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CHAPTER THREE The Tribulations of a Young Soldier1955–1960 (#ulink_b4b718d7-85dd-5d00-8dcb-07c4dac30645)
Despite Franco’s readiness to excuse Juan Carlos the entry examinations for the Zaragoza military academy, General Martínez Campos insisted that he undergo the test just like any other prospective cadet. Having passed, Juan Carlos joined the academy in December 1955. As his companions from the academy would later recall, the exams were very difficult and they believed that, although the Prince was usually treated like any other candidate by the examiners, the mathematics test he sat must have been easier than the one they took: indeed, Juan Carlos would soon be shown to be well below average in this subject.
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Although Juan Carlos, in his public declarations at least, would later recall his years as a cadet with nostalgic fondness, his time at the military academies did not always go smoothly. When he took his oath of loyalty to the colours on 15 December 1955, the ceremony was chaired by the brusque General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, the Minister for the Army, who was much more inclined to the Falangist than to the monarchist cause. Accordingly, in his speech, he made no mention of the Prince.
(#litres_trial_promo) In addition, Juan Carlos was saddened on this occasion by the fact that Franco had not permitted his father to attend the ceremony.
(#litres_trial_promo) On 10 December, Don Juan wrote to him, reminding him of the tremendous responsibilities he would be undertaking when he swore his loyalty to Spain: ‘15 December will be a great day because it is the day on which you will knowingly consecrate the rest of your life to the service of Spain.’ Juan Carlos sent his father a telegram: ‘Before the flag I have promised Spain to be a perfect soldier and with tremendous feeling I swear to you that I will fulfil that oath.’
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It was Juan Carlos’s fervent wish to be allowed to get on with life as an ordinary cadet. ‘You can avoid a lot of problems by getting lost in the crowd.’ That was rendered impossible because the campaign against Don Juan in the Movimiento press remained intense during this period. Juan Carlos found these constant attacks on his father upsetting. Some of his fellow cadets would derive a malicious pleasure from quoting the insinuations of the press. On several occasions, Juan Carlos was sufficiently provoked by remarks that his father was a freemason or a bad patriot (for serving in the Royal Navy) to get involved in fights. These were organized furtively in the stables at night, possibly even with the complicity of the teaching staff. When Juan Carlos eventually complained to Franco about the media’s attacks on his father, the Caudillo replied, with his habitual cynicism, that the Spanish press was independent and that he had no influence over it. He stated that, ‘it was impossible to do anything, since the press was free to express its opinions.’ As Juan Carlos commented, ‘it was such an outrageous lie that all I could do was laugh.’
Recounting this later, Juan Carlos was rather benevolent with regard to Franco. Reflecting on the fact that the Caudillo saw in Don Juan a dangerous liberal, he commented, ‘When my father said “I want to be King of all Spaniards,” Franco must have translated this as “I want to be King of the victors and of the vanquished.”’ This puzzled Juan Carlos, because of the fact that Franco knew full well that Don Juan had tried to join the Nationalist forces against the ‘reds’. Referring to the cunning letter with which Franco had refused Don Juan’s offer, Juan Carlos commented rather uncritically, ‘On that occasion, the General wrote my father a very beautiful letter to thank him for his gesture. In it, he told him that his life was too precious for the future of Spain and that he forbade him to risk it at the battle front. Why was my father’s life precious if not because he was the heir to the crown? But, what can you say … that was the General for you. At times, putting up with him was very difficult. But, as you know, I had totally convinced myself that to achieve my objectives I had to put up with a lot. The objective was worth the trouble.’ The objective was the re-establishment of the Borbón family on the throne.
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Despite these occasional outbursts of hostility towards his father, Juan Carlos would later recall his years in the military academies as amongst the happiest in his life. In a brief letter to the readers of a Spanish magazine which published, in 1981, a feature on this period, he wrote: ‘I remember my years at the military academies with genuine satisfaction and nostalgia … Now that my post and occupations leave me hardly any time or freedom, I often think back to that distant period in which my life evolved in a way so different from the current one.’
Above and beyond the special status, of which none of his fellow students could remain ignorant, Juan Carlos soon became a genuinely popular cadet. His contemporaries at the academies would later describe him as a ‘sensational companion’, outgoing, generous, particularly gifted at sports and endowed with an extraordinary memory. His ability to remember people’s names and faces would later enable him to recognize and greet comrades and teachers whom he had not seen in years. He had a good sense of humour and enjoyed playing practical jokes on his friends. He often participated, for instance, in the food fights that occasionally erupted at lunch times in the refectory. Academically, he was said to be of ‘average intelligence’, but above average in ‘general knowledge’, foreign languages, tactical thinking and military ethics. He struggled with mathematics, which was ‘the subject dreaded by all’. Juan Carlos was also perceived as being deeply religious: every day, he would get up before reveille in order to attend the voluntary, early morning mass.
