Spain and Greece: From Dictatorship to Democracy

So Juan Carlos of Spain has resigned - although they call it something different when you're a King.

Once he has gone will his people forgive him for the corruption and lavish spending and remember him instead as the man who led them to democracy? Maybe. Because whilst the transition from fascist dictatorship to liberal democracy was long and hard for Spain, it was at least comparatively bloodless.

And if the Spaniards want an example of what things could have been like without Juan Carlos, they only have to look to the other end of Southern Europe. There you will find - or rather won't find - a somewhat less happy monarch and a country whose transition from dictatorship to democracy was anything but peaceful.

Death In The Afternoon

The recent success of Far Right parties in the 2014 European Elections led any to recall the dark days of the Thirties. But you don't have to look back that far to find fascism stalking Europe.

There was Franco, of course, who came to power in the Spanish Civil War and was still around when I was born. That war, the crucible in which the ideologies that were to tear the Europe apart in the Second World War tested themselves, was fought on a number of fronts, both geographically and political. As well as the battle between left and right, there was conflict over the role and power of the Church, the monarchy and the regions.

The lead up to the war had seen the inept King Alfonso XIII make such a complete hash of things that everyone except the army ended up hating him. However when he eventually saw the game was up he retired with such good grace that even otherwise sensible people like Winston Churchill believed the right wing propaganda that he'd been ousted by a Communist coup.

The left then won the next election, lost the one after that then won again in 1936 before Franco bought the Army of Africa over in German planes to start the war. The Republican side included, along with the Communists and the Anarchists, very conservative regionalists such as the Basques, whilst the Nationalist side include fascists and two flavours of monarchists; those who wanted Alfonso back and those who wanted the old Bourbon kings instead.

In the end the Communists wiped out the anarchists and then the Nationalists wiped them out. The monarchist and regionalists also lost and so Spain ended up with a short fat General as dictator. On the plus side though they were so worn out by their own little war they wisely decided to sit out the big one that started in 1939.

And Franco was still there, older and fatter, when the Sixties came to an end. The last grotesque spectre from the days of the Nazis.

"A Rape of Democracy"

But Franco wasn't that out of place in the Europe of the early Seventies.

In Northern Ireland soldiers were on the streets, whilst on the British mainland the National Front was marching and Enoch Powell was talking of Rivers of Blood. In Italy right wing terrorists caused carnage, whilst in Portugal a dictatorship continued to try to hold on to its African Empire in defiance of the world and common sense. However the darkest place in Europe at that time was Greece.

Greece had flirted with fascism in the Thirties under the brutal regime of Metaxas, whose favoured method of torture was strapping opponents to blocks of ice. However despite his aping of Italian fascism, in one of the numerous ironies of Greek history he found himself under attack by Mussolini.

The Greeks had no problems dealing with the Italians, but the Germans were another matter. Occupation was accompanied by oppression, often as not carried out by locally raised Security Battalions. Winston Churchill - him again - armed the Communists to fight the Nazis, but then when the war was over rearmed the Security Battalions to fight the Communists.

Greece then limped into the post war world as a bitterly divided nation. A fiercely contested election in 1967 was expected to be won by the centre left. However before the vote could take place power was seized by a group of Army Colonels. This was a big surprise to the King as he had been plotting with a group of Army Generals to seize power after the elections.

The Colonels asked King Constantine to endorse their regime and, after a polite discussion, he agreed. The Colonels then got exactly what they wanted, a picture of themselves with the King bestowing his regal authority on their "military regime of collaborators and Nazi sympathisers."

Constantine then went off and attempted a counter-coup, which was a dismal failure. He was arrested and sent into exile in Rome, but the damage was done.

Tilting at Windmills 

However as the Sixties drew to a close both Franco and the Colonels could see that their regimes had no future. Franco killed up to 50,000 people since 1945 whilst the Colonels had tortured more than three and a half thousand, but that was not enough to keep the the spirit of the time away.

In Greece the Colonels relaxed their grip and tried desperately to find someone to hand power over to. Papadopoulos, head of the Junta, approached the old political establishment but only found one man willing to talk to him, a former minister from the 1950s called Spyros Markezinis. In September 1973 he became Prime Minster and the loneliest man in Greece.

