On December 20, 1973, the assassination took place, at the hands of ETA, of the President of the Government, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. It was not the first assassination of a president of the Spanish government – in the last 100 years there had been perpetration of Joan Prim (1870), Antonio Canovas del Castillo (1897), Jose Canalejas (1912) y Eduardo Dato (1921)–, but he was a key figure in the institutionalization of the Franco regime from its beginnings and the guarantor of its continuity after Franco’s death.
Born in Santoña in 1904 into a military family, Carrero Blanco opted for the Navy, in which he participated in the war of the Rif and stood out as a professor of underwater tactics at the Madrid Naval War School. Since 1941 he was the political arm of Franco and the main helmsman of the Government. A practicing Catholic, of daily mass, and a militant of national Catholicism, ultra-conservative and reactionary, Carrero Blanco was deeply anti-liberal and, therefore, anti-communist.
More information (Auto)
News title (Auto)
96063646
In the mid-1950s, Carrero Blanco placed a young man in the command position of the engine room. Laureano López Rodóprofessor of Administrative Law and prominent member of the The Work of God, which had helped him overcome a serious marital crisis, recruiting the crew from among his co-religionists. While Franco mediated between Falangists and Opusdeist technocrats, Carrero always expressed his support for the latter, architects of the ‘developmentalism‘. An economic well-being that should not, in any way, call into question the political structure of Francoism, which he considered superior to any other, including liberal democracies.
Image ID: 96063753 Francisco Franco and Luis Carrero Blanco. File /clip/0897350a-e216-402e-904b-cbfa5b0c62e6_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg 880 495
Carrero Blanco made this clear, a year before his death, in an open speech before the National Council of the Movement, the most important political body of Franco’s regime, made up of a hundred people appointed by Franco. The submarine admiral launched a torpedo into the waterline of the proposed political liberalizationflatly rejecting political participation outside the National Movement, the sole party of the dictatorship. For Carrero, the main problem was not political, but moral and, specifically, labor unrest and the degeneration of young people’s behavior due to “corrosive forces who are using pornography, drugs, denial of religious values, contempt for authority and rejection of patriotic values to corrupt Spanish youth.” However, the admiral was defeated by the ‘Yellow Submarine’ of the Beatles.
In 1973, when Franco decided to delegate, for the first time, his position as President of the Government, no one was surprised that it fell to his faithful servant, who had already more than expressed his deep loyalty to him and his work and his total and absolute identification doctrinal embodied in the Principles of the National Movement And in the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom. In his first speech as President of the Government before the Cortes, he made clear his loyalty to the Prince of Spain as successor to the dictator and first monarch of the new Francoist dynasty known as the “monarchy of July 18” or the ‘blues’, due to the color of the Falangist uniform shirt.
Image ID: 96063768 Luis Carrero Blanco and Prince Juan Carlos, June 9, 1973. File /clip/d8e3f4fb-2a7d-474a-b282-7134ec98a30c_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg 880 495
In his speech, Carrero referred to the Monarchy of the National Movement: “To this monarchy and to the person of the Prince of Spain who will one day be – God willing, it is still very far away – your first monarch, is to whom I declare my total and absolute loyalty.” And he ended with a strong idea that clearly and transparently summarizes the program of government action: “continue.”
The least that can be said about Carrero Blanco is that with him there would never have been a liberal democracy and, much less, a Social and democratic state of law. The new monarch’s room for political maneuver would have been more limited and the confrontation (and repression) with the opposition would have continued. That is why the persistence of a 40-meter monument dedicated to his memory in his hometown is surprising and outrageous. It’s not that it’s illegal, it’s just that it’s shameful. May he rest in peace in the Mingorrubio cemetery along with Carlos Arias Navarro and his idolized Francisco Franco.
Andreu Mayayo Artal is professor of Contemporary History at UB.
2023-12-20 06:11:04
#Carrero #Blanco #Francos #valet
