FELIPE GONZÁLEZ MÁRQUEZ Prime Minister of Spain from 1982 to 1996, Felipe González Márquez (born 1942) helped lead Spain into the European community of nations. Birth and Childhood Felipe González Márquez was born on March 5, 1942, in Seville, the largest city in western Andalusia in the south of Spain. His father, Felipe González Helguera, bought and sold cattle and owned a small dairy in a lower-middle-class district of Seville. His mother, Juana Márquez, was, in her son's words, "the driving force of the family." The particular period of Spanish history in which González grew up had a decisive influence on what were later to be his ideological beliefs. Between 1936 and 1939 Spain had suffered an horrific civil war, resulting from a military rising that overthrew the reformist government elected to power in February 1936. Under the ultraconservative regime established by General Francisco Franco at the end of the war in 1939, all political parties and trade unions were banned except those organized by the state. All forms of dissent were prohibited. González was born at a time when Spanish prisons were full to overflowing with political prisoners. Thousands of people had been executed since the end of the war because of their liberal beliefs. In his neighborhood in Seville lived a number of former political prisoners who had served their sentences in a nearby Francoist labor camp. Finally, the 1940s were years of extreme hardship. The combined effects of the civil war, the subsequent world war, the Francoist policy of economic autarchy, and a long, severe drought brought shortages of even the most basic necessities of life. Spaniards refer to the 1940s as "the hungry years." During those years González attended a school run by Claretian priests, then entered the Faculty of Law at Seville University. There he was soon influenced by the highly politicized atmosphere which characterized Spanish (and other European) universities in the 1960s. In 1962 he joined the illegal and secret Socialist Youth movement and, two years later, the equally clandestine Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). It was also at Seville University that he met Carmen Romero López, whom he married in 1969. By the mid-1960s the economic and social situation in Spain had changed considerably from the hunger and scarcities of the 1940s. The Franco regime had abandoned autarchy and Spain had been reincorporated into the world capitalist system. Politically, however, the regime had not changed at all. Strikes were illegal, but became increasingly frequent in these years, as did demonstrations, go-slows, lock-outs, unfair dismissals, and numerous other manifestations of conflict between employers and workers. When González graduated from Seville University in 1966, he set up the city's first labor counseling office and, as a lawyer specializing in labor cases, acted on behalf of the employees in various parts of the country in some of the most important disputes of the time. Early Political Career While he was advancing his professional career, González was also gaining a name for himself as a member of the clandestine Socialist party. In 1939 most of the party's surviving leaders had left Spain for exile. Inside the country a minimal organizational structure managed to keep going, from which new leaders began to emerge. Felipe González was one of this new generation of activists. In 1965 he became a member of the Seville provincial committee and, later, of the national committee. In 1970 the PSOE held its 11th congress and González was elected to the party's most important internal body, the executive commission. By then González and his contemporaries in the PSOE felt increasingly uncomfortable with an aging exiled party leadership that seemed to be divorced from the realities of contemporary Spain. In 1974 at the 13th party congress held at Suresnes near Paris, González was elected as the party's first secretary-general. His election represented the triumph of the "new" PSOE over the "historic" sector. It also constituted the recognition of González as a major figure within the Spanish socialist movement and the beginning of a new phase in his political career. As leader of the PSOE (with the nom de guerre "Isidoro") his political responsibilities and activities had already increased when, in November 1975, General Franco died, opening the way to the legalization of a multiparty system in Spain. Throughout 1976 González traveled widely in Europe discussing the political future of Spain and of the PSOE with the leaders of other European socialist parties. He established particularly strong links with the West German Social Democratic party. At home he participated in negotiations between the centrist government of Adolfo Suárez and the opposition parties which were designed to achieve consensus on the need for moderate reformist policies, rather than radical change, in order to ensure a peaceful transition to democratic rule. When