Furthermore, the relative prosperity brought by the neo - capitalism had altered the nature of the threat of the working class on the oligarchy (precisely, also, because the own oligarchy had changed). The relationship among some workers that were paying the periods of a Seat 600, a television and a nevera and the bankers and industrial that were depending on a high and continued productivity, was clearly different of the existing among day-labourers and latifundistas in the years thirty. The requirements of a most complex economy had created a new proletariat with a relatively high level of specialization and of income.
For the industrialists and bankers that were directing the economy, the agreements in connection with the productivity were more necessary to assure a continued growth of the economy than the police terror. When many of the greats and more competitive companies, were preferring to watch to the future and to integrate to the working class in the capitalistic system, through an economy based on economic incentives and to widen their/its operations coming into contact with the European Economic Community, the búnker franquista and their/its methods were resulting already, in the best from the cases, embarrassing and, in the worse, an obstacle for the future economic development.
In 1969, these contradictions was found still in latent state. Yet had not arrived the moment in which the already traditional pressure of intellectual, students, working and peasant by the change is seen reinforced by a similar pressure on the part of sectors before firmly franquistas: that moment would arrive only after the crisis of 1973.
With all, already they could deal signs in that address. The student and worker opposition was growing in scale and in a way continued intensity and was reinforcing the effects that the socioeconomic change was having on the elite franquista. This would remain dramatically clear with occasion of the scandal Matesa, in 1969, and with occasion of the repercussions that had the process of Burgos of 1970s.
The agitation in the Spanish universities had been intermittent from 1956 and practically endemic from 1962, but in 1968 the crisis situation had reached a point in which the police occupation of the campus university was almost permanent. The pressure of the students was aspiring to substitute the University Spanish Union (SEU) by democratic institutions, aspiration that was crashing thoroughly with the political building franquista. To the sight than what was occurring in other Europe points, the regime was observing the student disturbances with great attention. In May of 1968 there were incidents in Madrid among the policeman and 5.000 university demonstrators and the dissatisfaction arrived even to the University opusdeísta of Navarra.
For the regime the problem was acute. Not only it were tried to students, as a rule, they prepared to be in the future the bureaucrats of the Spanish State and the directors of Spanish industry, but many of the students that they were victims of the charges of the policeman were children and daughters of the accommodated middle class and even of the high officials of the regime. The own Commander reflected their/its/your/his preoccupation by this problem in their/its/your/his speech of Seville 22 of June, refiriéndose, with surprise of all, to the need of a dialogue. Already in April of 1968, the gravity of the problem was known thing, though improperly, what remained patent with the appointment of a sympathize you of the Opus Dei, José Luis Villar Palasí, as Education ministers.
This meant a reverse for the inmovilistas of the governmental elite, parallel reverse to their/its/your/his disability to be faced to the problem of the worker dissatisfaction. The economic growth of the sixty had brought with himself a growing prosperity for the workers, but even so were receiving so alone a part desproporcionadame decrease from the benefits of the boom economic Spanish. It was produced an escalation of the conscience of class, what remained reflected in an increase in the Worker Commissions force and in the fact of the fact that the strikes were gone politizando increasingly.
The official union Organization never had become an effective middleman among the workers, employers and the State, and, from 1969, their/its deficiencies would leave to the way light much more categorical each day. José Solís Ruiz, minister general secretary of the Movement, made a weak captation attempt of the new militant of the working class for the official syndicalism. Inevitably, and in spite the rhetoric anticapitalista of the Phalanx, all operation of this type that it did not offer to the workers the right to independent representation or the right to strike, was destined failure. While bankers and industrial were negotiating already, from was making time, secretly with the leaders of CC.OO. in Madrid and Barcelona, the encounters among the officials of the official unions and the representative of CC.OO. were arriving too late. Furthermore, the inanidad of the operation of Solís remained of I manifest before the continued use of the policeman to finish with the strikes.
