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Adolfo Surez
Spains democracy man

Adolfo Surez, first prime minister of a democratic

Spain, died on March 23rd, aged 81
Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition
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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 Francoisms death throes, when to emerge,
and what sort of Spain he wanted. Another is Felipe Gonzlez, the countrys first Socialist prime minister,
who demonstrated that the lefts long period of wounded resentment after the civil war could be transmuted
into a successful run in government. Yet another was Torcuato Fernndez-Miranda, the kings political
mentor, who in 1975 pushed forward the name of an apparently mediocre provincial, Adolfo Surez. And
then, decidedly not least, Mr Surez himself, who took on the task of thrusting Spain into democracy and did
so at dizzying speed.
Within a year of his appointment as Spains then-youngest prime minister, in July 1976 when he was 43, Mr
Surez had passed a law establishing a two-chamber Cortes and universal suffrage; had legalised the leftwing parties, including, most vitally, the communists; had declared an amnesty for political prisoners,
legalised trade unions and dismantled most of Francos four-decade-old political machinery; had got his
reforms heartily approved by public referendum, as well as by parliament; had called free elections, formed
the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) to fight them, won, and was on his way to drafting a new
constitution. He had only one agenda, democracy. He went for it with all the impatience of a man whose chin
sometimes showed that he only spent three minutes shaving, and who never read any book all the way
through.
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Very few thought him ideal for the job when he started. Many did not rate him at all: a procuradors son from
vila, in the harshest part of Castile, who, though his parents were Republican, had worked his way up
through Francos Movimiento Nacional as far as general secretary, with no particular credentials or
connections. (His title of Duke of Surez was a later present from Juan Carlos, the highest in the kings gift;
the fact that he looked like a nobleman, his imperious face and bearing enhanced with padded-shoulder suits
and platform shoes, was incidental, though also helpful.) What people underestimated was his talent for
political intrigue: for sniffing out the ambitions and weaknesses of colleagues, for cutting deals, for
apparently taking people into his confidence with a ready laugh and a slap on the back, and for making even
enemies feelas he charmed them with the offer of a cigarette and a lightthat they were intimates, and
could do business with him.

For all the speed of change, it was not smooth sailing. Much of the left distrusted him; unions went on strike.
He had been Francos man, after all. Some of the 40-somethings he had gathered round him to effect the
transition were dismissed as azules, blues, after the colour of Falangist shirts. Nonetheless he reached out
swiftly to the Socialists and, a bit less swiftly, to Santiago Carrillos Communists; and in 1980 he even
pushed for a new divorce law, though complaining that Opus Dei, to which he had been close, were all
over him. His mantra was to get Spanish politics back to normal, out of the long and bloody shadow of the
civil war he himself had never known; to take the drama out of it, and set Spain in the modern world.
The lone wolf
Two things in particular hobbled him. One was the terrorists, Basque, Maoist and neo-fascist, who could
neither be conciliated nor legalised. The other, consistently dangerous and furious, was the army. Most of the
generals hated everything he did, especially the legalisation of the Communist Party. There were rumours of
coups; he countered them by courting more liberal officers, especially Gutierrez Mellado, and sacking
hardliners, but never made many friends in the barracks. In February 1981, when armed rogue commanders
took over the Cortes for 22 hours, only Mellado, Carrillo and Mr Surez stayed bravely, or recklessly, in their
seats: right, left and centre openly defying the golpistas to protect the freedoms he had won.
By then, however, he had resigned as prime minister in the midst of sharp recriminations. Though he formed
a new party, it lost the next elections to the Socialists. Having achieved democracy, Mr Surez had no more
policies in his quiver, except to prolong his time in office. He was not so much power-hungrythough his
enemies said he wasas addicted to the practice of politics, a passion that left room for little else save,
occasionally, family and football. He had always been a lone wolf rather than a party man, and a networker
between left and right rather than an ideologue. His unparalleled political instincts had brought Spain liberty
and pluralism in an astonishingly short time, but he ended up sending mixed signals as to which side he was
on.
In the last decade of his life, clouded by Alzheimers, he gradually forgot that he had ever been prime
minister, or what he had done for his country while he was. A poignant photograph, soon famous all over
Spain, showed him in 2008 with Juan Carlos, the burly king with his arm round the shoulder of his
diminutive first prime minister, in shirtsleeves. The two men were walking away from the camera as if to say,
job done. As indeed it was.
From the print edition: Obituary