Spain: 40 years since the 78’ Constitution. A critical view and the need for profound changes

Was it a model transition? Can the 78’ regime provide progressive answers? Does the monarchy work? Is there another way out?

Introduction

On November 20 of 1975 Francisco Franco died. This was the official beginning of the so called “transition”, the passage from a dictatorial regime to a democratic one. In 1978 the new Constitution was created, as the new supreme law for Spain’s legal system. It was ratified by a referendum, came into effect the last days of December and was enacted by King Juan Carlos I.

Therefore, what can we expect from a Constitution born out of that transition, with the Francoist political elites controlling the reform process? What can we expect from a Constitution that is born controlled by the same leaders of the previous dictatorial regime?

This Constitution established the parliamentary monarchy as the official form of government, with a territorial organization based on communes, provinces and autonomous communities. The king is the head of state, he moderates state institutions and is the international representative. These are the pillars that, along with the Judiciary, and legislative powers and the armed forces, constitute the bourgeois regime.

With Constitution´s 80th anniversary getting closer, president Pedro Sanchez (PSOE) is hosting several celebrations: debates among former presidents of the PSOE and PP, while Ciudadanos and Vox hold their own events. They have even raised the issue of the need for  partial modifications to the Constitution -mostly reactionary reforms- but that it isn’t possible because there is a lack of consensus. Beyond their electoral fights, they have a strong point of agreement: they are both staunch supporters of the ´78 regime and the transition.

We do not share this opinion and we want to raise several questions that lead to an exchange of ideas: Was the transition an example to be followed? Can this regime offer progressive policies? Is Francoism still part of our institutions? What social sectors does it favor? Is the judicial system independent? What is the role of the monarchy? How was the two-party system established? Is there an alternative? These are some of the questions we will address from a critical viewpoint and the conviction of the need to make profound changes. On this occasion, we will make a historical journey to the present day, including two articles on political assassination and repression during the transition: Yolanda González y Gustau Muñoz.

From the defeat to the dictatorship

The 1936 elections were won by the Frente Popular (Popular Front), conformed by the republican parties, including ERC (Catalan Republican Left), the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party), and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE). The right wing took it as a declaration of war. On July 17 the Francoist military uprising took place in Melilla and a day later expanded to the rest of the peninsula and islands. The coup was successful in some parts and failed in others (Asturias, Basque Country, Cantabria, Murcia, Catalonia, Madrid). The uprising barely had popular support and was based in the army. It had different results in each province, eventually dividing the country.

After this, the structures of the Republic were fractured, and power fell into the hands of workers´ committees organized by political parties and trade unions, without any centralized power.

Despite the massive deployment of workers and peasants, plus the strength of the international brigades, Franco had powerful alliances and ended up defeating the Republicans after the battles of Guernica, Ebro and Catalonia. In March, the Francoist troops arrived in Madrid and on April 1 the war ended, followed by a dictatorship, which ended the democratic period of the Second Republic.

From 1939, Franco and Spain rested on a regime characterized by the concentration of political power in Franco. Anticommunism, anti-parliamentarism, anti-liberalism, national-Catholicism, traditionalism, militarism, all fascist traits, which had violence as its political medium. The consolidation of the regime was built on these bases, followed by a series of economic transformations and failures.

The consolidation of this counterrevolutionary process coincided with the beginning of a phase of defeats and retreat of the European fascist and Nazi regimes, which shows the particularity of the situation in Spain.

Franco´s

For forty years, the dictatorship imposed a brutal level of exploitation on the Spanish working class. At the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s, opposition intensified and the workers and students movement got stronger. However, though it built a rebellious network, it wasn’t able to overthrow the government.

When Franco died in 1975 a breath of fresh air came through the window, workers felt that it was time to break with the past and return to the streets. There were reasons to be optimist: in 1974 the Revolution of the Carnations in Portugal overthrew the Salazar dictatorship, in power since 1926.

A strong rise in the class struggle began, with a series of strikes for wage increases and for democratic demands, such as freedom of association and the release of political prisoners. The struggle of the nationalities also resurfaced. The regime staggered, but finally managed to survive, readjust partially and endure over time. It was able to do so thanks to the collaboration of the PCE and the PSOE, which actively operated to dismantle the mobilization and guarantee the capitalist thirst for profit.

