NOTES ON SPAIN
Pascual Maragall and Xavier Rubert de Ventos
EDITORS' NOTE:
"Notes on Spain" is excerpted from a longer
account of the political situation in Spain , sent to us in january,
1975 . The postsmpt was received in May .
It is hard to imagine how much Spain has changed in the last four or
five years and at the same time how much things are still the same.
The country has modernized . Highways (and tolls) ; thousands of
brand-new little cars roaring everywhere ; high-rise buildings ; pop music ; a
middle class with a new game , investing in bonds and equities, and a new
slang , stock-exchange jargon ; a neat Europeanization of fashions (in fact of
course , an Americanization , but without the lack of style that makes
American fashions fascinating) ; higher wages-in a word, the thing that is
called economic development, or at least economic growth .
At the same time , Spain is still a backward country. Everything is
undersize, insufficient, middle-of-the-road, unoriginal. Everything lacks
color in colorful Spain. Highways are congested as quickly as they are built.
People are discontented with their lives. The cost of living , up 15-20 percent
each year , eats up higher earnings. Even land speculation , the most
prosperous industry in a country that is urbanizing at an incredible pace , has
become risky as young radical planners have been called in to bring order to
Spain's messy cities.
Politics have changed a bit. (Some would say a lot.) One can
talk
democracy and freedom and political parties to a degree that was unimagin–
able a few years ago (when people only thought and whispered about
revolution). Yet the last word is (perhaps " was" when this piece gets to the
reader) still that ofFranco's supporters. The last word is, in fact, on the lips of
a man who literally cannot speak: Franco is too old.
The point is, the regime is the same, and the same people speak for it.