Two months later an uprising took place at Athens Polytechnic, with the students demanding peace and love and democracy. Instead they got the army. In the confusion afterwards both Papadopoulos and Markenzinis were deposed and a new hard man took over, the head of the Secret Police Dimitrios Ioannidis. Suddenly the torture chambers were busier than ever.

Watching this from Spain was Franco. Old and ailing, and with his henchmen squabbling, he was planning his own transition from power. Then, in December 1973, his chosen successor, Admiral Blanco was killed by an ETA bomb so powerful that it was joked he became Spain's first man in space. Franco needed a Plan B.

In 1969 he had promised to restore the monarchy. The son of old Alfonso was Juan de Borbon, a well known liberal and opponent of his regime, so Franco decided to skip a generation and promise the throne to his son, Juan Carlos.

It should have been his older brother really, but he'd accidentally shot himself whilst cleaning his revolver, further proof that Royals really shouldn't be allowed near firearms. With Blanco dead Juan Carlos was now in line for power and it was assumed he'd be a convenient sock puppet for Franco's supporters.

But in 1974 everything changed.

On 15 July Ioannidis launched a coup in Cyprus, intending to annex the island to Greece.  Four days later Franco fell ill and made Juan Carlos acting head of state. The next day Turkey busted Ionnidis's flush by invading Cyprus. This humiliation was the end of the line for the junta and, with none of his brother officer willing to support his madness any longer, Ioannidis's puppet administration invited former Prime Minister Konstantine Karamanlis back from Paris to form a government.

Franco lingered on for another year, but to all intents and purposes Western Europe's two most brutal regime's had fallen within the space of a few days.

Spain's transition to democracy was not yet complete though and there would be one final test for Juan Carlos. In 1981 a man in a silly hat seized parliament in a coup. Just as in Greece fourteen years earlier, they asked the King to endorse their action. Juan Carlos though was not Constantine. He refused to take their phone call and instead contacted his own Generals one by one to tell them he wanted democracy restored.

Juan Carlos then leaves office tarnished by scandal, but probably ultimately to be well remembered. Former King Constantine of Greece meanwhile remains in exile, unable to return home until he stops calling himself King and gets a normal surname.

Lessons Learnt

Drawing lessons from all this though is very difficult.

In Greece the liberal opposition appeared to play the game by the rules. They refused to compromise with the junta and demanded the restoration of democracy before they would become involved in government. The result though was bloodshed and the tyranny of Ioannidis.

In Spain the liberals and the reactionaries fought it out in secret behind closed doors, and then when Franco was dead they argued in parliament. The ending of the fascist regime was long and drawn out, many people were compromised, but ultimately it was bloodless.

But it was facilitated by a terrorist bomb and the linchpin of it all was Juan Carlos, the democratic monarch, one of the few examples of the blind chance of hereditary accession throwing up the right person at the right time.

How to Abolish the Monarchy

She's still around then?

So it seems. Republicans don't really seem to getting far in this country for some reason.

Roy Jenkins more-or-less said republicanism was a hopeless cause, suggesting that the only way to abolish the monarchy was for a progressive political party to stand in a General Election with that as it's main Manifesto commitment and win an absolute majority, which frankly isn't going to happen.

But that may be a tad defeatist. Since 1945 more than eighty kingdoms or sultanates have become republics, so its not as if it never happens.

What we need is a plan, so lets look at other monarchies that bit the dust, and see what we can learn.

1) The King (or Queen) Over The Water

If your King or Queen isn't from your country, doesn't speak the language and doesn't actually even live there then getting rid of them is easy.

Iceland became a republic when it severed its ties to Denmark in 1944 and Ireland showed the way for the British Empire in 1949, when the Dáil Éireann passed the  Republic of Ireland Act and ditched Colin Firth. (but see comments below).

India followed suit the next year and our current Queen has been ditched as head of state by Pakistan, Ghana, South Africa, Tanganyika, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, The Gambia, Guyana, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Malta, Trinida and Tobego, Zimbabwe, Fiji and Mauritius to date with Barbados and Jamaica planning referendums. Quite an impressive list.

The downside is that whoever replaces them will need to live in your country and hence require feeding and watering, which is an argument Australians have used repeatedly in debates about becoming a republic. Better a Queen with her head in our trough than a President with his head in theirs, being the argument.

