1186 Ch. 29 • Democracy and the Collapse of Communismwar with nationalist rebels in its African colonies of first Angola, beginning
in 1961, and then Mozambique, conflicts that Portugal could neither afford
(at the annual cost of half the nation’s budget) nor win (see Chapter 28). In
April 1974, a group of liberal army officers overthrew the dictatorship. The
Socialist Party emerged victorious in elections the following year and
Angola and Mozambique became independent, lapsing into bloody civil
wars. Despite another coup two years later by a group of officers, the Por
tuguese transition to democracy occurred without bloodshed. However,
political turmoil forced the government to abandon a program of state
nationalizations and some agricultural collectivization in 1976. That year,
Mario Soares (1924— ) took office as the first democratically elected prime
minister in Portugal in fifty years, and he dominated Portuguese political life
into the 1990s.
In Spain, General Francisco Franco survived as dictator long after his
friends Hitler and Mussolini had gone to their graves. After World War II,
the United States prevented the United Nations from imposing economic
sanctions against Spain because of Franco’s support of the Axis powers.
Franco maintained Spain’s authoritarian political structure. While repudiat
ing secular values, he accepted economic modernization, with the help of
the United States.
In the late 1960s, opposition to Franco’s regime mounted in Catalonia
and the Basque country, Spain’s most industrial regions, each with an
entrenched separatist movement. Franco struck hard against Basque and
Catalan separatists; the Catalan language, for example, remained illegal in
print. But Franco retained popularity in traditionally religious regions, such
as Navarre and his native Galicia.
Franco agreed that Juan Carlos (1938- ), the son of the heir to the throne
before the civil war, would succeed him as head of state and that Spain
would remain an authoritarian state. Within the Spanish government, how
ever, many officials already believed political reform inevitable, even desir
able. Socialist and Communist parties existed, although they were illegal.
Government censorship itself became more lax in the 1970s.
Upon Franco’s death, Juan Carlos became king in 1975. He accepted the
transformation of Spain into a constitutional monarchy with a democratic
political structure. Spain emerged from authoritarian rule and international
isolation. Spectacular economic growth and increasing prosperity helped
the centrist Adolfo Suarez (1932- ) keep a series of governments afloat
through skillful political negotiation, even without a parliamentary majority.
The charismatic Felipe Gonzalez and the Socialists swept Suarez aside in
the 1980s. In 1996, Jose Maria Aznar became Spain’s first conservative
prime minister since the time of Franco.