Si

All over Spain, the word was si. FRANCO SI proclaimed a sign that covered four stories of a skyscraper in downtown Madrid. VOTE SI FOR LA PAZ echoed posters on the walls and lampposts of every Spanish town. Spanish movie stars filmed television spots to prove that they wanted to si as well as be seen, and flamenco dancers hammered out special si seguidillas with their heels. To be sure that no one missed the message, billboards from Cadiz to Catalonia displayed a silky senorita in an overstuffed sweater, urging motorists to vote si.

All told, the Spanish government spent more than $1,000,000 in an effort to get voters out in force to approve the new constitution presented to them three weeks earlier by Francisco Franco. It was a document that looked to ward the day when Franco will no longer be around, and the regime was taking absolutely no chances that it would be turned down. Any and all arguments against it were relentlessly suppressed. What the Franco government wanted was a simple vote of confidence in the wisdom of El Caudillo.

They got it. In all, 19,289,344 Spaniards--88.5% of the electorate--streamed to the polls, and 95.9% of them voted si. So overwhelmingly was the vote, in fact, that it embarrassed some of Franco's most ardent admirers. "We could have allowed the opposition to speak and still won 70%," said one Spanish official. "And 70% is a landslide victory anywhere."

The document that Spain approved represents no great leap toward Western-style democracy, but it is at least a step in the direction of political liberalization. It guarantees religious freedom to the tiny minority of Spaniards--30,000 Protestants and 6,000 Jews--who were not born into Catholic families. It confirms the law of last year that relaxed government controls over the labor movement, including the right to strike, and all but destroys the already hollow shell of the Falangist Party. It also creates direct elections for one-fifth of the members of Parliament; the other four-fifths will continue to be selected by the government.

Providing an Answer. By far the most important accomplishment of the new constitution, however, is that it provides an answer for the first time to the question that has plagued Spain ever since the civil war: What will happen when Franco dies? As before, his regime will have to choose between a king (most probably Don Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, 53, the liberal-minded pretender to the Spanish throne) and a regent (favored by antimonarchists as a device to turn Spain into a republic). But the new constitution provides some guarantee that the death of Franco, who until now has been virtually the sole and single source of full power, will not create such chaos that no choice is possible. It specifies that Franco must remain as chief of state for as long as he lives, but gives him "permission" to step aside as chief of government and turn over operating control of the regime to a premier of his own choosing--if he so desires.

The indications are that he will. If so, he will have established the machinery for an orderly continuity that Spain so long has lacked.

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