The problem is that despite the last indisputably British king probably being old King Cole, we still seem to think of the Royals as British. Plus they do live here and speak English.

Plan: Persuade the Windsors to move back to Germany and speak German.

 2) The Agent of a Foreign Power

Kings put in place by a hated foreign power are never much liked as witnessed by the fate of Maximilian I (and only) of Mexico. A bemused Austrian aristocrat persuaded to become King of Mexico by Napoleon III, he was second rate ruler, but he did at least go on to become a first rate piece Impressionist art.

The nearest modern equivalent is the late and unlamented Shah of Iran. Originally put in place by an Anglo-Russian invasion in World War II that deposed his father, he was elevated to absolute power by an Anglo-American coup masterminded by CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt.

You could say Kermit made him an American puppet, but I won't. This is a serious blog.

Plan: Spread the rumour that the CIA bumped off the nice George VI.

3) The Communist Takeover

Progressive politics hasn't always bothered with the niceties of democratic elections.

Communism and royalty never really mixed and communists coups or rigged elections have removed the kings of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Vietnam, and Laos and the sultans and emirs of South Yemen (all 25 of them).

Unfortunate the commies went of business a few years ago and haven't been heard of much since.

Plan: Bring back Comintern

4) The Military Coup

The left unfortunately doesn't have the monopoly on undemocratic routes to power. Military coups have deposed the rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Rwanda, Yemen, Burundi, Libya,  Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the Central African Empire.

Unfortunately, subsequent heads of state have been amongst the most oppressive and homicidal in the world and most of these countries have since seen war and slaughter on an industrial scale.

Plan: I think we'll pass on this one.

5) The Fascist Collaborators

Italy and Greece both removed their kings in popular referendums. The monarchs had pissed on their chips by endorsing a fascist dictator and a military dictatorship respectively.

Worse, the fascists then went on to lose a war against a hated neighbour. Ironically in Italy's case this was actually Greece.

Now we very nearly did have a king who would have collaborated with any fascists he found given half a chance, but unfortunately he abdicated in 1936 and was replaced by his brother, who did as much to stand up to fascism as any constitutional monarch really could.

Plan:  Well, we could ask Harry to get his infamous fancy dress costume out again, but all told we're probably best passing on this one too.

6) The Palace Massacre

The world's newest republic is Nepal, where King  Gyanendra was deposed after he dissolved parliament and tried to defeat a Maoist insurgency via direct rule. He failed, but it wasn't the Maoists that did for him, but his own nephew Dipendra.

On 1 June 2001 Dipendra attended a party at his palace held by his father and mother, the popular King Birenda and Queen Aishwarya. Eton educated Dipendra then apparently got rat-arsed, argued with his dad about who he should marry, and eventually went mad with a brace of assault rifles and killed both his parents, two uncles, two aunts, a brother, a sister and a cousin.

He then tried to kill himself, failed and ended up becoming king by default whilst in a coma in hospital, before expiring three days later as the country's penultimate monarch. After that it was hard to convince the Nepalese people that their royals could be trusted with scissors, let alone power.

Juan Carlos of Spain only became king after his elder brother accidentally shot himself whilst cleaning his revolver and in 1975 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was gunned down by his own nephew. Only one other king has been killed since WWII (also a Faisal, but of Iraq) so it seems the biggest threat to the life of a royal family comes from their own firearms. 

Plan: Well, we know they like guns......

7) The Deferred Republic

Samoa technically became a republic on independence in 1962, but they sportingly allowed the two existing kings to carry on for the rest of their lives.

One died the next year, but the other, Malietoa Tanufili II, was made of sterner stuff and soldiered on for the next 45 years before finally pegging out at the age of 94, probably after having outlived everyone who drew up the constitution.

Samoa then became a republic, and if that wasn't a big enough change for everyone they pretty rapidly changed the side of the road they drove on and missed a day out of their calendar so they could cross the International Date Line.

Plan: Given how long our royals tend to live this might not be feasible if you wish to actually live to see a republic.

And that I'm afraid is about it.

There was a popular revolt in Zanzibar, but it was a one off. So if we wish to be rid of the Windsors it's one of the seven options above.

