Out of Mothballs

Weakest leg of the three-legged stool (army, church & Falange) which supports General Franco in power is the Falange. Thirteen years of political stock-jobbery have riddled the Falange like a colander. Recently, seeking American aid, Franco has played down the role of the party that was once his pride & joy. But last week, his quest for money, military aid and international friendship beginning to seem fruitless, Franco decided to build up the Falange again.

The idea was first put forward by mustachioed Pascual Marin, fanatical young (35) Falange boss of Segovia: take the blue shirts out of mothballs and stage a rally of the old guard. Labor Minister Jose Antonio Giron, leader of the Falange extremists, was all for it, but there was opposition from 1) Falange moderates, happy in their cushy government jobs; 2) the monarchists, who fear that a reawakening of Falangist activity may mean the end of Pretender Don Juan's chances of getting the throne; 3) the army, one of whose spokesmen said: "We prefer commemorating wars in which the beaten enemy was a foreign invader, not misled countrymen"; 4) the church, expressing itself through a Catholic Action leader: "Civil war is sometimes a necessity, but always hideous. The wound must be healed and forgotten, if we don't wish to perpetuate the source of man's evil: hatred."

But Franco had the last word: "The existence of the Falange is a necessity for the very life of Spain," he said. Echoed the official Falange daily, Arriba: "The Falange saved Spain from the sin of Liberalism. We have won a supreme right which cannot be canceled, no matter how strong the wind blows."

At week's end the Falangists gathered in the throne room of Segovia's Alcazar: a mere 300 Blue Shirts, a few army officers--some wearing the German Iron Cross--and three former army chaplains. Presiding was General Moscardo, defender of Toledo's Alcazar. At night the Falangists paraded Segovia's floodlighted streets, singing songs and shouting Falange slogans.

But the big show was on Sunday, when 30,000 Falangists from all over Spain converged at Lion's Heights (35 miles northwest of Madrid), the Guadarrama pass dividing New and Old Castile. They cheered "Viva Giron!" when the swarthy Labor Minister cried: "For us, fighting is easy; we love war, we yearn for the feel of a gun in our hands!" The applause to his hour-long speech showed him as the only individual in Spain outside of Franco with personality and popularity of his own. As for Franco himself, his faint voice and prepared script were anticlimactic, as he declared: "If war comes, it will not resemble others. Communism cannot be fought by the inoperative liberal doctrines of the old nations. It is necessary to fight them with new ideologies." A forest of arms stretching up in the old Fascist salute showed what ideology Franco was referring to.

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