18 Jan 2012 Fraga i la desfiguració

I once devoted a book to questioning the official account of Spain’s transition to democracy. In the book (Els assassins de Franco, “Franco’s Assassins”) I wrote about some of the key characters of such turbulent times. I analysed a figure like Manuel Fraga and others like the Communist leaderSantiago Carrillo as parallel lives (an exercise which I would recommend to anyone for it is highly enlightening). There are more kindred spirits in the world than one might think and some seemingly opposed ideologies are rather similar when we examine their biographies through a microscope.

Carrillo associated himself with the “Fragas” in Romania and other Soviet dictatorships, whom he deeply loved; so it was only natural that someone like him would come to understand and appreciate the former Francoist minister eager to find his own place within the new system. Equally Fraga, who naturally admired the “Francos” from all around the world, like the Cuban Fidel Castro, had no choice but to come to an agreement with the leader of Communism in Spain, who fought in his own country against a tyranny which he considered appropriate in others. Attitudes more than ideas bring people together. After all, Fraga and Carrillo first justified the historical suitability of dictatorships of one kind or another but, afterwards, were capable of evolving and renouncing some of their respective dogmas and ended up lecturing others on democracy with remarkable conviction. Hence, the undeniable contribution of these two leaders to the most important objective which Spanish society had in 1975 (to avert another civil war) must be valued and deserves generous recognition.

What happens with Fraga’s death is the same as with that of Juan Antonio Samaranch’s: they permit us to look back and weigh things up. Depending on the account of the facts they want to give, each person focuses on the most self-serving episodes of these characters’  biographies. In Fraga’s case, some stress his role as father of the Constitution and tamer of the Francoist right while others emphasise his task as the minister who constructed the dictatorship’s friendly propaganda and who was responsible for the repression dished out by Arias Navarro’s government. Due to generational and cultural changes, after the death of a figure like Fraga some of the agreements reached between 1975 and 1978 are questioned. This, however, should not surprise nor shock anyone, for it shows that this society is alive and asks itself questions. A society which does not dare to discuss certain issues for fear of invoking the ghosts of the past is democratically immature or fossilised.

Dealing with the past is a delicate but necessary task: we are the result of our history and we can look forward because we are capable of looking back. Every community does its best to deal with this. There is no ideal model: neither in South Africa, Chile, Germany or Poland. The transition was the foundational moment of our current system and awarded men like Fraga with a second chance. But nobody knows how things would have developed if people like him had not taken part in the democratic process. Arguing now whether that was wise or unwise, fair or unfair, decent or indecent does not take us anywhere, since we cannot turn back time and put those decisions right. Just think about it for a minute: the real problem is not the events which took place over thirty years ago but their current recount and presentation. Just because, back then, none of the courts of the developing democracy brought to justice the Francoist hierarchy (whether converted to democracy or not), this should not imply that their biographies can be re-written to the point of being distorted nor that the rest of us should pretend not to have noticed.

The problem is the customary distortion of the most elementary, documented and objective of truths, the truth that precedes interpretations which are inevitably subjective. In a very interesting documentary on Fraga by José Luis López Linares (Últimos testigos, “Last Witnesses, with script by Manuel Milián Mestre), the now deceased politician makes the following statement: “I have not been an accomplice of any dictatorship. The word ‘accomplice’ is used for those who take part in a crime, and I only have reasons to be proud in my own conscience of what I did back then. I did not contribute to the building of the dictatorship, or the extraordinary regime in constant evolution. I contributed to its progressive opening so that it would be possible to succeed it in a different direction”. Euphemism is the first step towards distortion: “extraordinary regime” instead of “dictatorship”. What do we think about those who insist that Hitler did not kill six million Jews? We consider them Holocaust deniers and bearers of a historic lie.  What should we think, then, about somebody who refuses to refer to Franco’s regime as “dictatorship”? This is not up for discussion: it is the fundamental truth. His self-portrait as a democratising insider deserves a separate, much more complex debate altogether.

Once kick-started, distortion gathers momentum. The obituaries published these days omit that Fraga was a minister during the dictatorship period, while they do mention that he had been president of Galicia’s regional government, senator, founder of the People’s Party and drafter of the Constitution. Why? Had not the man in question said himself that he only had “reasons to be proud” of his role during the Franco era?

I am not calling for trials in retrospect nor posthumous sentencing; I only ask for some respect towards words and some loyalty towards reality as it was. That is all.