A Mood of Unease

I beg you to pay attention to the tensions that manifest themselves in different sectors of our national life.

-Madrid Archbishop

Casimiro Morcillo Gonzalez Let no one, from without or within harbor the least hope of being able to alter in any respect our institutional system.

-Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco,

Spain's Vice President These statements recently electrified Spam, where protest is still a tentative testing affair. The speakers, representing the church and the armed forces earned the force of two powerful arms of the political triad that has supported the rule of Generalissimo Francisco Franco for 32 years (the third being the aristocracy). One man is a usually conservative cleric, pleading with the government to be more liberal; the other is the officer who administers Spain on a day-to-day basis, warning the country against liberalism. Both addressed themselves to the same phenomenon: the mood of questioning, dissatisfaction and anxiety that has come over today's Spain.

Though the country's spreading sense of unease began long before De Gaulle's present troubles, and goes to the very core of Spain's Establishment, the upheaval in France has served to sharpen and intensify it. Spain has never been exactly a contented country--it has always had too many inequities, too much passion for that-- but at no time in recent history has it been beset by such a sense of frustration.

Modern Hero. The frustration is felt t almost every level of Spanish life and has taken particularly deep root among Spain's 12 million workers, whose labor syndicates are creatures of Franco's government and easily bend to its will. In hopes of lobbying for labor gains, Spain's workers have boldly launched a grass-roots organization of their own as a rival to the syndicates. Called the Workers' Commissions movement, it has spread rapidly iow has chapters in factories all over Spain; it has also reached some white-collar employees, such as bank clerks and office personnel. In theory, the commissions are illegal, but in fact they are tacitly tolerated by the government, though one of their organizers, ex-Socialist Marcelino Camacho, is now on trial in Madrid on charges of leading an illegal demonstration. As a result, Camacho has become something of a modern Spanish hero.

At first the commissions' tactics were cautious, involving in-plant petitioning agitation and brief work stoppages. But as the movement grew, it acquired the support of students, churchmen, and political groups ranging from liberal Monarchists to the Communist Party . Non- violence remains its credo, but the threat of more audacious and aggressive action is always there. Some plant executives leaving the factory parking lot at day's end now prudently check to be sure that their brake-fluid lines have not been cut or their tires slashed. On May Day, the Workers' Commissions turned out such a huge crowd of marchers that the government nervously called full "red alert" and positioned police and riot squads all over Madrid.

Factory Priests. The movement has acted as a catalyst for other segments of Spanish society. In support of it and of their own complaints against the regime, Spanish students rioted at the University of Madrid earlier this spring and forced it to close for more than a month. Three weeks ago, trouble erupted there again when hundreds of students chanting "We want liberty of expression" battled the police with stones, set furniture ablaze and smashed windows.

Looking nervously over his shoulder at France, whose turmoil has been thoroughly chronicled in the Spanish press, Franco has since made his first concession to the students. To alleviate congestion in the nation's overcrowded universities, the government promised to open three new universities in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao and add smaller polytechnical institutes in two other cities. But student militants remained unimpressed, and last week several hundred demonstrators took over the schools of philosophy and letters, science, and economics at the University Madrid, threw up barricades, and held their ground for more than two hours before vacating the buildings and turning them back to the school authorities.

Fired with a desire not to be left behind in isolation from students and workers, more and more Roman Catholic priests are also backing the Workers' Commissions and helping to organize them, even demonstrating alongside the students. Almost 100 priests have obtained permission from their bishops to work in factories or on construction jobs.

Loss of Confidence. Adding to the rising unease is a slack in the four-year economic boom that, beginning in 1962, thrust Spain into the 20th century world of rapidly rising industrial wages new cars and washing machines, The lull has created unemployment and put a brake on wage increases. Above , it has cost the government the confidence of many businessmen who had always staunchly supported Franco. The government gives the impression of not knowing quite what to do about either the economy or the popular unrest, and this impression is strengthened by the fact that Franco seems to spend more time fishing than tending to government. When it comes to any internal threat to his power, however, he is at 75, just as agile as ever at playing rivals off against one another. In some ways, what rankles many Spaniards most is the government's retreat from its promise to relax its tight rein over significant portions of the country's life. After a strike shut down a Bilbao steel plant for seven months, the 1965 right-to-strike law was revoked, a bitter blow to labor. The much heralded press law of 1966 had its freedom riders seriously curtailed by the inclusion of press offenses in the penal code, which provides the regime with a handy means of punishing dissenting opinion.

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