In 1959, the Communist Party of Spain launched the slogan of the National Political Strike. The Treaty of Rome (1957) had left Spain outside the nascent European economic community and monarchical circles were restless. In January, at a dinner at the Memphis Hotel in Madrid, secret monarchists and socialists had outlined the idea of a Spanish Union to promote a transition that would avoid missing the European train. One of many ideas born between tablecloths. In this context, the PCE, which did not want to be marginalized, voluntarily launched the slogan of the National Political Strike and got to work. He called for a general mobilization for June 18.
Thousands of leaflets were dropped and some of the party's main leaders in exile clandestinely crossed the border to be close to the protests. The HNP was a failure. The Police controlled everything. One part of the country had adapted to the dictatorship and the other part was afraid. The regime was not going to fall in the short term. The young Javier Pradera was the first to warn about it in a letter sent to the PCE secretariat in Paris. That year 1959, the Catalan economist Joan Sardà Dexeus was putting the finishing touches to the Stabilization Plan that would save Francoist Spain from economic bankruptcy.
The HNP failed, but this voluntarist effort was maintained, and suddenly, in 1973, when the oil crisis broke out, the big cities went into HNP mode, without reaching a general strike: the workers' mobilizations caused by inflation were They were linked to the demand for political freedoms, reaching a great social breadth. Without these strikes and mobilizations, the transition to democracy would have been much slower and would not have culminated in the 1978 Constitution. There was no HNP, but the dynamics of change were going in that direction. That is why the figure of Adolfo Suárez emerged from above: to intercept and redirect that dynamic.
Yesterday, while Alberto Núñez Feijóo, dressed in a May '68 style turtleneck, spoke in Puerta del Sol, shouts were heard in favor of a general strike to prevent the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez. They were those from Vox. A part of the right wants “something else” to happen in the coming days.
When he heard the slogan “general strike,” the speaker stopped. Núñez Feijóo is playing these days to tighten the margin that a party fully registered in European institutions can afford. Isabel Díaz Ayuso pushes to verbally cross that limit, let's see what happens. There is Milei passion in some areas of Madrid politics.
The right has launched a spectral HNP dynamic. Manifestos from above against the investiture pact (judges, prosecutors, state lawyers, tax inspectors, labor inspectors, associations of the Civil Guard, professional associations, Madrid law firms) and full seats from below, especially in Madrid and Seville. Maximum tension sustained over time to overthrow the future government when possible.
The right has rediscovered, in the opposite direction, from top to bottom, the National Political Strike that Santiago Carrillo and Fernando Claudín failed to carry out. But there is something inside that analogy that we should not forget: Freedom consists of being able to call demonstrations to try to be a traitor and demand prison for a politician who is about to revalidate a legitimate parliamentary majority. The dictatorship consisted of beating, torturing and imprisoning those who protested against a truly illegitimate Government.
