Family Affairs

Thin, nervous, ambitious Don Ramon Serrano Suner found the road to success was comparatively easy. While his fat-bottomed brother-in-law, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, was crushing Spanish Loyalists, Serrano skulked behind the lines, building up the Falange Espanola Tradicionalista. As head Falangista, Serrano controlled Spain's sole political party with a claimed membership of some 2,500,000. As head of the Ministry of Press and Propaganda he controlled what all Spaniards (supposedly) read and thought. As Minister of the Interior he controlled what they ate and when they went to prison. When he became Foreign Minister in 1940, he tried to control Spain's foreign policy and channel it into full Axis collaboration. He was doing all right until last week. Then he got the bounce.

Disease. From a family standpoint, Don Francisco Franco had plenty of reason to smack down his upstart inlaw. Serrano had dutifully fathered the six children of Senora Zita, handsome sister of Franco's wife. But a few months ago, Spaniards reported with bitter humor, Serrano had presented his wife with a social disease. His name was linked in Madrid cafe jingles to at least three women: the wife of a South American diplomat, the sister of a Spanish writer and a comely actress.

If these extramarital relaxations were not enough, then there were two other good reasons for dropping Serrano into the political ashcan. Three months ago in Rome, Pope Pius XII dressed him down for his sparsity of morals and his abundance of pro-Axis sympathies. Leaving the audience in a white rage, Serrano reportedly cracked: "This fellow is impossible!" In Catholic Spain the slur was intolerable. Even worse was Serrano's bumble of Aug. 15 when his Falangist thugs tossed a grenade into a crowd coming out of Bilbao Cathedral.

The Falangistas intended to kill War Minister General Jose Varela, twice winner of Spain's Grand Laureled Cross of St. Ferdinand, who relieved the siege of the Alcazar in Spain's preview of World War II. The grenade killed four people, but not General Varela. He demanded Serrano's scalp and the execution of the Falangistas involved. (A Madrid dispatch broadcast from Germany last week reported that one Juan Jose Dominguez was executed "for throwing hand grenades.")

Disaster. A previously inept politico, Franco demonstrated that the stress & strain of being dictator of a gaunt, proud land still in a state of civil war had taught him a few lessons. He canned both General Varela and Serrano in a Cabinet shakeup that became an international sensation.

As his new Foreign Minister, Franco named blond, blue-eyed General Francisco Gomez Jordana y Souza, an anti-Falangist Tradicionalista who was Foreign Minister when the U.S. recognized Franco's Government in 1939. Count Gomez Jordana is considered less pro-Axis than Serrano but was loudly pro-German in World War I.

Franco himself took over the post of chief of the Falange, naming as the Party's vice president Manuel Mora Figueroa, an aggressive Falangist just returned from service with Spain's Blue Division fighting Russia. Without a quiver of regret for Serrano, the Falange newspaper Arriba declared: "Our internal policy follows its unmistakable line and our foreign policy is sealed with blood and reaffirmed in silent heroisms."

To be his new Minister of Interior, Franco chose Bias Gomez Perez, who loudly brayed: "Repression with unswerving energy of all provocations or acts of sabotage." Gomez replaced Colonel Valti Galaraza Morante, a militarist who feuded with Falangist civil governors in 1941.

It is axiomatic that all Spaniards by temperament are agin the government, even if they like it. It was evident that Dictator Franco was still trying to get some sort of political unity in a land where millions still hate him and the men who stand with him. His greatest problem has been to try to reconcile the Falange and the Catholic Church. The Falange, preaching Spartan morals, worker syndicates and Fascist ideology, has fought with the church over early child training and with business interests fearing leftism. At the same time the Falange has tangled with militarists who say they won the war and have a winner's right to rule, and with Monarchists who want Spanish rule returned to the House of Bourbon. Needing the Falange for political support, Franco also knows that its practices and pipsqueak pomp are anathema to the Spanish people.

Distress. Berlin and Rome, having buttered up Serrano as their pride & joy, had no ready explanations for his new role as whipping boy. In a sense his dismissal was a diplomatic slap, but it meant no sudden switchover in Franco's generally pro-Axis policy.

U.S. Ambassador Carlton J. H. Hayes, Catholic scholar from Columbia University, stayed on the job and had an interview with Serrano during the time the Nazis broadcast, inaccurately, that he had flown to Gibraltar. Hayes's able diplomacy and Rooseveltian chatter about U.S. post-war tourist plans were seen by some as forerunners of a more friendly attitude from Franco. But Franco has remained neutral for other sound reasons: 1) An open break with the Allies would ruin Falange propaganda and espionage work in the Western Hemisphere; 2) Spain would become a potential invasion point for the Allies; 3) Franco does not dare arm a population where probably 90% of his people oppose his regime. Fat Franco was still in a position to switch to the Axis if he became convinced the Allies would lose. At home he had ridden out a squall.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.