the death agony of francoism The Franco ist state of exception Imposed over Euzkadi (the Basque country) has been unable to halt the advance of the mass movement there. In spite of the hundreds of arrests, the torture, the harossment, the virtual police-military occupation, and the terrorist attacks of the far-right parallel police gangs, tens of thousands of workers followed the call issued by the workers commissions, far-left groups, and other political organizations and went on strike June 11. At this point, information on the general strike is still fragmentory. But initial reports indicate that more than 50, 000 were on strike in the province of Guipúzcoa and more than 20,000 in Vizcaya (Biscay). In some industrial cities, like Eibar in Guipüzcoo, the strike was almost total. General assemblies were held in many factories. The strike came six days after the frame-up trial against Ignacia Garmendia and four of his comrades, Bosque militants the Francoist regime had been planning to murder. The prosecutor had demanded the death penalty against Garmendia. Buf in the context of the rise of the moss movement, one of whose major demands has been that Garmendia and his comrades be freed, the dictatorship's court apparently thought better of it. On June o the military commander's office in Burgos, where the trial was held, announced that Gormendia had been sentenced to twenty-three years in prison; four others were sentenced to terms ranging from six to twenty-three years. That in itself is an initial victory. The dictatorship wanted Garmendia dead; the mass movement stayed the hand of the executioner. But the state of exception is still in force, New frome-up trials are planned, notably against Eva Forest and Antonio Durn, against whom the dictatorship has also asked for the death penalty. Those trials, together with the state of exception, are a political test of strength between the diciaforship and the mass movement. If the terror now being inflicted on Euzkadi continues to fail to crush the mass movement and if the June 11 general strike acts as a springboard for a new leap forward for the moss movement, the Spanish bourgeoisie may well set its "succession" operation in motion, replacing the dictator in an attempt to divert and channel the mass movement. But the crisis of the regime and of Spanish capitalism is so deep that it can be said with certainty that any attempt to preserve Francoism without Franco or to half the revolutionary movement in the Spanish state by granting a few concessions is doomed to failure. The succession operation will only give the mass movement yet another impetus. In this context, organizing international solidarity with the revolutionary movement in the Sponish state is a primary task for the international workers movement, and especially for its vanguard. The outbreak of the new revolution in the Sponish state, particularly in combination with the ripening prerevolutionary situation in Portugal, will have deep repercussions throughout capitalist Europe ond even beyond. In this issue of INPRECOR we are publishing three texts on the revolutionary movement in the Spanish state. The first is the appeal issued by the Euzkodi Coordinating Committee of Workers Commissions calling for the June 11 general strike. The second, a resolution of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, onalyzes the crisis of Francoism and Spanish capitalism and presents the program of the Fourth International in Spain. The third is a joint appeal calling for a boycott of the fake "trade-union elections" organized by the dictatorship. It was issued by the comrades of the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria/Euzkadi to Askatasuna-VI (Revolufionary Communist League/Basque Nation and Freedom-VI) and the Liga Comunista (Communist League), sympathizing organizations of the Fourth International in the territory of the Spanish state. Coming issues of INPRECOR will report further information on the general strike of June 11 and on the development of the struggle to bring down the Froncoist dictatorship, opening salvo of the third Spanish revolution of this century. June 15, 1975
3