Spain’s first freely elected premier after Franco era dies at 81

By Marc Rattray

March 23, 2014 10:16 pm

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Adolfo Suárez, who has died aged 81, drove through Spain’s peaceful transition to democracy after 41 years of dictatorship under Franco.

After setting up a new party, the Unión de Centro Democratico, he was elected as the newly liberated country’s first freely elected prime minister in 1977 and was re-elected for a second term in office in 1979. In 1981, some months after his resignation, he won the admiration of the world by standing up and arguing with a pistol-waving member of the civil guard, who stormed parliament in a vain attempt at a coup d’état. He was the only parliamentarian, with the exception of Lt Gen Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado and the Communist leader Santiago Carrillo, who refused to lie down and take cover when the guardsmen began firing on live television. Shortly afterwards, he was awarded a dukedom by the king.

Described by Felipe González, a Socialist successor, as a “clever man without an ideology”, he proved particularly adept at dismantling the key aspects of Franco’s administration, having himself risen through its ranks in his early career. It was he who piloted through a new constitution, legalised trade unions and delicately depoliticised the armed forces by dismissing fascist politicians and generals. It was on his orders that the dismantling of the Cortes was approved, the body which prepared, elaborated and approved laws in Spain. And it was he who offered, to the disgust of many in the ancien regime, full political rights to the Communist party. His office saw the introduction of a new style of politics, which replaced the bombastic and threatening style of Franco’s regime with a new willingness to listen.

Adolfo Suárez González, one of five children of a state prosecutor, was born in 1932 in Cebreros, a Castilian village of 5,000 inhabitants near Avila. His family was drawn from the comfortable middle classes and were strongly Catholic in an area of Spain well known for its religious feeling. A handsome young man, his faith was sufficiently strong to make many of the young women in his village concerned that he would one day become a priest. Instead, after a brief stint as an amateur bullfighter, he enrolled at Salamanca University and later joined the Madrid Bar Association.

A chance meeting then occurred that would change his life. He met Fernando Herrero Tejedor, one of the grandees of Franco’s regime. Although drawn from the higher echelons of the government, Tejedor was by no means a hardline conservative. As a member of Opus Dei, he was also proudly Catholic and Suárez became his protégé.

Suárez was able to find his first steps on the sprawling apparatus of Franco’s regime through Tejedor. Despite showing little commitment to the fascist doctrine he was able to rise through the ranks of the administration by becoming close to the right people. He was also extremely able and hardworking. By 1969, he had become head of television, where he was careful to apply the restraints on the media that high-ranking army officers required.

His new position formed the basis of a later alliance with the king. Instead of informing Juan Carlos, who was then a prince, of the latest government position on a programme, he consulted him and the two men formed a bond. After Franco’s death in 1975, and against all expectation that the king would choose someone so young, Suárez was appointed the interim prime minister.

Suárez’s looks, youth and anonymous background made him an attractive symbol of a new Spain. An eminently practical man, he was able to view dispassionately the practical consequences of different ideologies. Critically, he was not swayed by the familiar demons of Marxism, republicanism and nationalism and managed to steer an even course to democracy in an uneasy political climate.

Undoubtedly benefiting from his interim role, he won Spain’s first democratic election of the post-fascist era in 1977 at the head of the UCD. He had formed the party just two months before the elections and it was bound together by little more than a will to be in power and Suárez’s personality.

Despite protracted recessions and the constant thorn of Basque terrorism in the side of the newly formed government, democracy brought economic benefits to Spain. Large international companies such as Ford and General Motors invested billions of dollars in the country. Political stability brought with it the base of a later, more sustained economic growth that accompanied a maturing, liberalised Spain.

Suárez, who is survived by four of his five children, resigned from the premiership and the leadership of the UCD amid party infighting in 1981. He had objected to its move from the centre to the right. After an abortive attempt to bring to power a second party, the Centro Democrático y Social, he bowed out of party politics for good in 1991.