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Spaniards uneasy in wake of coupBy James Markham N.Y. Times News ServiceMADRID — Jittery Spanish democrats are trying to speed their country’s entry into the European Economic Community to deter nostalgic generals from attempting a rerun of last month's failed putsch. And, to give soldiers a higher purpose than conspiracy, Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo’s center-right government hopes, too, to hustle Spain into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.But the slow-moving machinery of diplomacy, a sagging Western European economy and an unresolved national identity crisis in Spain itself are complicating efforts to anchor Spanish democracy to multinational institutions headquartered north of the Pyrenees. Last week Foreign Minister Jose Pedro Peres Llorca went to Brussels, seat of both NATO and the EEC, to emphasise the urgency of getting Spain into Europe. The Common Market's Council of Ministers promised to intensify” the negotiations but did not advance the 1984 entry target date.“The coup (attempt) probably did more than any number of speeches to make people realise what is at stake,” said an EEC official in Brussels. We know now that we can't take democracy for granted in Spain. But all this can't change realities.”The realities are that the Common Market’s bloated system of agricultural subsidies has gotten out of control while the workhorse of European prosperity, the West Germany economy, among others, is showing signs of fatigue. Early Spanish entry would only aggravate wrangling over payments to farmers, who are already producing more than the EEC can consume or profitably export. Subsidies to Spanish olive oil alone would run to $1 billion; that kind of loose change is not available.The feeling among Western European politicians in general is that the Common Market must get its own house in order before enlarging it.As for NATO, the coup attempt may help Madrid hasten Spanish entry. The Socialist and Communist opposition had been sliding toward anti-NATO street demonstrations and last month held a dry-run march past the United States air base at Torrejon outside Madrid. Since the attempted coup, however, a more cautious attitude has prevailed, and politicians on the left, in particular, have been on good behavior. Many analysts areconvinced, anyway, that Felipe Gonzalez, the Socialist leader, has been loudly anti-NATO partly to keep his left wing in line while he maneuvers the party toward moderate, social democratic positions on vital economic issues.Even so, obstacles to joining NATO remain. The government’s strategy seems to be to call a vote on the issue in Parliament, perhaps late this year. It can count on a firm majority.But Foreign Minister Perez Llorca will want to demonstrate to skeptical deputies that the British are on their way out of Gibraltar, where they have been since 1704, and that EEC membership is more than a mirage. Talks on Gibraltar have been stalled for more than a year, though British and Spanish diplomats say privately that a way could be found to blur the issue of sovereignty if the Rock became a NATO base.NATO enthusiasts in Spain argue that membership will bring modernization of equipment, joint maneuvers and other contacts with the professional armies of Northern Europe that will give Spanish generals more positive preoccupations than bemoaning Basque terrorism and plotting the salvation of the fatherland.”Gonzalez and other NATO foes counter that membership didn’t stop the Greek colonels or, last year, Turkish generais, from pulling the rug from under volatile Mediterranean democracies. Portugal was a tidy dictatorship and a NATO member before 1974.Behind the debate lies a more troubling -question about Spanish identity; Does Spain consider itself a Western European nation? If the seizure of Parliament by Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero Molina last month was vintage Latin America, the reactions of some sophisticated Spaniards have also been reminiscent of the Third World. Like politicians and journalists in nations just emerging psychologically from colonialism, they have concocted fabulous plots that turn on an all-powerful and all-knowing power — in this case, the United States.All evidence suggests that the failed putsch caught the U.S. Embassy in Madrid com--pletely by surprise. In Washington, Secretary of State Alexander Haig Jr.’s initial response was that it was an internal matter.” The gaffe was later cushioned by six warm letters from the Reagan administration to King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Calvo Sotelo.Not satisfied, the Spanish press, without checking the circumstances of the Haig remark — made off-the-cuff while escorting a visiting foreign minister to his car — has run with it for a month as expressing American policy toward Spain. The Reagan administration was tilting toward dictatorships in Latin America, the press and Gonzalez argued; why not in Spain?The xenophobia says a good deal about distrust of the Reagan administration and even more about Spaniards’ uncertainty over whether they are authentic Western Europeans. Reflecting the ambivalence, newspapers like El Pais have managed, in the same breath, to accuse the United States of being cool toward Spanish democracy and of wanting to hurry Spain into NATO.On the center and the left, such accusations are voiced more in sorrow than inanger, kindled always by the memory that the United States, by signing a defense treaty with the Franco dictatorship in 1953, stabilized the regime and diminished the sting of Western European ostracism.On the Spanish far right, a fierce national pride takes on uglier hues. What does Europe have to say? asked the neo-fascist daily, El Alcazar, commenting on a swing by Felipe Gonzalez to rally Western European support for Spanish democracy. Would Europe tolerate that we should decide what France, Italy, Germany, Belgium or the United Kingdom should do? We damn this blatant interference, and these much-trumpeted ‘human rights’ about which Europe talks so much!”Haig will step briefly into the storm April 8, when he visits Madrid on his way back from the Middle East.
Newspaper Details
Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, US
Sat, Mar 21, 1981
Page 9
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USA 20 Jul 2020
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