Here Come the Socialists

Their election seems certain after Suarez quits his party

Ever since Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo took office in early 1981, his Union of the Democratic Center Party has been buffeted from both ends of the political spectrum. The very Cortes vote to approve his appointment was interrupted as right-wing army officers staged an aborted coup d'etat that raised ominous questions about Spain's fragile, four-year-old democracy. Then last spring, the Socialist Party of Felipe Gonzalez won regional elections in Andalusia, outpolling the U.C.D. by a stunning 52% to 13%. Last week the U.C.D. was reeling from another, perhaps fatal, shock: former Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez's announcement that he was abandoning the U.C.D., which he had founded in 1977, to form his own party, the Democratic and Social Center (C.D.S.).

Major defections, from both the U.C.D.'s left and right wings, had so seriously eroded its power in the Cortes that the party seemed in danger of disintegrating before the next elections, which must be held by March 1983. Suarez's departure has now so thoroughly undermined Calvo-Sotelo and the party that the Prime Minister will almost surely have to call elections this fall. The expected result: the virtually certain emergence of a Socialist government.

Long known to be troubled by the U.C.D.'s drift to the right under the lusterless Calvo-Sotelo, Suarez made his break "because the U.C.D. is now an impossible project." Even so, his new party bears a striking resemblance to the original Union. Sketching out a vague manifesto, Suarez called for a free-market economy and a society "where all rights and liberties are guaranteed." But he is most deeply worried about a dangerous left-right polarization in Spanish politics, a split, he fears, that could fundamentally threaten Spain's young democracy.

Suarez has been privately critical of the government's unwillingness to crack down on reactionary elements in the military after the attempted coup last year and of its failure to press for reform, especially in the training of officers. The charismatic Suarez won the respect of his countrymen by refusing to dive for cover when the submachine gun-toting golpistas invaded the Cortes. "Our aim," he now says, "is to present to the electorate a credible idea of a viable center in Spanish political life."

The new party has little chance of becoming a dominant force by election time. Indeed, Suarez insists that he does not want to govern again, and he has ruled out a coalition with the Socialists before the elections. Says Party Leader Suarez: "We will campaign as long as we have the funds, and after that we will go around with our own spray cans."

Disclaimers aside, Suarez clearly hopes to play a pivotal role in the next Cortes. Currently, the Socialists hold 119 seats in the 350-member Chamber of Deputies, and they are expected to gain at least another 30 or so in the elections. That would put them within striking distance of the 176-seat majority needed to form a government. If the newly created Center Party musters enough seats to help make up the difference and put the Socialists into office, it could ward off a growing challenge from a right-wing coalition led by Popular Alliance Leader Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a onetime minister under Francisco Franco. That, apparently, is Suarez's aim. "The possibility of coalitions is a matter to be reckoned with after elections," the former Prime Minister said last week. "The Socialist Party knows that it can count on our support and our respect if they win."

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