When it came to friendships, the Prince necessarily had to be careful, making every effort to avoid the creation of a circle of admirers or sycophants who wanted to be with him only out of self-interest. He tried to get to know as many people as possible, which was made easier by the fact that the class groups changed every term. He was aware of the dangers of nepotism: indeed, at the end of his military training, he refused to use his influence in order to get plumb postings for his friends from the academies. He did, however, strive to keep in touch with his old companions, attending and often even organizing reunions.
(#litres_trial_promo) Not all of his contemporaries were keen to flatter him: ‘Some thought that I was a spoilt brat, spoiled by destiny, a daddy’s boy, the inhabitant of another planet. I had to use my fists to become one of them.’
(#litres_trial_promo) To this end, he encouraged his peers to treat him with considerable informality. His close friends called him ‘Juan’ or ‘Juanito’, or even ‘Carlos’, whilst his other companions addressed him with the informal ‘tú’ and jokingly called him SAR, an abbreviation of ‘Su Alteza Reaf’ (His Royal Highness).
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This easy-going informality outraged General Martínez Campos who visited the academy each weekend to review the Prince’s progress and have lunch with him. On one occasion, Martínez Campos allowed his tutee to invite a couple of his academy friends to join them for lunch. During the meal, when he heard one of these friends call the Prince ‘Juan’, he exploded. Red-faced with fury, he leapt to his feet, knocking his chair out of the way and shouted at the culprit: ‘Gentleman cadet! On your feet and stand to attention! How dare you, gentleman cadet, address informally and by his first name someone that I, a Lieutenant-General, address as His Royal Highness!’ Unsurprisingly, Juan Carlos was never again able to convince his friends to join him for lunch with Martínez Campos.
(#litres_trial_promo) Juan Carlos soon came to dread these visits from his supervisor, turning pale and trembling as the meeting time came closer.
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The teaching staff at the academy addressed Juan Carlos as ‘Your Highness’ and, at roll-call, he was referred to by his full title – ‘His Royal Highness Juan Carlos de Borbón’. That aside, in so far as it could be put aside, Juan Carlos was, according to his contemporaries, treated by the teaching staff just like any other student. He was disciplined like any other cadet when he broke the rules. Once, for instance, he was put under house arrest for being caught smoking indoors. The Prince was subject to the same timetable as the other students, which left them very little free time. Reveille was at 6.15 a.m., although Juan Carlos rose earlier in order to attend mass. By 6.30 a.m., all cadets had to be standing to attention in the corridors, where roll-call took place. The young men were then allowed to take their showers – in water usually either freezing or so hot as to be almost unbearable. Individual study time followed, then lessons, lunch, a half-hour break, further lessons, another half-hour break and dinner. According to his contemporaries, no one was ever asked by the teaching staff to make allowances for the Prince or to treat him with special deference. In his first year at Zaragoza, Juan Carlos was thus subjected to the same ‘novatadas’ (initiation tests) and other pranks as the other newly arrived students. Years later, he remembered not only many of the pranks played on him on his arrival at Zaragoza, but also their names: ‘I had to undergo everything. I had to do the “reptile” on the bedroom floor. I slept with the “nun” [with a sabre resting on his chest]. They “X-rayed” me [they made him sleep between two planks from the bedside table]. I also had to let them “clay pigeon shoot” me [he was left in a room blindfolded and, when he attempted to leave, he was battered with pillows].’
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Juan Carlos enjoyed being an ordinary cadet and even made an effort to prevent the teaching staff giving him preferential treatment. He once complained, for instance, that the mathematics tutor gave him an undeserved grade. According to his fellow students, the Prince had a ‘natural sense of justice’. Prudently, he used his special status only in order to help others. For instance, when a companion had been punished for some misdemeanour by being deprived of pudding, Juan Carlos would complain that there was something wrong with his helping in order to get an extra one to pass to the friend.
