Torcuato Fernández-Miranda
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| Torcuato Fernández-Miranda | |
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| In office December 20, 1973 – December 31, 1974 |
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| Vice President | Torcuato Fernández-Miranda |
| Preceded by | Luis Carrero Blanco |
| Succeeded by | Carlos Arias Navarro |
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| In office June 9, 1973 – December 31, 1974 |
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| President | Luis Carrero Blanco (1973) Torcuato Fernández-Miranda (1973-1974) |
| Preceded by | Luis Carrero Blanco |
| Succeeded by | José García Hernández |
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| Born | November 10, 1915 Gijon, Asturias, Spain |
| Died | June 19, 1980 (aged 64) |
| Nationality | Spain |
| Political party | Movimiento Nacional |
Torcuato Fernández-Miranda Hevia (Gijón, Spain November 10, 1915 - London June 19, 1980) was a Spanish lawyer and politician who played important roles in both the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and in the Spanish transition to democracy.
Fernández-Miranda was born in Gijón, Asturias, on Spain's north coast, in 1915. He died in 1980 while traveling to London.
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[edit] Franco regime
By the age of 30, Fernández-Miranda had already served as a lieutenant for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and begun a promising career as a law professor; that year, he earned a chair at the University of Oviedo, of which he would later serve as rector, 1951 to 1953.[1] He was destined to make his biggest impact in public service, however.
Franco chose him to serve as the government's Director-General of University Education in the mid-1950s, and gave him an even weightier assignment in 1960: Fernández-Miranda was entrusted with the political education of Prince Juan Carlos, whom Franco had tapped to carry on his regime as King of Spain, after the dictator's death. After having endured years of military training, Juan Carlos credited Fernández-Miranda with being the first of his tutors to teach him to rely on independent thinking.[1]
In the final years of the Franco regime -- the dictator would die November 20, 1975 -- Fernández-Miranda also played an important political role as a high-ranking member of the Movimiento Nacional (National Movement), the dictatorship's only legal political party. He served as interim Presidente del Gobierno (prime minister) for a few weeks in December 1973, after the assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco. He had been Carrero Blanco's principal deputy prime minister. Although Fernández-Miranda was one of the top candidates to succeed Carrero Blanco, the job of prime minister -- Franco's last, as it would turn out -- went to Carlos Arias Navarro.
[edit] Leader in transition
Shortly after Franco's death, Juan Carlos was crowned king November 22, 1975. He retained Arias Navarro as prime minister but, in a nod to his political mentor, named Fernández-Miranda speaker of the Cortes (the legislature) and president of the Consejo del Reino (Council of the Kingdom) in the transition government. In these roles, Fernández-Miranda was able to push a willing king toward the development of a democracy.
Fernández-Miranda sought to establish a two-party system, with one conservative party and one liberal party. He suggested legitimizing the suppressed PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), which was leftist but anti-communist, for the liberal role.
Upon Arias Navarro's resignation in 1976, Spain was still operating under Francoist law; it was Fernández-Miranda's job, as head of the Council of the Kingdom, to suggest three names to the king for a new political leader. He placed the reformist Adolfo Suárez on his list, despite Suárez' relative inexperience. Suárez was duly selected, and soon called for a political reform law, to be followed by democratic elections, Spain's first in 40 years.
The law professor Fernández-Miranda, still serving as speaker of the Cortes, was the principal author of Suárez' Ley para la Reforma Política (Political Reform Law), approved by the Government in September 1976, by the Cortes in November 1976, and by a popular referendum December 15, 1976.
[edit] Democratic Spain
Although he played a large role in the transition to democracy, Fernández-Miranda remained a political conservative. Following Suárez reforms with which he disagreed -- such as the legalization of the Communist Party of Spain and increasing tolerance of decentralization -- the speaker resigned from the Cortes prior to the first election, June 15, 1977.
After the election, he was named by the king to the Spanish Senate, which now became the upper house of a bicameral Cortes. He served there for one term, representing the UCD, until January 2, 1979.[2] He was later named a duke of Fernández-Miranda, and, in 1981[3] Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Preston, Paul. "Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy." New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-393-05804-2.
- ^ Spanish: Senado.es: Torcuato Fernández-Miranda y Hevia, accessed April 28, 2007.
- ^ Spanish: El Toisón de Oro en el siglo XXI, page 15, accessed November 17, 2006.
- This article draws heavily on the 31 January 2007 version of the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia.
| Preceded by Luis Carrero Blanco |
President of the Government of Spain (acting) 1973-1974 |
Succeeded by Carlos Arias Navarro |
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