alist nations, and both had known brief and unsuccess- ships moored in the River Tagus mutinied and tried to take their ships to join the anti-fascist Spanish fleet. ratic' powers of Western capitalism, despite the idle The countries of the Iberian peninsula - Portugal and Spain — are today the scene of the most monumental class struggles on the European continent.
In Portugal the working class, following the collapse of the brutal fascist regime that kept it down for so long, is shaking the capitalist system in this corner of the continent to its very foundations. In Spain the fascist dictatorship still survives, but the Spanish working class has placed itself at the head of a vast popular movement which is growing in strength from day to day as both the dictatorship and those capitalist groups who seek simply a liberal facelift prove unable to meet its challenge either through brutal repression or liberal blandishments.
If the great battles of the international class war during the past three decades have been centred in that part of the globe ruthlessly plundered by imperialism - Asia, Africa and Latin America - today they are erupting in the very heartland of world capitalism. In 1917 Lenin tried to explain the apparently ironic fact that socialist revolution should have broken out in Russia, the country least suited for it in terms of its economic development, by saying that 'the imperialist chain broke at its weakest link'. Today the weak links are again starting to buckle, and they are to be found on the Iberian peninsula.
During the 1920s and '30s Spain and Portugal were among a number of capitalist countries whose ruling classes responded to the social and economic crisis by imposing brutal fascist regimes in order to shatter the resistance of the working class movement Both were among the most underdeveloped of European capitful attempts by the capitalist class to rule through the institutions of capitalist democracy (Portugal from 1910-1926 and Spain from 1931-1936).
In each case this period was brought to a sharp end by the only force capable of uniting all the quarrelling factions of the ruling class and taking the decisive action necessary to deal with the working class; the army. In Portugal, where industrial development was very limited and the working class smail and inexperienced in political struggle, this was achieved with little resistance. But in Spain, where the workers' movement had decades of experience of political struggle under both military dictatorship and capitalist 'democracy, the reactionary military plot met with an iron ring of proletarian resistance which was only broken after three years of bloody civil war.
COMBINED
The histories of Spain and Portugal have always been closely intert wined - in part because of the similarities of the two countries, and in part through conscious co-ordination. When, 10 years after their Portuguese counterparts had taken the road to dietatorship, the Spanish ruling class plunged into civil war, the conflagration immediately spilled over the border. The opposition to Salazar's dictatorship, who had for five years depended upon the territory of the Spanish Republic as a base for their political work, saw their fate inextricably linked with the antifascist struggle in Spain. Portuguese volunteers were recruited to join the international brigades and the Spanish republican army, often using arms which they had been accumulating for use against Salazar. In Sep- until the eventual outcome was clear. tember of 1936, the crews of three Portuguese warThey were only stopped by shelling from Lisbon's shore batteries.
On the other side the Portuguese regime welcomed the fascist rising, which had orginally been hatched in the Portuguese seaside resort of Estoril. From the beginning the Franco forces were accorded every facility on Portuguese soil, including the transmission of military supplies from Germany. As soon as it was practical - in early 1938 — Salazar recognised Franco's government as the official ruler of Spain, and as the war drew to an end his police rounded up Spanish republican refugees and dutifully passed them on to Franco's butchers. A special unit of reactionary Portuguese was formed to fight alongside Franco's army - including in its ranks a later faithful spokesman of the Portuguese capitalists, Antonio Spinola.
On the home front Salazar — who for long had tried to avoid the trappings of the fascist states, stressing his regime's 'Catholic' inspiration - felt compelled to create his own storm troopers (the Portuguese Legion) and a fascist-style youth corps (Portuguese Youth) in order to combat the danger of subversion from insurgent Spain.
In March 1939, the fraternity of the two dictator ships was sealed in the infamous 'Iberian Pact' of mutual assistance. During the war they drew even closer, trying to maintain a two-man balancing act between the fascist Axis powers and the 'democratic' Allies. While their sympathy - often expressed in material assistance (provision of facilites for espionage and communications, supply of essential war material) -was unashamedly with the former, the two dictators were too skilful opportunists, and felt too weak in such a clash of giants, to cast their lot with either side This prudence saved their skins. After the war both regintes gradually made their peace with the democ
spain/portugal ...the revol hopes of opposition forces that the victorious allies would reject these offspring of defeated fascism. Portugal was admitted to NATO in 1949. Spain, symbol of economic measure, but a anti-fascist struggle, whose ties with the Axis had been quite open and direct, had a longer and more difficult haul. But within a few years she too was admitted to the conmunity of the free world". the door opened by a military and economic assistance pact with the United States.
Portugal and Spain were both anachronisms in the world of post-war, booming Europe. While economic miracles were being worked in Italy and Germany. and the somewhat less miraculous British economy managed to take some comfort from the growth of world trade and the international capitalist economy.
Portugal and Spain remained impoverished backwaters. locked in their isolated cells of fascist 'national selfsufficiency' - much to the chagrin of their respective capitalists.
But there is a problem is seen by the European r creation of a new politica framework that can bette each member country. uniformity in the politica fascist-style regimes of Sp the common European m This might have been the fact that regimes such hatred among the masses power may drive this und struggles emerging. But a of the masses becomes ur to struggle exceeds their tivity outwits the most ef and their struggles erupt ever more uncontrollable of the 1970s, both Portu
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