‘Capitalist Socialists’ Anger Labor : Spain’s Leader, Unions Headed for a Collision

For decades, Spain’s Socialist Party and Socialist labor unions have run like twin trains on parallel tracks. Now they are hurtling toward a collision that could rattle Spain’s prospering young democracy.

After six years of Socialist government, Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez looks at Spain’s buoyant economy with satisfaction. Gonzalez, aloof and elegant, sees a bright future for a brawny Spain in a united Europe.

In contrast, the unions, historically Spanish socialism’s staunchest ally, see broken promises. They feel abandoned by their old friend, Felipe. Where has all the socialism gone? they wonder.

“When Gonzalez talks, the entrepreneurs applaud. His policies are typically of the right. If he were (British Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher, it would be easy to understand, but this is supposed to be a Socialist government,” complained Jose A. Saracibar, chief negotiator for the Union General de Trabajadores, Spain’s largest union and a wellspring of political strength for Gonzalez’ Socialist Workers’ Party.

Last month, Socialist and Communist unions stunned Gonzalez with a 24-hour nationwide general strike--the first in 54 years--that shut down the country down. As many as 8 million of Spain’s 12 million workers stayed home to protest government economic policies.

New Protests Vowed

Repeated rounds of talks between the government and the unions failed to narrow money and policy differences, and on Feb. 8 talks were broken off and the unions vowed new protests while awaiting Gonzalez’s state of the union address today.

Storming from one late-night negotiating session that he described as a “total failure,” Gonzalez said surrender to union demands would undermine government social and economic policy.

“I would prefer a thousand times to go home than to lead a puppet government,” the prime minister thundered.

The unions are demanding wage increases to keep pace with last year’s inflation rate of 5.8%, a higher minimum wage, improved pensions and expanded benefits for Spain’s nearly 3 million unemployed. The government insists that meeting the demands would revive an inflation that has been steadily reduced from 14% when Gonzalez took office.

Speculation on Election

Gonzalez was reelected to a new four-year term in 1986, but the present impasse has encouraged speculation that he may feel obliged to call mid-year elections in quest of a renewed mandate. Political handicappers think Gonzalez would win--but probably at the cost of his current absolute majority in Parliament.

What is irking to their traditionalist brethren is that some Gonzalez Socialists appear to have abandoned ideology for opportunism. Some of those who came to power with Gonzalez have gotten rich, and by now nearly all of them are stylish. In many ways, their critics on the left charge, Spain’s “capitalist socialists” have become social democrats: the same sort of well-dressed establishment pillars as Italy’s Gucci Communists.

Gonzalez this month fired the modish head of Spanish national television because she had stocked her wardrobe on government funds. There are questions about some officials’ expensive new homes and the provenance of a Cabinet minister’s piano. Gonzalez himself likes to relax on a yacht the government bought for Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the late Spanish leader. Doughty Spanish workers who clung to egalitarian beliefs when fascist police made them dangerous are not amused now.

When union leaders wonder if success has spoiled Felipe Gonzalez, they think back a decade to the national political and economic consensus devised to speed Spain toward modernization after four decades of isolation that ended with Franco’s death in 1975.

Fruits of the consensus have not only stoked dramatic economic growth, twice the European average in recent years, but also have helped consolidate the blossoming democracy that Gonzalez, 46, dreams of leading into the 21st Century.

“In 1980 we agreed to a sacrifice, to accept salary increases lower than the rate of inflation,” said Saracibar. “The sacrifices got results, and since 1986 the economy has been good--except that now there is no agreement from the government or employers about sharing the benefits. They don’t want agreements, but our surrender.”

The Spanish economy has recorded powerful, business-led growth of 5% in each of the last three years. But last year’s wage increases were based on the government’s projected rate of 3% inflation, only about half the final figure.

Government policies kind to Spanish capitalists have encouraged both new investment and restructuring of existing industries to make them more competitive with Spain’s partners in the European Community. Along the way, unemployment has grown to become Spain’s biggest economic headache. At 18.8%, it is currently the highest in Europe. Unions seek expanded coverage that would protect about half the unemployed instead of the current one-third.

Underlying the specific issues is a personal showdown between Gonzalez and Nicolas Redondo, head of the Socialist union. It is both a question of who is in charge and where the country is headed.

Socialism in Spain has traditionally meant a left-of-center political vision favoring the working class. It matured as a clear alternative to communism on the one hand and conservative capitalism on the other.

Gonzalez is as Socialist as ever, his supporters aver, but they say he has adapted socialism to the demands of governing a modern state.

“Felipe said very early that he wanted to preside over a ‘socialism of wealthy’ and not a ‘socialism of poverty,’ ” said Elena Flores, a foreign relations specialist for Gonzalez’ party. Gonzalez supporters realize that the same old recipes will not work any more, she said; they have become more modern, but the unions have not.

“They remain in an era of confrontation and demands,” Flores said.

From where union leaders like Redondo and Saracibar sit, the issue is one of principle.

“The policies of the Gonzalez government are not the historic policies of the party,” Saracibar complained. “The party itself has become only a sounding board for the government, and the Parliament is also firmly in government hands. Therefore we, de facto, have become the opposition.”

The government is strong and the unions are relatively weak, but if a showdown comes, some bumps are in prospect as Spain gears up for the scheduled 1992 economic unification of the European Community.

“Gonzalez can win a new election, but he cannot govern effectively against the opposition of Spanish workers,” Saracibar warned.