WHAT DOES THE EUROPEAN IDEA, THE IDEA OF EUROPEAN UNITY MEAN today? In the Christian era, a kind of unity was born of a common faith. It found expression in the Church and in the universities. It excluded neither ethnological diversity nor multiple and autonomous centres of power. From time to time, it enforced the truce of God, but it imposed neither lasting peace nor obedience to the same laws.

THE MOMENT EUROPEAN POLICY BECAME AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT IN the external and internal policies of our countries, it could not ignore the use of the ‘Summit’, which in itself was an outcome of technological advance and of the personalization of power. The first meeting between the heads of government of the Six took place in 1957, in order to speed up the conclusion of the Treaty of Rome. Later, it was France which was most insistent that these meetings should be repeated. The reason behind this insistence was, broadly speaking, the nature of the French constitutional system and the osition of the President of the Republic, whose task it is to take t e main res onsibility for foreign affairs.

HAVING SPENT MORE THAN ONE THIRD OF A CENTURY IN THE TALL and narrow dungeon of Franco's authoritarian regime, Spain now stands on the threshold of an uncharted future. Not even those who say that the 35-odd million inhabitants mostly enjoyed the shade and the miasma can deny that the silhouette there for all to see is, unsurprisingly, that of a hesitant convalescent. Anxious questions concerning the future of Spain do not owe their acuity to the dread of what appears inevitable, but rather to the wide range of apparently equally probable alternatives.

IT IS REPORTED THAT WHEN ALVARO CUNHAL CAME OUT OF PRISON IN the late 1950s, he initiated a purge of the leadership of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). Their crime was apparently españolismo – or a sympathy with the broad reformist policy of ‘national reconciliation’ adopted by the Spanish Communists in 1956. The Spanish leaders were aware of this implied slur on their revolutionary seriousness, but as both parties battled for survival against repressive dictatorships, it was not an issue over which to break openly the fundamental solidarity between them. Yet a decade and a half later, with Cunhal seemingly leading his Party down the highroad to socialism and his Spanish comrades probably within sight of their immediate goal of the collapse of Francoism, the theoretical discrepancies have re-emerged. Santiago Carrillo, Secretary-General of the PCE, has been sufficiently critical of Cunhal's attempt to create an Eastern European-style socialism in Portugal to earn Soviet accusations of lack of solidarity. Carrillo has described Cunhal's policy during the last year as ‘a good example of how not to make a revolution’. In doing so, the Spanish leader has not only incurred the displeasure of Moscow, something which he has learned to live with since his stand against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, but also risked serious internal division inside his own party.

DURING THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, SPANIARDS HAVE BEEN LED TO concentrate their attention on economic affairs. ‘Enrichissez-vous’ has been the cry of the government to all classes. World prosperity, a modicum of business freedom, some well-timed reforms, a great. deal of enterprising spirit have spelt economic success and an end to persistent underdevelopment.

The repression of political activities imposed a political and social consensus conducive to economic growth. However, the time is fast approaching when the enforced political moratorium will come to an end. Groups of varyin ideologies will contend for power. A backlog of problem will have to be attended to. In this article, while avoiding prophecy, I wish to evaluate the foreseeable effect of some of these variables on the Spanish economy after Franco disappears.