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Nevertheless, it was inevitable that there would be differences in the way that Juan Carlos was treated at the Zaragoza military academy. He travelled into the centre of Zaragoza by car, a black SEAT 1500, whereas his contemporaries did so by tram. Although, while out on manoeuvres, he slept on the floor of a tent like everyone else, in the academy, he had an independent, though small, bedroom, while the others slept in communal dormitories. According to one of his Zaragoza companions, Juan Carlos’s bedroom, which was situated above the infirmary, was Spartan. The only objects in it, besides a bed and a desk, were a multiple photograph frame displaying the pictures of all of the Borbón kings of Spain – including his father. He had pictures of his mother, his brother and his two sisters and a girlfriend, María Gabriella di Savoia. His book collection was small – a few textbooks and next to his bed usually was a novel by Marcial Lafuente Estefanía, from the ‘Rodeo’ collection of western stories popular at the time. Juan Carlos enjoyed less freedom than the others. He was obliged to have extra lessons and saw his private tutors during the morning period that should have been for individual study, during the afternoon breaks and sometimes at weekends. On the occasions when it was possible to go out for drinks in Zaragoza with his friends, they were delighted to be able to use his status and his unusual blond good looks as a ploy to get to know girls. When the cadets were on trains en route to camp, at each station women would come out to say hello to him. His ability to pick up girls was as unlimited as a capacity for falling briefly in love.
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In March 1956, there occurred an incident which totally diverted Juan Carlos from any thoughts of girls or even of the crown. He and his 14-year-old brother had travelled from Spain on the Lusitania Express to spend the Easter holidays in Estoril with their parents and sisters. It was the first time for some months that Don Juan and Doña María de las Mercedes had had all four of their children together. Alfonsito was a pupil at the lycée in Madrid and was about to become a cadet at the Spanish naval college at Marín near Pontevedra. Alfonsito was regarded as the family favourite, witty, intelligent and more simpático than his rather introspective elder brother. His passion for golf and sailing had brought him particularly close to Don Juan.
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On 29 March, Maundy Thursday, the entire family, dressed in black, attended morning mass and took communion at the small church of San Antonio de Estoril near the sea front. The principal Maundy Thursday service, which they also intended to attend, would not take place until the evening. In those days, Catholics still had to prepare for communion by fasting from midnight of the previous day. Rather than fast for 24 hours, the family had taken communion at the early mass. After a frugal lunch, Don Juan and Juan Carlos accompanied Alfonsito to the Estoril golf club where he was taking part in a competition (the Taça Visconde Pereira de Machado). Despite the cold blustery weather, Alfonsito won the semi-final and was looking forward to playing in the final on Easter Saturday. With no sign of a let-up in the cold wind and showers, the Spanish royal family went home. At 6 p.m. they attended the evening mass in the church of San Antonio and then returned home. At 8.30 p.m., the car of the family doctor, Joaquín Abreu Loureiro, screeched to a halt outside the Villa Giralda. Apparently, Juan Carlos and Alfonsito had been in the games room on the first floor of the house, engaged in target practice with a small calibre. 22 revolver, while waiting for dinner. A recent gift, the pistol was, at any reasonable distance, relatively innocuous. Nevertheless, there had been an accident in which Alfonso was shot and died almost immediately.
On Friday 30 March, the Portuguese press carried a laconic official communiqué about Alfonso’s death issued by the Spanish Embassy in Lisbon. ‘Whilst his Highness the Infante Alfonso was cleaning a revolver last evening with his brother, a shot was fired hitting his forehead and killing him in a few minutes. The accident took place at 20.30 hours, after the Infante’s return from the Maundy Thursday religious service, during which he had received holy communion.’ The decision to make this anodyne statement and to impose a blanket of silence over the details was taken personally by Franco.
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Inevitably, however, there were rumours that the gun had been in Juan Carlos’s hands at the time of the fatal shot. Within three weeks, these rumours were being stated as undisputed fact in the Italian press.
(#litres_trial_promo) They were not denied by Don Juan at the time nor have they ever been denied by Juan Carlos since. Shortly after tire accident, Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, a monarchist and member of Opus Dei on Don Juan’s Privy Council who later served Franco as Minister of Public Works, met Pedro Sainz Rodríguez and commented later: ‘His short and portly figure was woebegone because a pistol had gone off in Prince Juan Carlos’s hand and killed his brother Alfonso.’ It is now widely accepted that Juan Carlos’s finger was on the trigger when the fatal shot was fired.
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In her autobiography, Doña María de las Mercedes neither denied nor confirmed that it was Juan Carlos who was holding the gun when it went off. On the other hand, she directly contradicted the official statement. Doña María explained that, on the previous day, the boys had been fooling around with the gun, shooting at streetlamps. Because of this, Don Juan had forbidden them to play with the weapon. While waiting for the evening service, the two boys became bored and went upstairs to play with the gun again. They were getting ready to shoot at a target when the gun went off shortly after 8 p.m.
