rds just such a situation. es in the EEC was thus pean capitalists might eist dietators, but the y would bring with them xample they would set to breed by the still living ar and the millions of led in the EEC, would class of the entire consigent class struggle uropean capitalist Portuguese capitalists 1 they could give -lift and create the democracy that could of the working class. vardness of Portuguese s to take a desperate d Spain the image of Is same backwardness to try another despert democracy. the heroic liberation d from a source of rets into a millstone lutionary situation. In mple. the insurance com k unit have elected a comcising workers' control vith the other workers' companies of the CUF lass industrv. and of tex s commissions to demompanies. ters control was spreading, urgeois Popular Democrats S) and used the Constituof authority of the GovThis strengthened the July, saying the fundamenir. However, the real reason against the organs of stitutionalising popular of the three main leaders why the SP left the Govthe July issue of the mage bodies of self-organisaI prevent the Governvill lead to the disintegraof the country. He ocracy is a multi-party id CDS, and establishing Assembly.
NARCHY' ding and by escalating gainst "populist anarchy' Socialist Party was reso Maior. In this town, all were burned by the mob se newspapers were totBut none of these things existed in sufficient quantity in the societies of the Iberian peninsula to make capitalist democracy work. The Portuguese capitalists' gamble thus had a totally different effect - instead of allowing them to head off the emergence of a poweriul workers movement, it produced an immense explosion that threatens their class rule altogether.
Once again, Portugal has revealed to Spain its future. There is no more a basis for the creation of a stable capitalist democracy in Spain than there is in Portugal. While the situation of the Spanish capitalists is not yet quite as desperate as that of their Portuguese counterparts and they have greater reserves at their disposal (in particular the army is not nearly as affected by the political crisis), the development of a real mass upheaval could quickly sweep away these advantages. What is more, the Spanish working class has a much longer tradition, a much higher degree of organisation, and is a more powerful force throughout society, than was the Portuguese working class before 25 April. Things which the Portuguese working class had to spend precious months learning and developing like regional co-ordination of their own organs of struggle- - the Spanish workers already possess.
What is more, the spanish working class now have the crucial lessons of the Portuguese class struggle at their disposal. The bankruptey of class collaborationism, the impossibility of defending democratic conquests through the capitalist state, the necessity for the working class to take power through its own class organisations to solve the problems produced by the capitalist crisis, have all been hammered home to the most class-conscious Spanish workers by the living experience of their Portuguese brothers and sisters.
Twist and turn as they may in the coming months, there is no way that the Spanish capitalists can forestall the coming explosion. At the moment the Portuguese working class is running into heavy water in its own fight, but if it can prevent the ruling class from regaining the initiative it will soon find the Spanish proletariat marching shoulder-to-shoulder beside it. And if the upsurge in Spain can be set into motion Portuguese soldiers - with the MFA or the workers?
In Braga, Mario Soares called for more experiences like Rio Maior at a public meeting. This allowed the fascist parties, under the cover of the SP, to mobilise and take advantage of the discontent of the masses in the North to attack a series of headquarters of the CP and far left organSa HONS. The headquarters of the LCI in Oliveira De Azemeis were also burned. Union headquarters and libraries were allacked, mullants were persecuted.
Now the Socialist Party wants to deny its responsibility Faculty of Medicine at Barcelona University during an anti-Franco demonstration while the Portuguese proletariat is still marching ahead, the strength of the working class on the Iberian peninsula will be invincible. The birth of a Socialist Iberia will be on the order of the day and such a struggle cannot but herald the birth of a Socialist Europe.
It is this which makes international solidarity so crucial. Just as the fate of the Portuguese revolution is tied up with the development of the class struggle in Spain, so the struggles of the working class in every European country would receive an unprecedented boost from the eruption of a socialist revolution on European soil. At the present moment this makes it