The Pretender's Cabinet

Spanish law decrees that Generalissimo Francisco Franco will one day be succeeded by a king or else a regent. But who? For years Spaniards have debated the question, but it took Franco's new and liberalized press laws to show how divided public opinion is on the subject. Since the law went into effect three months ago, the letters and editorial columns of Spain's dailies have been filled with increasingly confusing debates among supporters of the seven assorted claimants to the throne.

The premier Pretender, Don Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, 52, third son* of Spain's last King, Alfonso XIII, decided to try to clarify the picture. Last week he named the first five members of an eight-man "secretariat" that will function as a sort of cabinet, supplement the 60-man privy council that already advises him, and seek to unify the monarchists. The head of the new secretariat is Jose Maria de Areilza, the Count of Motrico, who has acted as Franco's ambassador to Argentina, France and the U.S. To improve "domestic relations"--meaning contacts with the Franco government--Don Juan chose Florentine Perez Embid, a prominent Madrid University historian and member of the influential Opus Dei movement. Though the new secretariat would resign if Don Juan assumes the monarchy, in the meantime it can promote in Spain what Don Juan cannot do from exile: the image of a benevolent, progressive constitutional monarch as the best alternative to the present regime.

* The eldest, Don Alfonso, inherited the family hemophilia and bled to death after a 1938 auto accident; the second, Don Jaime, a deaf-mute, renounced the throne, though he later renewed his claim.

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