(#litres_trial_promo) One possibility, later suggested by Doña María to her dressmaker, Josefina Carolo, is that Juan Carlos playfully pointed it at Alfonsito and, unaware that the gun was loaded, pulled the trigger. In similar terms, Juan Carlos apparently told a Portuguese friend, Bernardo Arnoso, that he pulled the trigger not knowing that the gun was loaded, and that it went off and the bullet ricocheted off a wall and hit Alfonsito in the face. The most plausible suggestion, possibly made by the boys’ sister Pilar to the Greek author Helena Matheopoulos, is that Alfonsito left the room to get a snack for himself and Juan Carlos. Returning with his hands full, he pushed the door open with his shoulder. The door knocked into his brother’s arm. Juan Carlos involuntarily pulled the trigger just as Alfonsito’s head appeared around the door.
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Doña María de las Mercedes later recalled: ‘I was reading in my drawing room, and Don Juan was in his study, next door. Suddenly, I heard Juanito coming down the stairs telling the girl who worked for us: “No, I must tell them myself”. My heart stood still.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Both parents ran upstairs to the games room where they found their son lying in a pool of blood. Don Juan tried to revive him but the boy died in his arms. He placed a Spanish flag over him and, according to Antonio Eraso, a friend of Alfonsito, turned to Juan Carlos and said, ‘Swear to me that you didn’t do it on purpose.’
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Don Alfonso was buried in the cemetery at Cascais at midday on Saturday 31 March 1956. The funeral service was conducted by the Papal Nuncio to Portugal, and was attended by prominent Spanish monarchists and royal figures from several European countries. The desolate Don Juan could barely contain his distress, his eyes full of uncomprehending sorrow. Yet he greeted them all with grace and dignity. The Portuguese government was represented by the President of the Republic. In contrast, the Caudillo was represented merely by the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Spanish Embassy, Ignacio de Muguiro. The Ambassador, Franco’s brother Nicolás, was in bed, recovering from a car accident.
(#litres_trial_promo) There were messages of sympathy from all over the world, including one each from General Franco and Doña Carmen Polo.
Juan Carlos attended in the uniform of a Zaragoza officer cadet. His look of vacant desolation masked his inner agony of guilt. After the ceremony, Don Juan took the pistol that had killed Alfonsito and threw it into the sea. There was considerable speculation about the gun’s origins. It has been variously claimed that the weapon had been a present to Alfonsito from Franco or from the Conde de los Andes, or that someone in the Zaragoza military academy had given it to Juan Carlos. The autobiography of Juan Carlos’s mother states discreetly that: The two brothers had brought from Madrid the small six-millimetre pistol and it has never been revealed who gave it to them.’
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Unable to support the presence of his elder son, Don Juan ordered Juan Carlos to return immediately to the Zaragoza academy. General Martínez Campos and Major Emilio García Conde arrived in a Spanish military aircraft in which the Prince was taken back to Zaragoza. The incident affected the Prince dramatically. The rather extrovert figure, so popular with his comrades in the academy for his participation in high jinks and chasing the local girls, now seemed afflicted by a tendency to introspection. Relations with his father were never the same again. Although he would return, superficially at least, to being a fun-loving young man, he was profoundly changed by the event. More alone than ever, he became morose and guarded in his speech and actions.
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The death of her younger son profoundly affected Doña María de las Mercedes who fell into a deep depression, began to drink, and turned ever more for company to her friend Amalín López-Dóriga. Doña María was held partly responsible for the accident by her husband because she had given in to her sons’ repeated requests and allowed them to play with the gun despite their father’s prohibition. According to one such report, by the French journalist Françoise Laot on the basis of interviews with Doña María, she personally unlocked the secreter (writing bureau) where the gun was kept and handed it to Juan Carlos. Françoise Laot would later state that, 30 years after the accident, María de las Mercedes told her, ‘I have never been truly wretched except when my son died.’
(#litres_trial_promo) So affected was Doña María that she had to spend some time at a clinic near Frankfurt.
His personal devastation aside, the death of Alfonso significantly weakened the political position of Don Juan. Henceforth, he would be more dependent on the vagaries of the situation of Juan Carlos in Spain. In the words of Rafael Borràs, the distinguished publisher and author of a major biography of Don Juan, the death of Alfonso: ‘deprived the Conde de Barcelona, from the point of view of dynastic legitimacy, of a possible substitute in the event of the Príncipe de Asturias agreeing, against his father’s will, and outside the normal line of succession, to be General Franco’s successor within the terms of the Ley de Sucesión’. Borràs speculates that, had Alfonso lived, his very existence might have conditioned the subsequent behaviour of Juan Carlos in the struggle between his father and Franco.
