Conspiracy theories usually give us easy answers to difficult problems. They are used to explaining the great events of history as the product of shady dealings by people who remain in the shadows, pulling the strings of events with unlimited power. If we talk about the Spanish Transition, this trend towards the most bizarre version is evident. Instead of analyzing the complex elements of that process, it is easier to attribute it to the design of a few people.
It has been said that the transition from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy was designed in the United States. Within the traditional anti-Americanism on the Spanish left, nothing could be easier to suppose that all the political change had been cooked up in Washington, at the heart of imperial power. From this point of view, Spain would have limited itself to being a subordinate actor within the framework of the logic of the Cold War.
Within this vision, the true great architect of the Transition would not have been Adolfo Suárez, nor Juan Carlos I, but Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State – Foreign Minister – with Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A professor at Harvard University, he had already been an adviser to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson when Nixon appointed him National Security Advisor in 1969.
We have very interesting information on Spanish-American relations thanks to declassified documents. Spain, in the early 1970s, had become more relevant to the United States in strategic terms. During the Yom Kippur War, the Americans used their bases in Spanish territory to supply Israel in its fight against various Arab countries.
The White House did not bother to ask for the opinion of the Franco government, which expressed its discomfort at US unilateralism, although it did not go so far as to denounce the agreements between the two countries. The dictator could not go too far in public, because that would have implied giving arguments to the anti-militarism of the opposition to the regime.
The situation, then, was somewhat tense when Kissinger appeared in Madrid on December 19, 1973. At that time, he and his collaborators were studying how to pressure the Spaniards to ease their resistance. Washington was thinking, for example, of supporting the decolonization of the Sahara or siding with the British, abandoning its traditional neutrality, regarding the dispute over Gibraltar.
According to a message Kissinger sent to Ford about the visit, the conversation with General Franco, whom he had found to be in very weak physical condition, took place without remarkable incident (“The talk with Franco . . . novelty”).
Regarding the then Prince Juan Carlos, the Secretary of State drops a laudatory comment, considering him a “quite impressive” young man. The relationship between the two, it seems, develops smoothly. On a previous occasion, Kissinger had informed his president that the current king emeritus was “quite pro-American” and that, for this very reason, he wanted to maintain a friendly relationship with him.
Kissinger was convinced that the prince was going to be an important element in placing the country on the path of stability. But, at the same time, he did not stop expressing doubts about his abilities: he considered him a naive who believed that everything could be fixed with good intentions. Even so, he considered it necessary that Franco hand over power to him without delay.
What did the head of US diplomacy know about Spain? Judging from his words, his vision was based on old stereotypes. We were, in his eyes, a nation lurching violently from anarchy to authoritarianism. When he thought of us, the words that came to mind were “death”, “sacrifice”, “tragic” or heroic”, according to the commonplaces about a country with people supposedly more visceral than trained to use the reason.
Kissinger takes advantage of the occasion to meet with Admiral Carrero Blanco, President of the Government at that time. A day later, on December 20, Franco’s right-hand man died in an ETA attack. Were the Americans aware that an assassination was going to take place so close to his embassy? Were they complicit in the murder?
Although much has been speculated about it, nothing has been proven. In fact, the theory is implausible. Why would an anti-communist like Kissinger want to eliminate another anti-communist like Carrero Blanco, whose rise to the presidency a few months earlier he had watched with satisfaction?
The Secretary of State, like his boss, President Nixon, had no problem dealing with dictators, as long as it served their national interests. The truth is that, despite representing a democratic state, Kissinger did not fail to feel some consideration towards Franco, in whom he saw a much less repressive ruler than any of those in the communist world.
He also thought that the dictator had laid the foundations for a change towards “more liberal institutions” to take place after his disappearance. This opinion was based on the academic literature of the time: for authors such as Barrington Moore or Seymour Martin Lipset, the more economic development there was, the greater the chances that a state would adopt democracy.
As Charles Powell, perhaps the historian who best knows US-Spanish bilateral relations, points out, Washington wanted, after Franco’s death, a peaceful evolution towards democracy without a radical break with the past. The concern of the White House, in geostrategic terms, was to guarantee access to its military bases in Hispanic territory. On the other hand, he wanted the future democratic Spain to join NATO, thereby strengthening the Western bloc in a world that had not yet emerged from the Cold War.
The White House remained informed about what the opposition was doing in Spain. Kissinger, faced with the imminent disappearance of an already very ill Franco, commissioned a report on the main political groups in the country. His problem, at that time, was to distinguish the important from the secondary, to find out who was worth talking to.
In Madrid, the US embassy contacted, for example, leaders of the PSOE and the UGT. Felipe González told Wells Stabler, the US representative, that his party intended to give Prince Juan Carlos a chance when Franco died, even though he believed he did not know the country well.
If, as some say, Kissinger marked the main lines of the Spanish Transition, the only possible conclusion would be that his efforts ended in failure, because the events went in a different direction than what he wanted. As a fervent anti-communist, the democracy he wanted for Spain did not include the PCE. The United States, he confessed on a certain occasion, was not going to oppose the legalization of the communists, but it would not make a bad face at the Spanish if they left it “without legalizing for a few more years.”
However, Adolfo Suárez brought Santiago Carrillo’s party out of the catacombs. Things, finally, went much faster than the Secretary of State intended. In a private conversation with José MarÃa Areilza, Foreign Minister, the North American recommended that the Government maintain, above all, public order. He had to avoid at all costs an anarchic situation similar to that in Portugal during the recent Carnation Revolution.
Democratization had to take place, the American told Areilza, but at a slow pace to be determined from power. Actions, according to Kissinger, did not matter as much as words: “It is better to promise than to give.” Everything would depend on finding a fair balance to avoid both radicalism and exaggerated continuity. Falling into either of these extremes could lead sooner or later to disaster in the form of political chaos.
It has also been said that Kissinger, in order to weaken Spain, advocated the establishment of an autonomous system. The affirmation is, of course, completely free. The decentralizing evolution of the state had to do with internal factors, not with a guideline set abroad. However, it must be recognized that a character as Machiavellian as the American, the protagonist of real conspiracies such as the one that brought General Pinochet to power in Chile, was ready to ignite all kinds of fantasies in the imagination.
Later on, the former Secretary of State did not hesitate to claim credit for the Transition: “The North American contribution to the Spanish evolution during the 1970s was one of the main achievements of our foreign policy.” This statement, as the reader may suppose, is nothing more than the characteristic self-advertisement of a man with a powerful ego. As Charles Powell says, Kissinger has always been a figure with a high opinion of his own success.
