Pomp, Prayer and Protest

"He is obviously a man with a lot on his mind," explained a government official in Madrid. He was accounting for the solemnly noncommittal look on the face of King Juan Carlos I last week as he received the cheers of a crowd almost three times bigger than the one that had seen off Franco's funeral cortege the previous Sunday. Although Queen Sofia seemed to enjoy the adulatory crush of those gathered in Madrid's Plaza de Oriente, the King remained impassive. In the supportive presence of French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, West German President Walter Scheel, U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Britain's Prince Philip, Spain's new King had just decorously assumed power during an official anointing ceremony at the Church of San Jeronimo in Madrid. The fac,ade of an orderly transfer of power from Francisco Franco to his designated heir was persuasively preserved, but a hundred questions were left hanging over the elaborate ritual of pomp and prayer.

Candid Warning. Among the things the King had to mull over was an unexpectedly candid warning from Vicente Cardinal Enrique y Tarancon, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Madrid. In a televised sermon delivered during the accession ceremonies, Cardinal Tarancon announced the church's intention to speak out "and shout if necessary" to protect human rights and liberties in Spain. The church would demand, he added, that Juan Carlos' government "promote the exercise of adequate freedom for all and the necessary common participation in all the problems and decisions of government."

As a kind of promissory gesture toward the liberalization demanded by opponents of Francoism, Juan Carlos last week granted a general pardon that will affect some 70% of Spain's prison population. The royal pardon, however, will apply to only about half the estimated 2,000 prisoners who are serving sentences or awaiting trial for political offenses. Among those the decree explicitly excluded were 250 or so prisoners who have been charged with crimes of terrorism, propagandizing for terrorism or membership in Communist and separatist groups condemned under the draconian legislation approved last July by the Franco regime. The death penalty will not be imposed upon anyone convicted before Juan Carlos' accession, but that was the only concession that the King made to opposition demands for immediate release of all prisoners arrested under the July decree.

To protest the limits on the pardons, 3,000 demonstrators -- perhaps the largest crowd the outlawed Spanish Communist Party has dared muster since the end of the Civil War in 1939 -- gathered outside the Carabanchel Prison in the southwest outskirts of Madrid. As the Te Deum mass for Juan Carlos was scheduled to begin at San Jeronimo, the protesters marched on the sprawling prison, where a number of prominent leftists, including Trade Union Leader Marcelino Camacho, were incarcerated. Mounted police charged the crowd and dispersed them with tear gas, clubs and a water cannon. There were no injuries, and the 23 people arrested were released within 24 hours.

There were other signs last week indicating Spain's movement toward democratization may be glacially slow. In the Galician city of La Coruna, 30 people were arrested for "illegal association," and four others were charged with distributing "subversive" material. The Public Order Court in Madrid sentenced seven members of the workers' commissions -- outlawed associations allied with the trade unions -- to jail for terms of six months to three years. The Information Ministry also banned a press conference called for foreign newsmen in Madrid last week by Socialist Workers' Party Leader Felipe Gonzalez, and threatened newsmen with "mass arrests" for attending unauthorized conferences.

"Nothing has changed in Spain," Socialist Spokesman Carlos Zayas told reporters who had been locked out of the International Press Club building. Some journalists who later gathered at a nearby bar to receive a written statement from Gonzalez were interrogated by plainclothes policemen. The Information Ministry also seized an issue of the newsweekly Cam bio 16 for an editorial calling for reform under the King. Earlier in the week the magazine had been forbidden to print a poll showing that most Spaniards want major changes in the 1966 constitution imposed by Franco.

Long Shadow. Juan Carlos' power to appease his opponents -- at least for the near future -- may be severely limited by the laws and institutions Franco established to perpetuate his regime. At week's end Juan Carlos was debating whether to ask for the resignation of Conservative Premier Carlos Arias Navarro or ask that Arias stay and replace the implacable right-wingers in Spain's present 19-man Cabinet. But a new Premier cannot be appointed without approval of the Council of the Realm -- a 17-man body that is almost entirely dominated by Franco hard-liners -- and the King's choice of a new Premier would be limited to three candidates selected by the Council.

Even in death, Franco last week cast a long shadow over the path of his chosen successor -- and over the country he had ruled for 36 years. Flags flew at half-mast throughout the country, and shop windows blossomed with black-bordered photographs of the departed Caudillo. Television carried replays of old Civil War footage, and news kiosks overflowed with magazines recounting the Franco legend in print and pictures. One weekly even featured a tear-out plastic disk with recorded speeches of the Generalissimo.

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