The PCE, joined by the trade union CC.OO. (Workers´Commissions), that was founded during the dictatorship, the PSOE and the UGT (General Union of Workers), agreed with King Juan Carlos Borbón and the Francoist political forces on the future political regime. The agreement confirmed the King as head of state, guaranteed the continuity of the Army, the Civil Guard and the genocidal police with its hierarchical structure. There was no purge in the armed forces and the path to a transparent investigation and the trial and punishment of Franco’s repressors, torturers and assassins was closed.

The agreement was consolidated with the 1977 elections. The question is: Were the elections of ’77 constituent? It was not expressed that a constituent process was going to take place. In fact, they eliminated the parts of the Law of Political Reform that referred to the constituent purpose that said, exactly: “the democratic meaning, will only be acquired by the will of the majority of the people; of a people constituted in the decisive instance of the very reform”. They led Spaniards to reform the laws of a regime that most thought to have been buried.

In that referendum and elections of April ’77, the government of Suárez pacted everything, legalizing some parties and not others, such as Manuel Azaña’s Izquierda Republicana (Republican Left), because it didn’t support the form of state. Why did the Francoist right not restricted in the elections? The PCE was legalized after renouncing its claim for a Republic, and the PSOE had no problems in getting its legalization. Finally the elections had a participation of 78.8% and an abstention of 21.2%.

The people took the elections as they were presented, as constituent, but they were not summoned by a provisional government to gather an assembly that would determine the sovereignty of the people. After setting up the Parliament according to their convenience, leaving out certain parties for opposing a form of state that had not yet been established, the two main issues discussed were: the form of State (return or not to the Republic destroyed by the Franco regime) and the Amnesty Law.

Because of the Amnesty law, those responsible for Francoist crimes can not be judged to this day, there is no Human Rights Commission in Congress and the Register of Associations is kept in the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, as if the people who decide to associate were suspicious. How is this constituent process going to be, if the people could not decide how to punish the Francoist crimes, nor decide the form of State? How is it going to be a constituent process if Francoist minister Rodolfo Martín Villa censured and outlawed public liberties and the plurality of ideas that are the basis of democracy?

This is how the regime of ’78 was formed, based on pacts and the institutionalization of silence (with the Amnesty Law). This continued with the brutal economic austerity of the Pacts of the Moncloa that same year and with the approval of the new Constitution the following year.

The role of the working class and social organizations.

They usually present the transition as a success story that established democracy in Spain as a result of the democratic commitment of all the parties, especially those of “left” led by Carrillo and Felipe González. This version tailored to the interests of the ruling class and the institutional left. It is essential to know what role of the working class played during the Spanish transition, because there are lessons for the present there that let us see the strength and possibilities of a united workers movement.

From the ’60s onward, the mobilizations radicalized. After that year, the working class was industrialized, with the arrival of rural workers to the productive sectors. Along with this regeneration and mobilization, the CC.OO. was created, helping the working organization while in clandestinity.

Slowly, the spirit of struggle was gradually recovered. It began with the strike of the miners in Asturias, which forced the Francoist minister Solís Ruiz to negotiate with them. One of the weaknesses of the regime was that it lacked democratic negotiation mechanisms, which facilitated the expansion of conquests and solidarity in the working class, the people and women. This period called “strike of silence”, was followed by conquests such as the the prohibition of free layoffs and previously unthinkable pay raises, all with the working class at the head, leading the fight against the dictatorship, with courage and determination.

At that time, strikes brought on tremendous repression and were punishable by jail, therefore, endangering life. But the general strike was still the instrument needed to conquer rights, to which the regime responded with repression.

The workers´ willingness to go through this risk was the result of the courage and strength of the class struggle, which was based on that feeling of organization and political activism, which planned and prepared the mobilizations even in the smallest detail. And all this, through the central idea of fighting for socialism and the need for public liberties.

It is worth mentioning the strike that was carried out by more than 800 workers in Vizcaya, against pay cuts and the company imposition of increased work rhythms. Though the strike wasn’t successful, it certainly became a milestone, only stopped when the state applied a state of exception. There were always responses to capitalist attacks, in which the most advanced workers understood that to overthrow the Franco regime they also had to reach their roots. For that reason, in 1976 there were elements of dual power after the general strike of Vitoria, based on company assemblies, negotiation commissions, use of legal channels. The need to attack the root problem was highlighted by the fascist assassination of five CC.OO. lawyers, although it clashed with the interests of the PCE that wanted to agree with the bourgeoisie and keep the masses under control.

