THE fact that Spain is now a pluralist democracy, and no longer a dictatorship, can be credited to several men. One is King Juan Carlos, who knew how to bide his time during Francoism’s death throes, when to emerge, and what sort of Spain he wanted. Another is Felipe González, the country’s first Socialist prime minister, who demonstrated that the left’s long period of wounded resentment after the civil war could be transmuted into a successful run in government. Yet another was Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, the king’s political mentor, who in 1975 pushed forward the name of an apparently mediocre provincial, Adolfo Suárez. And then, decidedly not least, Mr Suárez himself, who took on the task of thrusting Spain into democracy and did so at dizzying speed.Within a year of his appointment as Spain’s then-youngest prime minister, in July 1976 when he was 43, Mr Suárez had passed a law establishing a two-chamber Cortes and universal suffrage; had legalised the left-wing parties, including, most vitally, the communists; had declared an amnesty for political prisoners, legalised trade unions and dismantled most of Franco’s four-decade-old political machinery; had got his...
from The Economist: Obituary http://ift.tt/1g4flUF
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