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The Prince’s uncle, Don Jaime, endeavoured to derive political advantage from the tragedy. His first reaction had been to send a message of sympathy. However, on 17 April 1956 when the Italian newspaper II Settimo Giorno published an account of the accident which pointed the finger at Juan Carlos, he told his secretary Ramón de Alderete: ‘I am distraught to see the tragedy of Estoril dealt with in this way by a journalist who has been used in good faith, because I refuse to doubt the veracity of my unfortunate nephew’s version, as published by my brother. In this situation, and in my position as head of the Borbón family, I can only deeply disagree with the stance of my brother Juan who, in order to prevent future speculation, has neither demanded the opening of an official enquiry into the accident nor called for an autopsy on the body of my nephew, as is normal in such cases.’ These words were reproduced in the French press, presumably via Alderete and with the permission of Don Jaime.
Given that neither Don Juan nor Juan Carlos responded to Don Jaime’s demand, on 16 January 1957, he took the matter further and gave his secretary the following letter:
‘Reuil-Malmaison 16–1–1957.
Dear Ramón,
Several friends have recently confirmed that it was my nephew Juan Carlos who accidentally killed his brother Alfonso. This confirms something of which I have been certain ever since my brother Juan failed to sue those who had spoken publicly of this terrible situation. It obliges me to ask that you request in my name, when you feel that the time is right, that the appropriate national or international courts undertake a judicial enquiry in order to clarify officially the circumstances of the death of my nephew Alfonso (RIP). I demand that this judicial enquiry take place because it is my duty as Head of the House of Borbón, and because I cannot accept that someone who is incapable of accepting his own responsibilities should aspire to the throne of Spain. With a warm embrace.
Jaime de Borbón.’
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There is no evidence to suggest that Alderete acted on the letter or, if he did, that a court showed an interest in the case. Nevertheless, the combination of insensitivity and ambition demonstrated by Don Jaime was breathtaking.
The Madrid authorities were shaken by the news of the accident. Rumours started to circulate in the capital to the effect that Juan Carlos had been so overcome by grief that he was thinking of renouncing his rights to the throne and joining a friary as penance. In fact, as his father had ordered, Juan Carlos was back in Zaragoza within 48 hours of the accident. Franco’s relative silence on this issue was eloquent. Commenting on the tragedy to one of Don Juan’s supporters, he said with a total lack of sympathy ‘people do not like princes who are out of luck’. It was a recurrent theme. Two years later, he explained why he did not favour press references to Alfonsito: )‘The memory could cast shadows over his brother for the accident and make simple folk dwell on the bad luck of the family when people like their Princes to have lucky stars.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Perhaps most cruelly of all, within a year of the accident, Franco had permitted the Ministry of Education to sanction the publication and use in secondary schools of a textbook entitled La moral católica (Catholic Morality) which used the incident to explore the limits of personal culpability.
(#litres_trial_promo) Years later, Don Juan himself related that, when they met in 1960, Franco had justified keeping him off the throne by saying that the Borbón family was doomed: ‘Just look at yourself, Your Highness: two haemophiliac brothers; another deaf and dumb; one daughter blind; one son shot dead. Such an accumulation of disasters in a single family is not something that could possibly appeal to the Spanish people.’
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Franco’s lack of sympathy was a reflection of his hostility to Don Juan, of his own lack of humanity and perhaps too of the fact that, in March 1956, he was cooling on the idea of a monarchist succession. The scale of Falangist discontent that had been evident since the meeting at Las Cabezas seems to have led to him mulling over the mutual dependence between Caudillo and single party. This was manifested in the cabinet reshuffle of 16 February 1956. The liberal Christian Democrat Minister of Education, Joaquín Ruiz Giménez, was dropped, a punishment for his failure to control unrest in the universities. He was replaced by a conservative Falangist academic, Jesús Rubio García-Mina. Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, the Secretary-General of the Movimiento, was also removed for his failure to control Falangist indiscipline. He had been engaged in preparations to tighten up the Francoist laws lest any future king try to free himself from the ideals of the Movimiento. He was replaced by the sycophantic Falangist zealot, José Luis de Arrese. Alarmingly, for both Don Juan and for those who were looking forward to the eventual creation of a Francoist monarchy, the Caudillo commissioned Arrese to take over the programme of constitutional preparations for the post-Franco future.
