[These are dangerous times for a leopard to…]

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These are dangerous times for a leopard to try changing its spots. But that is just what the fascist regime in Spain is being. forced to attempt, almost four decades after General Franco launched his military insurrection against the Republican government and the working class.

Under the shock waves spreading from the example of the Portuguese revolution, faced with persistent and widespread political opposition within the country, and afflicted by the international economic crisis as severely as the rest of Western Europe, the machine of fascist state rule now faces a serious and intricate internal crisis.

Centre of the situation is 'la Operacion' ('the Operation) - the euphemism in ruling-class circles for the campaign to persuade' OT coerce the ageing Franco to relinquish his supreme political power in an orderly way. Though aged 82, the Caudillo has now almost completely recovered from the blood clot which almost killed him last summer. He has already taken back the powers that he then temporarily ceded to his nominee as formal. head of state, Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon.

INCOMPETENT The nomination of Juan Carlos, in any, case, is no more than a formal solution to the problem. The Prince, despite the extremely blue and reactionary blood that runs in his veins, is widely regarded as a man of severely limited intelligence and political competence, wholly unable to deal with the task of organising a rickety state apparatus to deal once more with the upsurge of the Spanish revolution. But, apart from him, the dictator has so far not created any new centre of power to take over from him when he dies or begins to sicken again.

He has strictly limited the very morest proposals for 'reform' coming from Prime Minsiter Arias Na\ arro and the cabinet. And in any case the cabinet itself - despite the fact that as a body it is wholly under the thumb of Franco in all important matters - has been split in the last few months on proposals to revise the labour laws and permit a nominal right to strike.

The original strengths of the fascist state are now the source of many of its internal problems. Fran. co's counter-revolution came to power during the Spanish Civil War over the corpses of one of the most determined and heroic working clas: struggles that European history has yet seen. The workers and peasants of Spain were betrayed by the Popular Front policies of Stalin and the social democracy, who refused to organise the war against Franco on a class or internationalist basis.

Nonetheless, to destroy the Spanish revolution Franco was forced to build - with the military aid of Italian and German fascism, and with the sympathetic support of most of the capitalist politicians in Europe - a brutal, efficient, centralised military state apparatus. The instruments of dictatorship - the army and police, the fascist Falange party, and to a large extent the church - had to be placed under a single decisive source of power: Franco's one-man rule.

Now that Franco's days are coming to an end, and the working class is once more on the offensive, the entire apparatus of state power is thrown into crisis. As a former cabinet minister put it - vividly revealing the corruption and careerism which has grown rife in three and a half decades of fascist 'peace' - The Caudillo holds the state together. The moment he goes there won't be one bull in the ring, but a thousand charging in every direction to make up for lost time'. LEAGUE?

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IST PRESS Thur 29th May, 192