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Communiqué of the LCR/ETA-VIO
Coordinación Democrática announces its decision to undertake adequate political measures to achieve the following objectives:
*Immediate release of political prisoners and trade-union prisoners without exception, the return of all exiles, and an amnesty that restores full rights to those who have been deprived of them for political or trade-union reasons,
* The effective and full exercise of the human rights and political liberties consacrated in international juridical documents, especially for all political parties, without any exception.
*The immediate and full recognition of trade-union liberty and the elimination of the present state union.
*The full, immediate, and effective exercise of the rights and political liberties of the various nationalities and regions of the Spanish state.
*The functioning of a single and independent judicial power according to the requirements of a democratic. society.
* The realization of the break or democratic alternative by means of the opening of a constituent period that leads, through a popular consultation based on universal suffrage, to a decision about the form of the state and government, as well as the defense of political liberties and rights during this period. Coordinación Democrática invites:
* The existing opposition bodies among the nationalities and regions to join with this body into the democratic alternative on the scale of the Spanish state;
*The political parties and trade-union organizations throughout the state that were not part of the Platforma or the Junta to integrate themselves into the Coordinaciồn Democrática;
*The economic, professional, and cultural sectors and the public administration, as well as the church, military, and judicial institutions to open up a dialogue, in the name of the higher interests of the fatherland, that leads to the realization of the peaceful alternative defined here;
*All the democratic, political, trade-union, and social forces and all the citizens of the peoples of the Spanish state to participate in the peaceful actions and mobilizations needed for the real conquest of fundamental rights and liberties and for the establishment,
JOAN RAVENTOS (Cen ANTONIO OUTIERREZ (P (msagrupamens Soesaliate). 1. In the first place, in view of the arrest of several members of Coordinac ión Democrática (CD) and the prosecution of four of them, including three leaders of at the time of the break, of broad coalition organs of executive power, nonexclusive and nonobligatory, that guarantee full exercise of democratic liberties and rights and the opening and development of the constituent process toward the transference of power to the organs of executive power or government that are constitutionally elected. Coordinación Democrática believes that the accomplishment of its political purpose os a democratic alternative requires that it last until general elections are convoked, without prejudice to the freedom of each party in the constitutional debate; after the democratic break, it will reconsider whether its continuation as a united body is opportune. The signers of Coordinación Democrática declare their profound conviction that in signing they all concur with the desire to overcome the conflicts of the past and that they will respect the results of the constituent process and the corresponding democratic elections. Coordinación Democrática expresses its total conviction that this program constitutes the only peaceful alternative leading to democracy. Its realization is thus not the exclusive task of the opposition, but must be the primordial task of all Spaniards. Madrid, March 26, 1976 Signers: Comisiones Obreras (Workers Commissions), Grupo Independiente (Independent Group), Movimiento Comunista (Communist Movement), Partido Carlista (Carlist party), Partido Comunista de España (Communist party of Spain), Partido Demócrata Popular (Popular Democratic party), Partido Social-Demócrata (Social Democratic party), Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers party), Partido Socialista Popular (Popular Socialist party), Partido del Trabajo de España (Labor party of Spain), Unión General de Trabajadores (General Workers Union), Unión Social-Demócrata Española (Spanish Social Democratic Union), Izquierda Democrática (Democratic Left), pending ratification at its next congress. CORRUSICA PRE MORe CARES DISTO RADA TURE DEME IN, BARIA workers organizations, we express our solidarity against Francoist repression and we commit ourselves to the struggle for their release, together with all political
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SPAIN prisoners, thus strengthening and extending the battle for amnesty. 2. On the CD declaration of March.26, 1976, our position is as follows:
a. The fundamental meaning of the constitution of CD consists of offering a political pact to the so-called reformist sectors of the government and of Francoism in general. This has been explained in various versions by leaders of the bourgeois and workers groups that have signed the declaration.