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Arrese took his commission to be the preparation of an entirely Falangist future for the regime – one that would have no room for Don Juan nor even for Juan Carlos. The enthusiasm with which he went about his ambitious task would soon provoke a significant polarization of the Francoist coalition. Franco’s cabinet changes were ill-considered reactions to a deep-rooted split at the heart of his coalition. The Ley de Sucesión had been a cunning way of neutralizing regime monarchists and outmanoeuvring Don Juan. However, the prospect of a future monarchy, even a Francoist one, alienated the Falange. And Franco had few options but to cling to the Falange. If the Falange were weakened, the Caudillo’s fate would lie less in his own hands than in those of the senior Army officers who wanted an earlier rather than a later restoration of the monarchy. The situation required a complex balancing act and Arrese was more human cannonball than tightrope walker. The violent protests of Falangist students in February 1956 had been a symptom of a long death agony rather than of youthful vitality. With his mind elsewhere, occupied by the inexorable rise of Moroccan nationalism, and thus underestimating the seriousness of the crisis, Franco had responded instinctively by reasserting Falangist pre-eminence within his coalition. He was not controlling events but letting himself be driven by them.
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Some months earlier, prominent Falangists had presented Franco with a memorandum demanding the swift implementation of their ‘unfinished revolution’. It was effectively a blueprint for a more totalitarian one-party State structure with no place for the monarchy of Don Juan.
(#litres_trial_promo) Franco now seemed to be giving the green light for his new Secretary-General to implement the memorandum’s recommendations. Arrese’s plans were seen by Traditionalists, monarchists and Catholics as a totalitarian scheme which would block even limited pluralism under a restored monarchy.
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With the help of Rafael Calvo Serer, the Conde de Ruiseñada, at the time Don Juan’s representative in Spain, elaborated a scheme to block Arrese’s plans by hastening the restoration of the monarchy. Ruiseñada was equally devoted to both Don Juan and to Franco. For some time, he had been in contact with General Juan Bautista Sánchez, the Captain-General of Barcelona, an austere and eminently decent man who was appalled at what he saw as the corruption of the regime. Now, the so-called ‘Operación Ruiseñada’ envisaged a bloodless, negotiated pronunciamiento, rather like that of General Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923. The lead would be taken by the Barcelona garrison, with the agreement of the other Captains-General, and Franco would be persuaded to withdraw from active politics to the decorative position of ‘regent’. While the restoration of the monarchy was implemented, day-to-day running of the government would be assumed by Bautista Sánchez. The involvement of Bautista Sánchez – the most respected professional in the Armed Forces – helped secure the support of other monarchist generals against Arrese. Don Juan had considerable doubts as to whether this wildly optimistic scheme had any hopes of success but, concerned by Arrese’s plans, agreed to let it go ahead.
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Needless to say, Franco’s intelligence services, which bugged most of Don Juan’s telephone conversations with Spain, were aware of what was being plotted. It was thus all the easier for Arrese, on a tour of the south with the Caudillo, to persuade him that a Falangist future rather than a monarchist one would be truer to his legacy. Franco gave vent to his impatience with Ruiseñada and Don Juan in speeches to which he gave, according to a delighted Arrese, ‘a twist of superfalangism and aggression that seemed to many to be announcing the beginning of the final triumphant era’. In Huelva on 25 April 1956, the Caudillo delighted his audience with an unmistakable and insulting reference to the monarchists and to Juan Carlos. He declared that: ‘We take no notice of the clumsy plotting of several dozen political intriguers nor their kids. Because if they got in the way of the fulfilment of our historic destiny, if anything got in our way, just as we did in our Crusade, we would unleash the flood of blueshirts and red berets which would crush them.’
(#litres_trial_promo) At a huge meeting of Falangists in Seville on 1 May, he passionately denounced the enemies of the Falangist revolution. In a passage of his speech that seemed to be directed at Don Juan personally, he referred openly to his own near-monarchical status. Describing the Movimiento with himself at the pinnacle, he said: ‘We are a monarchy without royalty, but a monarchy all the same.’ Stating that national life had to be based on the ideals of the Falange, he declared that: ‘the Falange can live without the monarchy but what could not survive is a monarchy without the Falange.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Many Francoists were happy enough to go along with the Movimiento as long as it remained a vague umbrella institution, but defining it so closely to Falangist terms led many to re-evaluate their own preferences.
One of them, the Minister of Justice, the Traditionalist Antonio Iturmendi, was sufficiently alarmed to commission one of his brightest collaborators to produce a critical analysis of Arrese’s preliminary sketches for constitutional change. It was a decision that would have considerable impact on the later trajectory of Juan Carlos. The man given the job was the Catalan monarchist and professor of administrative law, Laureano López Rodó. His report was to be a blueprint of his growing commitment to the cause of Juan Carlos.
(#litres_trial_promo) The deeply religious and austere López Rodó, who would quickly rise to a discreet but considerable eminence, was a typical senior member of Opus Dei, quietly confident, hard-working and efficient.