the first free elections in 41 years were held in June 1977 the PSOE became the main opposition party in the Spanish Cortes (parliament). Under the leadership of González, the PSOE worked to consolidate Spain's nascent democracy and to increase its own appeal to the progressive, but moderate, sectors of Spanish society. In May 1979 at the 28th party congress, González resigned as secretary-general when the majority of the delegates rejected his motion that the word "Marxist" be dropped from the party's definition of itself. Four months later, however, at an extraordinary congress, he was reinstated and the motion was carried. Giving the party a social democratic image earned González criticism from the left wing of his party, but it paid dividends with respect to the electorate. In October 1982 the PSOE won a landslide victory at the polls and González became Spain's first Socialist prime minister since 1939. Spain's First Socialist Prime Minister González' personal charisma, his prestige as a politician, and his control of the PSOE's executive apparatus subsequently enabled him to weather a number of internal storms and to implement controversial policies. Most notably, the leader of the PSOE altered decisively the party's position on Spanish membership of NATO. The PSOE was strongly opposed when Spain joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1981. After the 1982 election, however, the González government and the majority of the PSOE advocated remaining in the alliance. In a referendum held in March 1986 the question was decided in favor of retaining NATO membership. Three months later González again led his party to victory in a general election. He won his third term in office in the elections held on October 29, 1989, although this time, unlike the two previous occasions, the PSOE did not secure an absolute majority in the Cortes. During González's mandate, Spain definitively left behind the international isolation of the Franco years, becoming a member of the European Economic Community in 1986 and of the Western European Union in 1988. Prime Minister González maintained close relations with a number of Latin American leaders and, as vice-president of the Socialist International, took a particular interest in national and international efforts to resolve the problems occasioned by economic and political instability in Central America. After serving his forth consecutive term, González announced in June 1997 that he would not seek re-election. His withdrawal followed a series of financial and political scandals. The most serious were charges against some 20 political and police officials under González, including a former Interior Minister, over organizing squads that killed Basque separatists in the 1980s Encyclopaedia of world biographies FRANCISCO FRANCO Francisco Franco, the son of a naval postmaster, was born in El Ferrol, Spain, on 4th December, 1892. Franco graduated from the Toledo Military Academy in 1910. Commissioned into the 8th Regiment he was posted to Morocco in 1913. Although physically small he proved to be a courageous officer and won rapid promotion. Franco had reached the rank of major in 1917 and played a prominent role in strike-breaking in the Asturian coal fields and in 1920 Lieutenant Colonel Millán Astray appointed him second in command of the Spanish Foreign Legion (Tercio de Extranjeros). The Tercio de Extranjeros quickly developed a reputation for brutality. Astray and Franco encouraged the killing and mutilation of prisoners. Arturo Barea, who served under Franco in Morroco in 1921, later wrote: "When it attacked, the Tercio knew no limits to its vengeance. When it left a village, nothing remained but fires and the corpses of men, women and children." In 1923 Franco replaced Millán Astray as commander of the Tercio de Extranjeros and over the next few years he gained a reputation as a brilliant strategist and administrator. In October 1923 Franco married Carmen Polo, a member of a wealthy merchant family. Franco growing reputation in the armed forces was recognized when Alfonso XIII sent a representative to the wedding. In 1925 France and Spain agreed to combine forces against Abd-el- Krim in Morocco. Franco was placed in command of the Spanish troops and Henri-Philippe Petain led the French Army. In 1926 Franco was appointed Europe's youngest general. Two years later he was appointed commander of Spain's new military academy at Saragossa. This involved him visiting military schools in Germany and France. Franco supported the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera. However, after failing to solve Spain's economic problems he was forced to resign in January 1930. In 1931 Alfonso XIII agreed to democratic elections. It was the first time for nearly sixty years that free elections had been allowed in Spain. When the Spanish people voted overwhelmingly for a republic, Alfonso was advised that the only way to avoid large-scale violence was to go into exile.