡Viva la Falange!’ in reply to which shouts of ‘¡Viva el Rey!’ or ‘¡Viva Don ]uan III!’ were heard from monarchists present. Falangists then showered the hall with leaflets ridiculing Juan Carlos and the police had to be called to put a stop to the fight that erupted. The Prince also faced the increasingly overt hostility of the then Minister for the Army, General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, whose sympathies lay with the Falange. Later on that spring, young Falangists roamed the streets of Madrid shouting: ‘We don’t want idiot kings!’ Juan Carlos was also booed while he was giving out the prizes at some horse trials, and, in the summer, he was insulted during a visit to a Falangist summer camp.
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The noises coming from Falangists were the dying agony of a wounded beast. In reality, their organization could not have been more domesticated. On 19 June 1955, the Secretary-General of the Movimiento, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, declared in a speech made in Bilbao that to ensure the survival of the regime after Franco’s death, judicial, political and institutional guarantees would be necessary. The role of the Movimiento would be to sustain the monarchy that succeeded Franco and to keep it on the straight and narrow path of Francoism. It was the formal recognition by the Falange of the inevitability of a monarchical succession.
(#litres_trial_promo) For their part, the monarchists had to accept that the monarchy would be restored only within the Movimiento. To hammer this home, Franco exploited the anxiety of the sycophantic Julio Danvila, the most Francoist of Don Juan’s advisers, to further the establishment of a Francoist monarchy. At Franco’s behest, the willing Danvila concocted the text of an ‘interview’ with Don Juan in which he apparently gave royal approval to Fernández Cuesta’s speech. Franco agreed the text, which Danvila then took to Estoril where an indignant Don Juan refused to agree to its publication. Danvila then told the Caudillo that the Pretender had accepted the ‘interview’, at which point Franco amended the text to bring it even more into line with his own thinking and obliged ABC and Ya to publish it on 24 June 1955. Although outraged, Don Juan did not protest, since a public break between himself and Franco would have encouraged the anti-monarchical machinations of the extremist elements of the Falange. It might also have led to the termination of Juan Carlos’s education in Spain.
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Franco was unconcerned about the Falangist rejection of his apparent choice of conservative monarchism as the future of the regime. At the November 1955 rally in El Escorial to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the Falange’s founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Franco rekindled Falangist anxieties about his Las Cabezas meeting with Don Juan and the presence of Juan Carlos in Spain. He had arrived for the ceremony in the uniform of a Captain-General instead of the usual black uniform and blue shirt of the Jefe Nacional (National Chief of the Movimiento). There was some nervous shuffling in the ranks of the assembled Falangists. As Franco walked across the square towards his car, a voice called out: ‘We want no idiot kings.’ It has also been alleged that a cry of ‘Franco traitor’ was heard. There were other minor incidents reflecting Falangist discontent with the complacency of the regime that Franco dismissed as of little consequence.
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The constant running down of the Borbón monarchy, together with Franco’s assumption of royal airs, deeply annoyed Don Juan and his family. This was reflected in the indiscreet comments of Alfonso de Borbón, the second son of Don Juan. When he was 14 years old, Alfonsito was wont to refer to Franco as ‘the dwarf or ‘the toad’. He said, ‘That fellow won’t leave. He has to be kicked out … Having to visit him makes me vomit and la Señora, always showing her teeth, kills my appetite.’ It was an indication both of Don Juan’s deteriorating relations with Franco and the fact that Alfonsito was such a favourite that his outbursts were tolerated and praised. Not many years before, Don Juan had smacked his daughter Margarita for repeating a joke about Franco. Things had changed and there can be little doubt that critical remarks about Franco or his wife would quickly have been relayed to El Pardo by the many monarchist visitors who maintained a dual ‘loyalty’.
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