More immediately significant, at the beginning of July 1956, General Antonio Barroso Sánchez-Guerra protested to the Caudillo about Arrese’s activities. He was just about to replace Franco’s cousin Pacón as head of the Caudillo’s military household. Along with two other monarchist generals, one of whom may well have been Bautista Sánchez, he discussed with Franco a version of the Operación Ruiseñada, in which a military directory would take over and hold a plebiscite on the issue of monarchy or republic, in the confident expectation that such a consultation would produce support for the monarchy.
(#litres_trial_promo) While hardly likely to go along with Operación Ruiseñada, Franco was sufficiently sensitive to military opinion to begin gradually to restrain Arrese. Nonetheless, when he made a speech to the Consejo Nacional de FET y de las JONS on 17 July 1956, the 20th anniversary of the military uprising, he used notes provided by Arrese, ‘to ensure that he did not say anything, either influenced by other sectors of the Movimiento or in an effort to calm liberal and monarchist anxieties, that might put us in an embarrassing situation later on’.
(#litres_trial_promo) Essentially a long hymn of praise to his own achievements, although not without passing praise for Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the speech reassured Falangists that a future monarchical successor would not be allowed to use his absolute powers to bring about a transition to democracy.
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Unaware that the tide was turning against him, Arrese went ahead with his plans, distributing a draft to members of the Consejo Nacional, the supreme consultative body in the Francoist firmament. Although his text recognized Franco’s absolute powers for life, it left the decision as to his royal successor at the mercy of the Consejo Nacional and the Secretary-General of the Falange. When the text was distributed, there was uproar in the Francoist establishment, and monarchists, Catholics, archbishops and generals joined together in outrage. There were protests from three cardinals, a government minister (the Conde de Vallellano, Minister of Public Works) and several generals, at what seemed to be an attempt to give the Movimiento totalitarian control over Spain and block the return of the monarchy.
(#litres_trial_promo) By early January 1957, Arrese had been obliged to dilute his text sufficiently to satisfy his military and clerical opponents.
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Between the two poles of the proposal of Operación Ruiseñada for a negotiated transition to Don Juan and Arrese’s plans for a resurgent Falangism, there emerged a middle option favoured by Luis Carrero Blanco, who had recently been promoted to Admiral. To the detriment of Don Juan and the benefit of Juan Carlos, this would ultimately be adopted by Franco. It consisted of an attempt to build on the Ley de Sucesión by elaborating the legislative framework for an absolute monarchy, in order to guarantee the continuity of Francoism after the death of the Caudillo. The legal expert commissioned to produce a blueprint was Laureano López Rodó. Carrero Blanco had been immensely impressed by López Rodó’s critique of Arrese’s text. Recognizing his talent and capacity for hard work, at the end of 1956 Carrero Blanco asked him to set up a technical secretariat in the Presidencia del Gobierno (the office of the President of the Council of Ministers) to prepare plans for a major administrative reform.
(#litres_trial_promo) As Secretary-General of the Presidencia, the doggedly loyal Carrero Blanco was Franco’s political chief of staff. As Franco began to relax his grip on day-to-day politics, Carrero Blanco was gradually metamorphosing into a Prime Minister. López Rodó, in his turn, would swiftly become Carrero’s own chief of staff.
The Opus Dei was thus well placed for the future but was still hedging its bets. Just as Rafael Calvo Serer was banking on Don Juan being Franco’s eventual successor, López Rodó was working on a long-term plan for a gradual evolution towards the monarchy in the person of Prince Juan Carlos. His plans would not come to fruition for many years. For the moment, Bautista Sánchez and other partisans of Don Juan were trying to implement the Operación Ruiseñada in order to marginalize Franco and place Don Juan upon the throne. Bautista Sánchez was under constant surveillance by Franco’s intelligence services, and therefore did not attend, in December 1956, a meeting of military and civilian monarchists involved in the scheme who gathered under the cover of a hunting party at one of the estates of Ruiseñada, El Alamin near Toledo.
(#litres_trial_promo) Nevertheless, Bautista Sánchez continued to be seen by the regime as dangerous, particularly when, in mid-January 1957, another transport users’ strike broke out in Barcelona. Although not as violent as that of 1951, the coincidence of anti-regime demonstrations at the university alarmed the authorities.
(#litres_trial_promo) Bautista Sánchez was highly critical of the Civil Governor of the province, General Felipe Acedo Colunga, for the brutal force with which demonstrations of workers and students were crushed. Franco perceived this as tantamount to giving moral support to the strikers.