In the meantime we can perhaps take comfort in the words of the mildly republican Spanish Princess Eulalia who, when asked what the people of Britain would gain if we abolished the monarchy, replied

"They would gain as little as if, by a popular uprising, the citizens of London killed the lions in their zoo. There may have been a time when lions were dangerous in England, but the sight of them in their cages now can only give a pleasurable holiday-shudder of awe - of which, I think, the nation will not willingly deprive itself."

Meet the Duke of Cambridge

The aristocrat formerly known as Prince William must be pretty pleased with how his wedding went yesterday, but what, I wonder, does he make of his new name?

I guess nobody turns down the chance to become a Duke, but whether or not he realises that he is now sharing a name with the biggest buffoon ever to command the British Army is another question.

Prince George of Cambridge wasn't born in the fens, but in Hanover, and was the grandson of King George III of England, the mad one. He came to England after serving for a time in the Hanoverian army and was soon the Colonel of fashionable cavalry regiment. The nearest he got to active service was garrisoning the Ionian Islands, but nevertheless he swiftly became Inspector of Cavalry.

In 1854 the first major European was in nearly two generations broke out. In the intervening years the British Army had hardly been at peace though, and had been fighting a series of bloody wars against fearsome Sikhs and Afghans. The Honourable East India Company possibly had more experienced officers in its service than any other army in the world, and they all wanted to make their names fighting the Russians.

However in the mid nineteenth century heroic service on the Plains of Afghanistan counted for a lot less than blue blood, and so the 'Indians' stayed out east and George sailed to Crimea in command of a Division of Infantry.

Why the world's first industrial nation should go to war with an army whose leadership had more titles, and less military experience, the top table at yesterday's wedding is such a remarkable fact that it needs some explanation. The British Establishment doesn't usually need much of an excuse to be incompetent, but in this case the stupidity was at least partially wilful.

Back in the good old days of the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell had turned the course of history by putting together a pretty effective force of cavalry, called his Ironsides. So thoroughly professional were they that Prince Ruport's dandified Cavaliers were swiftly put to flight and King Charles's head was soon enough on the block.

This act of regicide, and the Commonwealth that was inaugurated afterwards at sword point, so horrified the aristocracy that once the monarchy was restored they vowed to never let it happen again.

Hence forth officers in the army would not be promoted on merit, but would have to buy their rank. The idea was that the army would then be led by gentleman of private means who, having no need of the King's shilling, would fight only in defence of their own wealth and status and never against their own kind.

The army survived the Napoleonic Wars thanks to the genius of the Duke of Wellington, and a sort of Darwinian natural selection that allowed talented, but impoverished officers, to rise to the top by filling dead men’s shoes.

The virtues of an aristocratic army were then shown as they rounded up Luddites and massacred protesting Manchunians. The Crimean War though was to prove a slightly tougher test of this force than Peterloo.

The first battle was an assault across the River Alma. Lord Raglan had put the famous Light Division, of Peninsula fame, up front and stuck George's 1st Division right behind them. Raglan then issued one of his famously ambiguous orders and told George to "act as necessary".

A professional soldier would have understood immediately that his job was to support the Light Division, reinforcing success and guarding against failure. George though was no such thing. The Lights carried the Russian defences at bayonet point, but then faced an immediate counter attack. George did nothing and so the Light Division was repulsed, and the army had to attack the Russian position all over again.

A real army would at this point have either quietly found a safe posting for George to be sent to where he couldn't do any more harm, or shot him to encourage the others, but then the British Army in 1854 wasn't a real army. The McNeill–Tulloch Report into the war later concluded that the senior officers weren't fit to dig latrines, but this was quietly shelved and a better report compiled, thus demonstrating that they couldn't even pull off a good cover up, and George ended up Commander-in-Chief of the entire army.

He then spent the next forty years vigorously resisting any attempt to bring the army into the modern age. His most famous quip, delivered to a fellow officer, was "Brains? I don't believe in brains! You haven't any, I know, Sir!", pretty much summed up his approach to soldiering.

An example of how little he learnt from the debacle of Crimea is that when war with Russia again looked likely in 1878, the man he named to lead the crucial expedition was the same officer who penned the order that sent the Light Brigade to their doom, now 75 years old.

Fortunately for the nation (or unfortunately for our enemies, depending on your point of view) George had a nemesis in the form of Sir Garnet Wolseley. As aristocratic and snobbish as any of his brother officers, Wolseley though didn't purchase his commission and initially served in the engineers, where promotion was by examination. He then fought and won a series of small wars for the nation, which gave him the clout to get things done. He slowly pushed through a degree of reform and reduced George's role to largely that of being a figurehead. Ironically he eventually succeed him as Commander-in-Chief only to discover he now had no power to do anything.

