From the Continent

At least two miracles have occurred in Spain’s recent political history. The first is the transition from a military dictatorship to a royal democracy, and the second is King Juan Carlos’s preservation of that royal democracy against a military coup. However, though Spain’s mixed government continues to function (weighted heavily toward parliament), it will be another miracle if it keeps functioning for long. The next big test comes October 28, when the voters of Spain will go to the polls for the third time since the death of Franco.

Spain has a tradition of partly representative government, embodied in the Cortes (legislature), that dates back as far as Britain’s Parliament. Then came the Reformation. In Britain, the Reformation had the effect of increasing the power vested in Parliament; in Spain, its effect was the opposite, the reaction against it bringing about the rise of royal absolutism—though always tempered by fierce individualism. George Ticknor, the Boston Brahmin who traveled the Iberian peninsula just after the Napoleonic wars, wrote his father that nowhere had he found a people so dedicated to liberty as the Spanish.

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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At least two miracles have occurred in Spain’s recent political history. The first is the transition from a military dictatorship to a royal democracy, and the second is King Juan Carlos’s preservation of that royal democracy against a military coup. However, though Spain’s mixed government continues to function (weighted heavily toward parliament), it will be another miracle if it keeps functioning for long. The next big test comes October 28, when the voters of Spain will go to the polls for the third time since the death of Franco.

Spain has a tradition of partly representative government, embodied in the Cortes (legislature), that dates back as far as Britain’s Parliament. Then came the Reformation. In Britain, the Reformation had the effect of increasing the power vested in Parliament; in Spain, its effect was the opposite, the reaction against it bringing about the rise of royal absolutism—though always tempered by fierce individualism. George Ticknor, the Boston Brahmin who traveled the Iberian peninsula just after the Napoleonic wars, wrote his father that nowhere had he found a people so dedicated to liberty as the Spanish.