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Madrid was buzzing with rumours and Franco quickly jumped to the conclusion that Bautista Sánchez was fostering the strike to facilitate a coup in favour of the monarchy. After his summer-time conversation with Barroso about Operación Ruiseñada, Franco was deeply suspicious of the monarchists. In fact, there was little or no chance of military action despite the wishful thinking of Ruiseñada, Sainz Rodríguez and others. However, the conversations between the royalist plotters and Don Juan’s house in Estoril were being tapped by the Caudillo’s security services, and Franco reacted to the transcripts of these optimistic fantasies as if they were fact.
(#litres_trial_promo) He sent two regiments of the Foreign Legion to Catalonia, under his own direct orders, to join in military manoeuvres being supervised by Bautista Sánchez. Franco also sent Bautista Sanchez’s friend, the Captain-General of Valencia, General Joaquín Ríos Capapé, to talk him out of his support for Operación Ruiseñada. The Minister for the Army, General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, also appeared in the course of the manoeuvres and confronted Bautista Sánchez with the news that he was being relieved of the command of Captain-General of Barcelona. On the following day, 29 January 1957, Bautista Sánchez was found dead in his room in a hotel in Puigcerdá.
(#litres_trial_promo) Wild rumours proliferated that he had been murdered – possibly even shot by another general, perhaps given a fatal injection by Falangist agents.
(#litres_trial_promo) A long-term sufferer of angina pectoris, it is more likely that Bautista Sánchez had died of a heart attack after the shock of his painful interview with Muñoz Grandes.
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Meanwhile, Juan Carlos was undergoing the process of getting over the tragedy of Alfonsito’s death. He seems to have adopted a forced gaiety and, understandably for a young man of nearly 19, spent as much time as his studies permitted in the company of girls. There were many of them and he had a readiness to think himself in love. He oscillated between being infatuated with, and just being very fond of, his childhood friend, Princess María Gabriella di Savoia. Neither Franco nor Don Juan approved of the relationship, among other reasons because she was the daughter of the exiled King Umberto of Italy, who had little prospect of recovering his throne.
(#litres_trial_promo) However, in December 1956, during the Christmas holidays at Estoril, Juan Carlos met Contessa Olghina Nicolis di Robilant, an extremely beautiful Italian aristocrat and minor film actress, who was friendly with María Gabriella and her sister Pia. She was four years older than him. His infatuation was instant and, before the night was over, he had told her that he loved her. They began a sporadic affair that lasted until 1960. She found him passionate and impulsive, not at all what she expected after what she had heard about the tragedy of Alfonsito. ‘Juanito,’ she later recalled, ‘did not show any signs of the slightest complex. He wore a black tie and a little black ribbon as a sign of mourning. That was all. I asked myself if it was a lack of feeling or if his behaviour was forced. Whatever the case, it seemed a little soon to be going to parties, dancing and necking.’ After responding to his advances, she asked about his relationship with María Gabriella. He allegedly replied, ‘I don’t have much freedom of choice, try to understand. And she’s the one I prefer out of the so-called eligible ones.’
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In 1988, the 47 love letters that Juan Carlos wrote to Olghina between 1956 and 1959 were published in the Italian magazine Oggi and later in the Spanish magazine Interviú. One of the letters was extraordinarily revealing both of the situation in which the 19-year-old Prince found himself and of his relative maturity and sense of dynastic responsibility. He wrote: ‘At the moment, I love you more than anyone else, but I understand, because it is my obligation, that I cannot marry you and so I have to think of someone else. The only girl that I have seen so far that attracts me physically and morally, indeed in every way, is Gabriella, and she does, a lot. I hope, or rather I think it would be wise, for the moment, not to say anything about getting serious or even having an understanding with her. But I want her to know something about how I see things, but nothing more because we are both very young.’ He repeated the message in another letter to Olghina in which he pointed out that his duties to his father and to Spain would prevent him ever marrying her.
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In her memoirs and in interviews following the publication of the letters, Olghina claimed that Don Juan had done everything possible to put obstacles in the way of the relationship. As she herself realized, Don Juan’s opposition put her in the same position as Verdi’s La Traviata, the courtesan abandoned because of the needs of her suitor’s family. In view of the innumerable lovers whose names tumble through the pages of her memoirs, Don Juan’s concern was entirely comprehensible. At one point, he stopped her being invited to the coming-out celebration in Portofino for Juan Carlos’s cousin, María Teresa Marone-Cinzano. According to Olghina, this provoked a ferocious row between Don Juan and his son, who threatened not to go to the ball. Juan Carlos eventually agreed to attend, but when he left early to go to see Olghina, there was a scuffle with his father.
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