50 years since Suárez’s appointment: the US ambassador assures Kissinger that “the King made the right choice”

Eduardo González Next Friday, July 3, marks fifty years since King Juan Carlos I appointed Adolfo Suárez as Prime Minister, replacing Carlos Arias Navarro, who had been dismissed two days earlier. Almost three months later, and after the initial expectations, US Ambassador Wells Stabler, the US ambassador to Madrid and, for some, Henry Kissinger's (Secretary of State between September 1973 and January 1977) true “spy” in Spain, offered his assessment: “The King was right to replace Arias, and Suárez appears to have been the correct choice.” According to documents declassified by the US administration, on June 4, 1976, shortly before leaving Washington for the first trip by a Spanish monarch to the United States (and to the Americas in general), the King met with Henry Kissinger, during which he reportedly confessed his intention to get rid of Arias Navarro. The dismissal was officially announced on July 1, less than a month after a visit to Washington that served to consolidate international support for the still-nascent Spanish Transition, especially after the historic speech before the US Congress in which the King uttered the word "democracy" in public for the first time. To everyone's surprise, the person chosen two days later to succeed Arias was Adolfo Suárez, a member of the National Movement (the single party of the Franco regime), whose appointment seemed to thwart any democratic progress. On the very day of his appointment, Wells Stabler sent a confidential cable to Kissinger (among others), revealed by WikiLeaks, in which he merely stated that Suárez was a “young, brilliant, and very eloquent” man who, “although he came from the National Movement, has demonstrated flexibility and pragmatism.” “Opposition figures usually speak well of him,” but his “reformist stance has earned him enemies on the right,” he continued. According to Stabler, “Suárez’s opinions have been constantly evolving (for example, at the time of Franco’s death, he was in favor of keeping Arias in power).” Three days later, on July 6, the ambassador sent another unclassified cable summarizing Suárez’s first public address to the nation, delivered “24 hours after he was sworn into office.” In that brief message (“five minutes, sitting in his office”), Suárez demonstrated that “his concerns are those of the Spanish people, in this order: employment, rising prices, a proper education for their children, democratic normalization, political reform, and solutions to everyday problems.” According to the ambassador, “Suárez identified with the generation of Spaniards who have only known peace, ‘the majority of Spaniards.’” “In his words, this group demands a ‘national revitalization’ that includes ‘order and liberty, social justice, civil liberties, so that the Spanish people can be masters of their own destiny,’” the ambassador stated. “The goal is ‘to govern with the consent of the governed,’” which “will require listening to ‘all voices’ and ‘respecting the adversary and offering them opportunities for collaboration,’” he added. “In summary, Suárez referred to the Crown’s express decision to make Spain a ‘modern democracy’ and to ensure that no voice goes unheard in the effort to create the conditions for a fruitful dialogue,” Stabler’s report concluded. “Suárez at three months” On September 30, 1976, Wells Stabler sent a new confidential cable to Kissinger, titled “Suárez at Three Months,” whose opening sentence was quite telling: “The King was right to replace Arias, and Suárez appears to have been the right choice.” “After a lukewarm start, Suárez has regained the initiative through dialogue and, above all, with a viable program of political reform,” the ambassador stated. “The prospect of elections has become a significant fact, which has prompted a coalition led by (Manuel) Fraga on the right and the efforts initiated by the Government and certain liberal Christian Democrats to form a centrist party as a bulwark of reform and against polarization,” he continued. “On the left, the democratic opposition is divided between the appeal of Suárez’s program” and the strategy of the PCE (Spanish Communist Party), “trying to hold the Socialists hostage to the legalization of the Communists,” he added. “The most serious threat comes from the combination of economic depression, labor unrest, and regional discontent,” he warned. “Violence-prone extremists on both the right and left reinforce each other, and the possibility of a dangerous cycle of unrest cannot be ruled out, but the sense of drift under Arias has disappeared, and Suárez has reasonable prospects for success,” concluded the summary of Stabler’s lengthy confidential report. Wells Stabler As Professor Jorge Urdánoz recalls, Wells Stabler (1919-2009) was “the man who knew the most about that confusing and now distant period we know as ‘the Transition’” from his position as US ambassador to Spain from 1975 to 1978. “He was also, without a doubt, a spy, one of the best,” he asserts in his study on “The Transition According to Spies” (Akal, 2024). “Stabler had lunch with the King, the Prime Minister, and the ministers,” and “they all provided him with information, recounted their meetings with others, and shared their plans, strategies, and objectives,” he recalls. This information was supplemented by that provided by “Embassy staff and high-ranking U.S. officials stationed in Spain,” a whole “network of contacts whose conversations ultimately ended up in his hands, so that he could analyze them and send the corresponding report to Kissinger.”

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