The Pacts of the Moncloa

The achievements of these struggles were great, but the Pacts of the Moncloa in 1977, provoked a drop in real wages, and the political parties of the left, nationalism, the government, CGT and CC.OO., “sold the sacrifice of all workers for a false democracy.”

The struggle was continuous and forced the government to give in, but then why did the main left parties and unions support the Pacts of the Moncloa, if this meant a retreat in all rights already achieved? At what point did the leaders of the PCE believe that the forms of workers’ democracy should be neutralized and subordinated to the political pact with the elites of the Franco regime? At the beginning the objective was the general strike, but these pacts imposed a transition from assemblies of workers, to agreements that institutionalized the negotiation between the leaderships.

How did these pacts lower real wages, and impose setbacks in everything gained? Statistical data indicate that inflation rose to 24.6%, unemployment went from 5% to 15-20% in the 80s, a cap on wage increases was imposed, subcontracting, precarity and temporary employment were promoted. CC.OO. and UGT obtained 10% of representation at the national level and 15% at the regional level. All of this, in exchange for entering state institutions.

The main nationalist parties also ended up joining this agreement, renouncing the right to self-determination and accepting limited autonomy in return. This was the case of ERC and the parties grouped in Convergence and Union since the approval of the Statute of autonomy of Catalonia in 1979. This regime of 78, alternating between the PSOE and the PP (Popular Party, the most recent heir of the old Francoist right, today in dispute with Citizens and Vox), with the support of traditional nationalist parties, has for decades guaranteed the Spanish and European bourgeoisie the “stability” it requires to get its profits from workers.

The women’s movement

During the transition, 21 woman and 6 woman senators (out of a total of 700 parliamentarians between the two chambers) were part of a difficult political change and defended the rights of women. From May 1975, women gained a little more independence and the feminist struggle began to be seen.

These women were part of winning basic rights such as the disappearance of the figure of the husband as head of the family, at least in theory and in the Civil Code. One of these feminist leaders was Maria Telo. As a lawyer, she exercised considerable pressure in relation to women’s rights and fought for the modification and conquest of certain rights, for example, being able to open a bank account, accepting an inheritance, appearing in trials and contracting for themselves without needing permission from the husband.

The women’s struggle was also felt in the conquest of laws such as the legalization of contraceptive methods and the retirement pension for the republican teachers persecuted by Franco. They were a group of 27 women who contributed to a political change, creating the article 14 that states that “Spaniards are equal before the law without any discrimination prevailing”. Of course the struggle goes much further, but at that time it was an important achievement.

They leave us an important message: “in politics, it’s not “anything goes”, but there are values to achieve and transmit”. Another thing to note is that many of these women shared the phrase “we will not thank you for anything”.

It is interesting to quote Robespierre: “The people whose leaders are not  held accountable for their actions to anyone, does not have a Constitution. A people whose leaders are accountable only to other inviolable leaders, has no Constitution, since it is up to them to betray it with impunity and let others betray them”.

The Spanish government is only held accountable by the big corporations, a constituent and assembly is therefore necessary to create a new political framework at the service of the majorities with transversal feminist policies.

In this sense, women must also be part of political change, we have to respond to the capitalist and patriarchal attacks we suffer, and leave behind both the regime established by the transition and the entire political class that supported that illegitimate Constitution. This implies deciding a new form of State and regime, without this monarchy that sustains patriarchy, heteronormativity and capitalism.

Unlike other dictatorial regimes, the Franco regime was not defeated by popular mobilization, despite the strength of the working class, with its efforts for unity and organization, something that history books never mention. This way, the bourgeoisie was able to maneuver to make its interests prevail. The political and trade-union leaderships played an important role in avoiding a definitive and categorical break with the past. In short, they helped the transfer of the Franco regime´s antidemocratic precepts, barely camouflaged, into the institutions of formal capitalist democracy. The fresh air that came through the window with the death of the dictator became rare and dense with the transition that was not an example to follow at all. In that process, the same protagonists of the fear of so many years guaranteed the continuity of the central aspects of Francoism.

