Return of the "Ultras"?

On cue, shops and banks shut down all over Madrid. Government offices closed, loosing a flood of loyal bureaucrats onto the streets. They joined blue-shirted youths carrying the black-and-red banners of the Falange, aging veterans proudly sporting their Spanish Civil War ribbons, and thousands of ordinary men and women. By high noon, an estimated 500,000 Madrilenos had crowded into the broad Plaza de Oriente, which faces the imposing 18th century royal palace. For two hours, the mob waved banners--one read GOD SAVE US FROM WEAK GOVERNMENT--sang hymns, chanted Falangist slogans, and shot their right arms up in a rigid fascist salute to the empty second-floor balcony.

Not until the horde had settled into a ravenous chant of "Franco! Franco! Franco! Franco!" did the Caudillo step onto the balcony. Dressed in a heavy gray overcoat, and looking all of his 78 years, he could hardly have found his reception disappointing. When the crowd saw Prince Juan Carlos, Spain's future king, at Franco's side, they shouted "Franco solo! Franco solo!" Paling visibly, the young prince quickly stepped back. "Spaniards!" croaked Francisco Franco in his high voice. "Thank you for this explosion of faith and enthusiasm, seconded by the people who believe in the destiny of the motherland."

Street Referendum. Though it was all carefully orchestrated--right down to the light planes towing VIVA FRANCO banners overhead--the mammoth rally nonetheless gave evidence that Franco could still count on the fealty of the working-class Falangists who brought him to power 31 years ago. The last time he had called for such a show of public allegiance was in 1946, when his seven-year-old regime was under extreme pressure from abroad to democratize. This time, the threat was internal--perhaps the most serious Franco has faced.

The focal point of the crisis was not in Madrid, but 130 miles away in Burgos. There in a military court 16 young radicals from Spain's northern Basque country are on trial on charges of assorted "separatist-terrorist-Communist activities." The 16 are members of the E.T.A. (for Euskadi at Askatusana--"Basque Land and Liberty" in Basque), a small, militant group of terrorists who profess to be fighting for local autonomy.

The regime had envisioned the trial as the climax of a two-year campaign to crush, once and for all, a nationalist resurgence in Spain's four Basque provinces. But the kidnaping of Eugen Beihl, a West German diplomat still held hostage somewhere in Spain, proved that the E.T.A. was still in business; moreover, when the trial got under way, an unprecedented wave of strikes, demonstrations and clashes with police erupted in every major city in Spain. Thus the courtroom drama escalated into a kind of noisy street referendum on the regime itself.

Silent Majority. Though most of Spain's 2,000,000 Basques--prosperous, Catholic and deeply conservative--care little about the E.T.A.'s fuzzy vision of "a socialist Basque state," the provinces fell in behind the Burgos 16. Unsettled by stories of police torture and by the fact that two of the defendants are priests. Spain's complacent and pro-Franco bishops united in a plea for "maximum clemency." Even more distressing to the regime were leaked reports that high Spanish officials, among them Foreign Minister Gregorio Lopez Bravo, were grumbling privately about the trial. When 300 prominent artists and intellectuals began a 48-hour sit-in at the Abbey of Montserrat near Barcelona, the center of Spain's Catalan autonomy movement, officials demanded that Abbot Cassia Mauro just throw them all out on grounds that the protest was "a provocation." Replied the burly abbot: "So was the Burgos court-martial."

Last week, though, it was the turn of the "ultras"--Spain's hard-liners--and they struck back in force. Under strong pressure from army officers who filled newspapers with open letters denouncing "outrages committed by minorities," Franco called an emergency Cabinet meeting. The Cabinet invoked emergency powers that allow suspected troublemakers to be jailed for up to six months without trial. Meanwhile, the streets were taken over by what one pro-Franco newspaper, not very originally, called "the silent majority." In Burgos, where the five-man military court was still pondering the case--their decision may not be announced until after Christmas--demonstrators paraded through town chanting "Long live the army!"

Hard-liners v. Technocrats. Never in Franco's rule had Spain's divisions been so deep or so public. The issue was not so much the Basques as the shape of post-Franco Spain itself. A rash of campus protests in Madrid and Barcelona nearly two years ago was all the excuse the generals needed to demand that Franco scuttle his five-year experiment in "liberalization" of state controls on the press, the labor unions and the universities--or face a military coup. There were signs last week that the hard-liners had summoned up the fading Falange to battle a new target: the "technocrats." These are mostly members of the secretive but apolitical Catholic lay organization Opus Dei, whose adherents control much of Spain's commerce and communications.

The Opus Dei technocrats are credited with the financial savvy and discipline that has pulled Spain out of the economic Dark Ages over the past 13 years. Partly as a reward, partly because Franco recognized that they alone could lead Spain into Europe and the Common Market, Franco last winter ceded to them the commanding voice in the government. The ascendancy of Opus Dei has deeply wounded the once supreme Falangists, who fought beside the Caudillo in the '30s. They vented their rage last week in front of the royal palace, shouting "Franco si, gobierno no!"--"Franco yes, the government no!"

The technocrats did not have to shout to make themselves heard. The two most prominent supporters of Opus Dei --Foreign Minister Lopez Bravo and Economic Planning Minister Laureano Lopez Rodo--simply failed to show up at last week's Cabinet meeting.

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