The Balance of Forces in Spain

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In 1963 the United States can renegotiate her alliance with Spain. If neither party were to raise new conditions, the ten-year-old alliance would be automatically extended, to last another ten years. However, General Franco has already hinted that he wants to bargain for further military aid. The political structure of the country with which the U.S. Government is now probably preparing to confirm its friendship is at an especially interesting stage.

The National Movement, the Falange Española Tradicionalista de las JONS, is even less of a party than most single parties in authoritarian states. It derives from General Franco's clever amalgamation of the Carlists (Tradicionalistas) and the semi-Fascists of the Falange who were his main non-military supporters in the civil war. The most fervent Carlists and Falangists were either expelled or kept outside, and today the few radical Falangists (of whom the most extreme is the small hectic group known as "Young Nation") are nearly as critical of General Franco as is any Socialist. The Falange proper is really no more than the bureaucracy which staffs the ministries and the various organizations, including old soldiers who make use of the Falange ideology to gather some popular appeal. This ideology is partly simply emotive-making use of the phrases of the epoch of the civil war such as "crusade of liberation"-and partly based on the radical aspirations of the ambivalent founder of the Falange, José Antonio Prime de Rivera; but most of the original Falangists remaining-possibly as many as 60 percent of the pre-civil-war members were killed between 1936 and 1939-have settled down as rniddle-aged businessmen, profiting from the recent industrial successes or from the more long-standing profiteering.