During that period, there were more than 200 political murders, most of them clearly recognizable, others barely concealed to divert attention. For this reason, we took two of those cases in which the comrades Yolanda González and Gustau Muñoz were victims.

We talked about the past because, without doing so, it is impossible to understand the problems of the present, that look different, but have the same background content. It is impossible not to feel pain and sadness due to civil war and dictatorship. But, turning the page won’t solve our problems, it expands them; it allows contradictions and injustices to continue accumulating, and at some point it will explode in different ways.

There’s another way

The monarchist-Francoist regime has been in crisis for years and we can see its exhaustion, its limitation to provide democratic and social solutions for the majorities. Since the fall of the dictatorship we have voted regularly, but under established mechanisms that favor the PP-PSOE two-party system, the tandem that consolidated corruption. Democracy is imprisoned in the regime of ’78 and neither the PSOE, the PP, Ciudadanos or Vox want to free it with fundamental changes in the Constitution. When they do propose reforms, they are partial or straight up reactionary.

From below, the signs of discontent grow due to the social and political situation and the loss of democratic liberties. The demonstrations of 15-M and the Indignados in 2011 were a clear expression of the weariness of large sectors of society, including the feminist movement, pensioners, Catalans and others.

To get out of the social, political and nationalities entanglement, fundamental social and democratic changes are needed, without half-fast measures. The elections must consecrate proportional representation with direct presidential election. A government under social control, without privileges, with officials receiving a salary equivalent to that of a qualified worker and the obligation to use public services, such as health, education, transportation, etc. like the rest of the population does. With severe punishments to the corrupt.

When there is popular dissatisfaction with government officials, the response is “wait until the term ends and vote differently.” It is inadmissible, it is necessary for all public offices to be recallable and for participatory mechanisms of direct democracy to be acquired, such as the Popular Inquiry, the binding Referendum and others that allow working people to decide on their own destiny.

Franco was buried in the Valley of the Fallen, in the same place as his victims. Many of the fascist symbols and honors that he had granted himself remain intact. We agree with removing the remains of the dictator from the monument to fascism in where they lay, but not with “turning the page”: unpunished crimes committed by the State and against humanity do not prescribe, and must be clarified. Their authors must be taken to trial and punished. Classified state files must be opened and reconstructed, the theft of goods and persons must be clarified in order to compensate the victims or their relatives. All fascist symbols must be removed from the public space.

The monarchical restoration is not symbolic, as some say to divert the attention from such an anachronism. The King, be it Juan Carlos I or Felipe VI, has an active presence in both external and internal affairs: sale of arms to the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia, endorsement of the 1O repression, etc. The royal family enjoys wealth and privileges and protagonizes scandals of all kinds, while the population does not have their basic needs covered. In Republican Spain the monarchy was long gone, but the Franco regime revived it and the transition recycled it to last over time. We must abolish the monarchy. Philip VI and the royal family should go to work, be stripped of their privileges, sumptuous goods and be accountable to justice as any other person.

In the transition to democracy, the Franco regime retained dependent judges and consolidated a judicial system dependent on the political power, partial and at the service of the great economic interests. The judges are chosen by the political power and they answer to it. Judge Pablo Llarena is a brutal expression of that. Following the guidelines of Rajoy and the PP, he did not hesitate when he had to invent false causes of rebellion and sedition against leaders, activists, neighbors and artists, just for thinking differently and democratically defending their idea of self-determination for Catalonia. Faithful to the above mentioned pacts, Pedro Sanchez agreed with the PP to place the reactionary Manuel Marchena in the General Council of the Judicial Power, a measure that later failed because of the popular condemnation.

Against this (in)Justice we propose: liberation of the political prisoners and exiled, with the annulment of trumped up charges. Freedom of ideas, down with the gag law. In order to guarantee popular sovereignty in matters of justice, we must elect and recall judges, implement social control of judicial processes and jury trials, with gender perspective training for magistrates, judges and prosecutors. These are measures to implement a real judicial democratization.

