Adolfo Suarez

摘要

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 Francoism's death throes, when to emerge, and what sort of Spain he wanted. Another is Felipe Gonzalez, the country's first Socialist prime minister, who demonstrated that the left's long period of wounded resentment after the civil war could be transmuted into a successful run in government. Yet another was Tor-cuato Fernandez-Miranda, the king's political mentor, who in 1975 pushed forward the name of an apparently mediocre provincial, Adolfo Suarez. And then, decidedly not least, Mr Suarez himself, who took on the task of thrusting Spain into democracy and did so at dizzying speed.