b. The political logic of this pact in reality is not a response to "the crisis of the government and the regime and the absence of just and effective solutions to the grave problems of the country." It is essentially a response to the relationship of forces that exists in the country between the two fundamental classes of society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This relationship of forces has been expressed in an offensive of mass action of unprecedented combativity, scope, and organization, especially since last January. This offensive has not only "burned" the first government of the Francoist monarchy in three months and revealed the unviability of any project of "reform" of the dictatorship, but has also begun to place a question mark over any possibility of establishing a bourgeois regime in Spain. Thus, the desire of the workers to win their demands, their right to work, their own organization based on the sovereignty of their assemblies and on the election in these assemblies of various types of direct representatives (delegates, representative commissions, etc.); the deep consciousness of solidarity between the working class and the other popular layers exploited and oppressed nationally and socially; the extension of the struggle for amnesty and the inclusion of "labor amnesty" within that struggle; the extension of the struggle for the dissolution of the repressive corps and for extraction of responsibility for the crimes of Francoism, in all, the struggle for the complete liquidation of the dictatorship - all these things already indicate that the objective dynamic of the mobilization of the masses after the conquest of liberty will clash with any attempt to restrain It within the limits of a "truncated democracy" concocted according to the recipes of the Spanish bourgeoisie. The pact that is offered by the CD to the "reformers" of Francoism has Spanish big capital, the military hierarchy, and imperialism as its real interlocutor and hos the essential objective of holding back this mass dy namic, reducing it to limits compatible with the estabTishment of a bourgeois "democratic" state in Spain.
•c. On this basis, it is possible to explain why the CD declaration does not pose opposition to the Francoist monarchy in o clear and explicit fashion; it does not clearly and 'explicitly pose the free exercise of the right of self-determination of all the peoples oppressed under the Spanish state; it does not even allude to the necessity of dissolving the Francoist repressive apparatus; it does not even allude to the economic and social de16 mands of the workers. The constituent elections are posed for an indefinite future; in the meantime some "broad coalition organs of executive power" (in which the Francoist "reformers" would be included and at whose head would stand Juan Carlos) will "guarantee" the defense of political liberties and rights. 3. Consequently, the LCR/ETA-VI totally opposes the political alternative of the CD. We deny that the "negotiated break" (ruptura pactada) is the road to the overthrow of the dictatorship; that road passes only through the development of the independent action of the working class and the people for their demands and slogans, without any "shortcuts, " through their own methods of struggle, their own forms of organization. It is only this mass action that will guarantee the liquidation of the dictatorship and the exercise of fundamental democratic liberties and rights. Now is the time to organize the final assault of the working class and the people against Francoism, to prepare the general strike that will bring down the dictatorship. No "provisional coalition government" has the slightest right to exercise power after the overthrow of the dictatorship. The convocation of elections to a constituent assembly by universal suffrage with the right to vote at sixteen years of age must be immediate. 4. In face of the desperate maneuvers of the bourgeoisie in its various political factions in the attempt to resolve its crisis of power, the working class must maintain complete political and organizational independence. Our people have paid and are still paying much too high a price for their liberty (Vitoria!) to receive in exchange a "negotiated caricature" of their rights and demands. The unity of the workers and people's movement is certainly more necessary than ever. This unity is being built in struggle, in the assemblies, by the delegates, the strike committees. This unity requires the common efforts of all workers political parties and groups to exfend, strengthen, and centralize the united organizations of the mass movement and its vanguard, in the factories, the workshops, the neighborhoods, the educational institutions, and so on. This unity requires the unconditional defense of the objectives of the workers against the dictatorship and the employers. It is for this unity that we are fighting. That the workers commissions, the Movimiento Comunista, the Communist party, the PSOE, the PTE, and the UGT appear as signers of the declaration of the CD is an obstacle and not at all a stimulus to the unity of the working class and the people. We call on all these workers organizations as well as the other workers organizations and parties and the revolutionary nationalist organizations to construct o united front against the dictatorship. Down with the Francoist monarchy!
alier the cantonal
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