SPAIN more reforms'

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The Francoist government of Adolfo Suarez and King Juan Carlos continues without much success to foster the illusion that it is the friend of democracy and freedom.

Last week it legalised gambling, a measure which will no doubt improve its image with the more decadent sections of the European bourgeoisie and boost the flagging tourist trade.

It announced that the general election would be held on June Sth; though at the same time it became clear that most workers parties were almost certain to remain illegal by then. Over 80 fascist, bourgeois and reformist parties have been legalised.

The regime announced that the Basque provinces would be permitted to have some kind of regional assembly, though it was evident that this would be given no powers at all.

It announced a 'reform' of the trade union law, whose main effects would be to make it even easier than now for employers to sack workers.

Even the most openly collaborationist sectors of the workers' leadership rejected this as not worth even talking about.

And finally, it launched a further amnesty for political prisoners which, like the three previous ones, is limited in scope and, of course, does nothing whatever about restoring the rights of the 25,000 or more workers blacklisted for political and union activities.

Despite this reformist mask, the regime also showed its true face when in San Sebastian on March 8th the police shot three alleged members of the Euskadi (Basque) liberation movement, EIA, Killing two of them. The workers of Euskadi immediately reacted with the unanimous militancy which they have shown so often in the last two years.

Massive strikes and demonstrations spread like wildfire throughout the provinces of Euskadi, showing once again the irreconcilable contradiction between the aims of this government of fascists and the demands of the mass movement in Spain.

This, of course, did not stop the Spanish Communist Party from staging a major event to back up its class collaborationist alliance with the Francoist regime. This was the Euro-communist summit meeting between Spanish CP leader Santiago Carrillo and Georges Marchias and Enrico Berlinguer of the French and Italian CPs.

The much publicised meeting produced a joint communique which was a spineless set of platitudes about unnamed 'democratic forces'.

It refrained from any criticism either of the Spanish fascists or of the Soviet bureaucracy. showed very clearly what unites these three major Western European Stalinist parties-a total hostility to the independent mobilisation of the working class against the political representatives of capital. In each of their three coun tries the leaders of these parties are sustaining in power the government through which the capitalist class is currently exercising its rule, whether this be Giscardian, Christian Democratic or fascist. In all cases these collaborationists do not want to overthrow capitalist rule but to broaden it to include themselves.