Spain: A Unique History by Stanley G. Payne

"The Left in Western Europe" in June 1975. These prospects were not encouraging, since the Revolution had not yet brought democracy to Portugal, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt, at that moment perhaps Henry Kissinger's principal subordinate as assistant secretary of state, lamented that for five hundred years the Russian empire had never ceased to expand. (In fact, it would continue to expand for five years more, Soviet influence reaching its peak worldwide by 1980 with the rise of Afro-Communism and the invasion of Afghanistan.)
    In Spain, however, events moved rapidly and surprisingly smoothly from the appointment of Adolfo Suárez as prime minister in July 1976. 23 Shrewd and constructive political management helped to keep the military from interfering, and the Spanish democratization became something of a model, to lead the "third wave" of major twentieth-century democratizations during the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1975 and the 1980s the handful of Hispanists who dealt with politics and contemporary Spanish history were in considerable demand from various institutions and universities in the United States, so that we formed a sort of "traveling circus," which appeared with slightly varying membership in a variety of different settings.
    By 1979 Felipe González had moderated both the Marxist doctrines and the political tactics of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE — Spanish Socialist Worker's Party), which not only abandoned its peculiar concept of direct action it had thought compatible with the parliamentary democracy (which it now espoused) but also accepted the principles of European social democracy, as distinct from "socialism." All this was enormously helpful, indeed indispensable, to the consolidation of democracy in Spain. The major point on which the Socialists refused to change was their neutrality in the Cold War. Neutrality vis-à-vis the Soviet Union had never been the position of some of the older leaders, such as Indalecio Prieto, but the González group that had taken over the party in 1973 claimed that the Cold War had had the effect of prolonging the Franco regime (which to some extent was correct). To declare neutrality in the worldwide contest, which in Europe was now a clear-cut struggle between democracy and totalitarianism, seemed strange for a party insisting on its own democratic credentials. Nevertheless, ambiguity had been a persistent feature of the history of Spanish Socialism, and in this area drew an official statement of gratitude from the Soviet government, not the sort of congratulations that a newly democratic party would normally want to have.
    The U.S. government and some of its west European counterparts became eager to have a newly democratic Spain enter NATO, the chief political obstacle to which was now the opposition of the Socialist Party. To try to overcome this, Washington and its NATO allies organized a meeting with representatives of the major Spanish parties at Ditchley Park (an old residence of the Dukes of Marlborough) not far from Oxford on the weekend of March 15-17, 1978. On the morning of the first full day, Gen. Alexander Haig, then commander of the NATO forces, arrived by helicopter on the large front lawn to address the group. These efforts were unsuccessful as far as the Socialists were concerned. I was seated throughout beside Luis Yáñez, the gynecologist from Seville who at that moment played a major role in the PSOE leadership. He was affable but noncommittal, and Socialist resistance on this issue would continue for six more years, until the decisive change in 1984 when González conducted his famous volte-face and referendum on NATO.
    For me personally the major Spanish political event of 1978 was the first congress of the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD), held in Madrid in October. The party leaders invited three American senators to attend, but the congress took place in the middle of the campaigning for the American elections, and none of the