When war broke out in South Africa in 1899 the day was saved by the Army Corps Wolseley had formed in the teeth of George's intransigence, but the catastrophes of Black Week showed that very little had really changed since the Alma.

However if his military conquests were almost non-existent, in the bedroom George had considerably more success. Nominally, but possibly not legally, married to an actress, his bedpost had more notches in it than most. Whilst he may never have been able to out think Wolseley, he appears to have had the edge in other ways.

However as none of the fruit of his overactive loins were considered legitimate by the exacting standards of the time, his title lapsed on his death until it was revived yesterday to be given, by the Queen, to Prince William.

I wonder what message she was trying to send to her grandson?

Edward II and the Red Hot Slanders.

There are two things everyone knows about Edward II; that he was an effeminate wuss, and that he met his end after they 'got medieval on his ass'. Students of history may also remember something about the Battle of Bannockburn and a bit of tabloid banter about his French wife, but mainly it's the cross dressing and the poker that sticks in the memory.

Mostly we have Mel Gibson to thank for this.

Mel Gibson's contribution to historical accuracy in movies is only exceeded by his contributions to temperance and Christian-Jewish harmony (Gallipoli being the exception that proves the rule). Going over the errors in Braveheart would take rather a long time, but lets just say the absence of a bridge in the Battle of Stirling Bridge is one of the minor ones.

Lets leave most of that aside and just concentrate on poor old Edward II, who couldn't have been more camp in the film if he'd been played by John Inman. However, despite some evidence to the contrary, being gay doesn't make you a limp wristed sissy any more than being an Australian makes you an alcoholic racist.

By the same token though having one of the most ruthless and effective military leaders of the Middle Ages for a Dad doesn't make you a great general any more than appearing in a few good films makes you a great director.

And that was really Edward's problem. He was lousy military leader, a lousy peacetime leader, and a lousy absolute monarch. In English history he's the embarrassing one between Edward I "Hammer of the Scots" and Edward III "Hammer of the French". Fair enough, that's the problem with hereditary monarchies, sometimes the guy you get just isn't up to the job.

But let's be clear about what talents you needed to be the top dog at the time of the knights. You needed to be single minded, ruthless, to be prepared to use extreme violence, to double cross your opponents, and to trust nobody. Today if you were recruiting for someone with that skill mix your best bet would be to try the local maximum security prison.

Edward, by contrast, appears to have been a pretty cool guy, and quite butch with it.

He enjoyed swimming, boating , music, dancing and romances. He enjoyed practical jobs like digging ditches and shoeing horses and liked the company of ordinary people. Quite a regular guy really, but someone who would stand out as a bit odd in the Royal Family today, let alone seven centuries ago.

Edward may not even have been gay. Being accused of sodomy by a medieval chroniclers is a bit like being played by an English actor in a Hollywood movie, it's just a quick way of telling the audience you're a baddie.

However we don't know that he wasn't gay. Given that there were 21 male monarchs between Harold II and Henry Tudor, then if 5% are gay we can make an educated guess that it was either him or Richard the Lionheart. However as Richard 'outed' himself on at least two occasions, once on the eve of his marriage whilst standing in church wearing only his pants, and spent a night in bed with the King of France, the smart money would probably go on it being him.

The main evidence for his sexuality is his preference for the company of his mate Piers Gaviscon over his, supposedly very beautiful, French wife. Beautiful she may have been by the standards of the time, but I doubt she was in the Sophie Marceau category of seductiveness, not least because she was twelve when she married him.

So Edward may or may not have been gay, but at least he doesn't appear to have been a paedophile.

And the red hot poker?

Well that isn't mentioned until a decade or so after he was deposed, and the contemporary accounts say he was suffocated. The truth is we don't know as the people who got rid of him weren't too keen on the story getting out. One historian even has him being banished to Italy and living out his days peacefully in the sun.

I think that's stretching credibility a bit, but if there was ever an English monarch who would have gladly swapped being King for punting around Venice it was Edward: a useless king, but a better person than many of his critics.

For more on Edward try this excellent blog.