Lost Momentum

And a sense of national drift

In the four years since the death of Dictator Francisco Franco, Spaniards have discovered that there is a lot more to making their new democracy work than dropping slips of paper into ballot boxes. Last week 946,000 voters in three Basque provinces went to the polls to elect a local parliament; the central government of Premier Adolfo Suarez had calculated that this new assembly might bring stability to the violence-prone region, isolating ETA terrorists, who have already killed twelve officials and claimed scores of bombings so far this year. The government strategy backfired: political parties allied with the ETA, which demands independence for the Basques, won 17 of the parliament's 60 seats. As a whole, Basque autonomist parties captured 42 seats to a mere six for Suarez's Madrid-based centrists. In the capital, senior members of the government morosely described the result as "a disaster."

The Basque upset was the latest in a series of political twists that have contributed to a sense of national frustration. With it has come a growing skepticism about the durability of Spain's new democratic institutions. Much of the disappointment and blame has been directed against Suarez's cautious leadership, and a senior government official concedes: "We have lost momentum." The once thriving Spanish economy has slowed painfully. Unemployment, already over 10%, has been swollen by hundreds of thousands of migrant workers forced home by industrial cutbacks elsewhere on the Continent. Fully half a million of the jobless are young first-job seekers, a group that is prone to political exploitation. Though inflation has been halved in the past two years to about 15%, investments have been drying up because diminishing confidence in the future--combined with the Spanish oligarchy's traditional fear of socialism--has prompted the wealthy to send capital to Latin America.

Battle lines are also being drawn over legislation before the Cortes (parliament) concerning two bitterly divisive issues: legalized divorce and secular education. Both measures are not only anathema to the still powerful Roman Catholic hierarchy, but are also hotly contested by the left, which wants even greater reform. Such controversies point up the paralyzing disunity within Suarez's own Union of the Democratic Center, which is less a political party than a loose coalition of moderates ranging from centrist liberals to former Franco conservatives.

Despite their complaints about Suarez, few politicians believe that the Premier is likely to be unseated soon; all parties agree that another election would not really change the present balance of forces. But Suarez has shown signs of personal frustration. He has tended to withdraw inside Madrid's Moncloa Palace and surround himself with a coterie of protective advisers. An aide even goes so far as to liken his isolation to that of Richard Nixon in the White House.

One ominous symptom of malaise is the growing visibility of a neofascist movement called the Fuerza Nueva (New Force). The party, led by a wealthy Madrid lawyer named Bias Pinar, 62, attracts alienated youth from some of Madrid's best families, who mix with a cadre of thugs and shadowy political operatives adept at exploiting a residual streak of nostalgia for the Franco era. Fuerza Nueva captured 350,000 votes--a mere .02%--in last year's national election. But the ultrarightists attract disproportionate attention with fiery street rallies and attacks, with iron bars and bicycle chains, against leftists. Pinar, who makes no pretense of upholding democratic pluralism and civil liberties, justifies the violence as "legitimate self-defense against terrorism." No one believes that the Fuerza Nueva is at present a realistic threat to democracy, but some politicians fear that if the country's political drift is not checked, the neofascists could represent a warning for the future.

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