PASCUAL MARAGALL
I
RUBERT de VENTOS
447
no longer a viable way of creating governments that represent a balance of
their interests. They feel the need for public debate and traditional
parliamentary practices. They need to know "who is who" in a society that
they rule but don't quite know . They need a different and more rigorous
selection process for their political representatives in the transition period
ahead.
But even if nobody knows who would win a national election, many of
the people on the top
sense
that they would be wiped out if such a free contest
were held . Now, no ruling class in its right mind is likely to organize such an
election. It is more likely to crumble before such an event occurs. This is why
their provisional unanimity is now based on the catch-word "Hurry up'"
Upon this complicated mixture ofself-deception and truth, a tacit pact is
probably in the making between the regime 's more liberal and intelligent
figures and the more hard pressed among the illegal opposition, at the
expense both of regime hard liners and the radical oppositionists, who urge
" ru prura" rather than "apertura.
*
*
*
Last November 14, not long before public discussion in the Consejo
Nacional of Arias's bill on political associations, there was a meeting in
Madrid of various democratic and evolutionist leaders. The leaders were
absent when the police arrived; they hurried to Direcci6n General de
Seguridad and tried to be arrested-without success. Prime Minister Arias
then managed to leak to the press his ignorance of the raid . Those who
were
arrested represented all the forces said to be in contact with the Prime Minister
before October: Catalan democrats and social democrats , Spanish socialists
like Felipe Gonzalez, and social democrats like Dionisio Ridruej o, an
ex-Falangist leader who was welcomed as a traitor in the political police
headquarters, the son of General Diaz Alegria, the chief of staff urged last
February to emulate Spinola, and others.
These are the people waiting just behind the door. They won't enter the
association game, but they won ' t openly boycott it either if they are assured
that the bill is only a beginning . Their chances would be good in an election.
They have money , political experience, and access to the media , in varying
degrees. Above all they are outsiders, not insiders. But they have no grass roots
organization, with the exception of the P. S. 0 .E., the Spanish Socialist Party.
Still , it is only a baby compared to the Communist Party ; its strength no more
than that of an infant compared to the total force of the revolutionary groups
to the c.p.'s left .
And here lies the problem. If the evolution gets "out of hand ," these