To put the still worse things for the inmovilistas, the Bishops Conference of the 24 of July in 1968 had condemned the vertical unions and made a call on behalf of some free unions. Now already, the respect withdrawal of the regime were not limited to organizations as the Worker Brotherhood of Catholic Action (HOAC) or as the Catholic Worker Youth (JOC) or to the worker cures, but, after the Vatican Council II, the movement to dissociate to the Church of the regime began to be extended also to the hierarchy.
Also the church was divided among inmovilistas and aperturistas, but the Vatican was supporting in a way growing to the most liberal forces. This was made evident during the negotiations of 1969 for the renovation of the Concordat, that remained blocked by the Franc denial to relinquish their/its/your/his right to bishops appointment, right to which were grasped desperately from the moment in which the independence of the bishops had begun to be a serious problem. The Vatican and the Spanish hierarchy retorted exploiting the fact of the fact that, under the Concordat, the regime could not impede in the bishops appointment auxiliares or of apostolic managers. In spite the irritation of the franquistas hard, the appointments somewhat more liberal were convirtiéndose in norm, not without is carried out a furious rear activity on the part of regime and of the reactionary members of the ecclesiastic hierarchy.
The process for which liberal bishops as monsignor José María Cirarda Lachiondo, of Santander, and as monsignor Antonio Añoveros Ataún, of Cádiz, were criticizing openly the social injustice, continued a rising course around the beginning of 1969. The reactionary primacy cardinal Plá and Deniel had died in July of 1968 and had been substituted by monsignor Vicente Enrique and Tarancón, committed with the spirit of the Vatican II. The process of gradual withdrawn of the ecclesiastic support to the Franc regime was converted, from then on, in one of the dominant elements of the periodo 1969-1975. What does not mean, with all, that the reactionary bishops as Fields War, Morcillo González, Almarcha Hernández and Squared Stone-cutter did not continue being identified fully with the dictatorship.
The critical clamor, in increase, of students, worker and priests did not drive to liberalization some in spite the serious disagreements appearance in the bosom of the forces of the regime. On the contrary, as corresponds to a slow and long agony, the regime was launched to the repression with a growing hardness.
Already in 1968, the escalation of the violence in the Basque Country had led to the procclamation of the emergency state in Guipúzcoa and to the reappearance of the Law of Racketeering and Terrorism. Then, 24 of January of 1969, as response to the student demonstrations, to the strikes of the North and to the continuous tension in Euskadi, the Governance minister, general Camilo Alonso Vega, convinced Exempt so that proclaimed the emergency state countrywide, yet with the opposition of some of the ministers of the Opus Dei, that they had preferred that remained limited to Madrid and Barcelona. They were accomplished numerous detentions, but the emergency state finished soon, 25 of March, by fear to frighten to the tourists. Was, since, a demonstration more than as a social and economic reality in change process was showing the lack of appropriateness and the inopportuneness of the methods franquistas.
The way in which the búnker was being isolated and forced to appeal to the violence gives inevitably a favorable image of the aperturistas. Inserts it of the technocrats of the Opus Dei, that were controlling the economic ministries, was that of to reach a prosperous capitalistic economy, integrated in the world market. In that sense, at least, they were clearly more progressive than some of the political troglodytes than occupied ministerial charges with Exempt.
However, there would not be that to forget that their/its efforts to impel the growth were characterized frequently by the inefficiency, the corruption and the high social cost. The first Development Plan reflected the belief of the technocrats of the fact that the efforts to redistribute the wealth, to reduce the regional imbalances or, even, to increase the state investments, would produce fiscal changes that would prejudice to the privileged classes, for whose protection the Regime was existing mainly. Because of this, the technocrats sought a growth that accepted and intensified the unequal distribution of the wealth, the regional inequalitys and the technological dependency. This trend remained fully of I manifest in the following development plans.
In spite of the autocomplacencia of the technocrats, the growth began before their/its plans would be reality and, frequently, it continued in spite of them. Once under way the economic impulse due to the opening of Spain to the world trade, the planning in the long run tended toward a sway policy that was aspiring solely al control of the inflammation and of the deficit of the balance of payments. Thus, when the boom of the sixty began to ralentizarse, the technocrats only they could answer with austerity measures, directed against the credit and the wages, therefore it was unavoidable that the social pressure on the regime is intensified.