The Catholic Church, a staunch defender of the dictatorship, retains its political and economic power as if nothing had happened. It influences state decisions that violate the democratic rights of women, youth, and the LGBT community. They continue to receive funds from the state that could be destined to meet social needs, they have wealth, privileges and are involved by serious scandals. Against this we propose: freedom of worship, not even one euro of the state for the Catholic Church, those who want a priest should pay out of their own pocket, no to religious education in public schools, no to the interference of Catholicism in people´s sexual life and the right to decide over their own body, free and legal abortion, total separation of Church and State.

The Franco regime also carried out a “cultural genocide” with the abolition of different languages at schools and everyday use, both private and public, with the aim of imposing the use of Castilian and homogenizing society under fascist precepts. Different peoples of the peninsula found their freedom of expression and national and cultural identity under attack. In Catalonia in particular, there is a permanent offensive against the language, the culture and the recognition of the Catalan nation as a historical and genuine expression that should be respected. We are in favor of the recognition of the right to self-determination, and whether or not a people want to be part of the Spanish State and the European Union, which is an imperialist bloc at the service of the powerful. It is the only way for a society without oppression.

The bourgeoisie is still just as favored as with de facto government. Ten years after the crisis of 2008, a clear assessment can be made: the crisis isn’t over, it can return at any moment and it disfigured the social panorama. The bankers, businessmen and the rich were saved from bankruptcy again and again, their profits were more than guaranteed by the PP and PSOE, which indebted us for years with the international loan sharks and subjected us to Brussels´ designs. We must stop this situation: nationalize the banks, foreign trade and the main sources of the economy; no the usurious payments of the debt, nor the impositions of Brussels to the designs of the IBEX35.

On the other side, there is a population that is impoverished in the midst of growing social inequality, prices on the rise, wages are insufficient, access to home ownership is next to impossible and rent rates are abusive. Funds should be destined to health, education, housing, gender and social assistance to the poorest, to immigrants in need and to the socially unprotected.

There is an unprecedented loss of the historical achievements of the working class, submerged in job insecurity, where women, young people and immigrants are the most affected, with miserable pensions for retirees who worked all their lives and with high unemployment figures. This is done with the complicity, by action or omission, of the leaders of the trade union confederations CGT and CC.OO., Accommodated with the powerful and the bosses, they increasingly distance themselves from the working class and their traditional tools of struggle like mobilizations and general strikes.

We propose: cancellation of labor reform laws, increases in salaries and pensions to cover all needs, full recognition of women’s labor and gender rights, equal pay and possibilities of accessing management positions, national housing plan with social fees to solve the need for home ownership, reactivate the economy and eliminate unemployment. The crisis must be paid by the capitalists who caused it and not the working people.

To a greater or lesser extent, with more or less depth, the workers and the people feel, suffer, exchange opinions or argue about these problems from different perspectives. What can not be denied is that there have been unsatisfied social, political, democratic and cultural needs in these past 40 years. People talk about it the streets, at work or school, with neighbors, friends or relatives, when they are not expressed in mass mobilizations such as the feminist movement, retirees or the Catalan people.

There are parties like Podemos that come and go in their position on the regime, that have even pronounced themselves in favor of dissolving the monarchy. However, they do not go to the heart of the matter and end up being part of the bourgeois regime and the capitalist system. It is more necessary than ever to promote and facilitate the possibility of the population to debate and decide on all these issues, from a unitary mobilization to a free and sovereign constituent assembly, with broad popular participation. Having the possibility to express our opinion and define our own destinies in our hands, to talk about the disasters of capitalist exploitation and to translate the majority definitions into a new Constitution. In this way, we will continue fighting for a strategic solution: for a government of the workers and the people, for socialism with workers’ democracy and a Free Federation of Iberian Socialist Republics.

Forty years after the creation of the Constitution of the ´78 regime and the transition, there’s nothing to celebrate and a lot to fight for, because there are many debts with the workers, the people, the youth, the women’s movement, the retirees and all the oppressed and exploited. Every Spaniard should question the transition and every December 6th take over the streets to honor those killed by Franco’s regime. Instead of taking the symbols of Francoism out of history, instead of talking about a democratic process, we should be talking about all the comrades who sacrificed themselves and fought against the dictatorship and suffered and fought to conquer their freedom. A deep and honest debate about the past is needed, and it is necessary to break with the policies of consensus of the bourgeoisie.

Laura Jaén – Manel Lecha