The "state of emergency" ["estado de excepcidn"] decreed by the Franco regime January 22 is the culmination of an increasing tendency toward repression that was already very marked throughout 1968. It is a sign of the bankruptcy of the so-called "liberalization" of the regime which aroused some illusions among reformist layers of the workers movement. Because of the deterioration of the economic situation, owing to the recession in Germany in 1966-67, and because of the radicalization of considerable sectors in opposition to Franco, the dictatorship's narrowing margin of maneuver became so thin that it had to take back even the paltry concessions it had granted in the preceding years.
In the period immediately prior to the "emergency" decree, the main sectors that had become radicalized were as follows: The Basque masses who combined their struggle for national self-determination with a stubborn defense of the workers' rights in the plants. The Asturian miners, whose jobs and means of livelihood are becoming more and more threatened by the crisis in the coal industry. The squads of students in Madrid, Barce~- lona, and other cities with universities, who carried their turbulent agitation into the streets. The workers commissions (the illegal bodies elected by the workers in the plants) which have been raising more and more political demands. The wives of political prisoners, who occupied the churches to demonstrate for the release of their husbands. Large numbers of lawyers and intellectuals, who have been protesting against the use of torture by the police against political prisoners. The agricultural workers, who are becoming increasingly restless in the southern part of the country.
Afraid that all these movements would gain momentum, the Franco regime intensified the repression as a desperate means of containing the spreading movement. The decision to do this probably came out of discussions and debates within the ruling circles, some of the officers and "hard-line" fascists overcoming those favoring continuation of a policy of "liberalization." But these squabbles are not the main feature of the crisis. This is much more an expression of the deterioration in the relationship of forces between the ruling group as a whole and the toiling masses than of a modification in the relationship of forces among the various cliques participating in the Franco government.
The magnificent rejoinder to the
"emergency" decree by the workers of Bilbao, who went on strike not only for a wage increase, but also specifically for abrogation of the "emergency" decree and release of the political prisoners, ‘met with a response by the workers throughout all of Spain. As this statement is being written, more than 150,000 Spanish workers are on strike. Far from having reduced the forces operating toward creating a prerevolutionary situation in Spain, the intensified repression undertaken by the Franco regime seems to have accelerated the process objectively.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International sends fraternal greetings to all the revolutionary workers and students of Spain and expresses its complete solidarity with them. By courageously pursuing their struggle against Franco, they can now hit one of the weakest links of European capitalism and thus weaken the entire system. The toppling of Franco, which they must seek to achieve, will constitute the prelude to the socialist revolution against the capitalist system and its bourgeois state. The attempts to unite all the revolutionists in a revolutionary Marxist party struggling for this perspective must be stepped up in view of the objective ripeness of the situation.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International appeals to the revolutionary workers and students of all of Europe, the international workers movement and the anti-imperialist movements of the entire world to actively express their solidarity toward the Spanish workers, students, intellectuals and peasants, who have so courageously broadened and deepened their struggle against the Franco regime. Demonstrations, meetings, and militant actions should be organized everywhere against the dictatorship and its representatives in the different countries. A big protest movement should be launched to bring about the liberation of the political prisoners in Spain, to deny aid or assistance of any kind from the capitalist powers or the bureaucracies of the workers states to the Franco government.
Down with the "state of emergency"! Down with the Franco dictatorship! Full and complete solidarity with the Spanish workers and students!
Forward to the socialist revolution in Spain!