The lightness of terror: Palomares, 1966
2004; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1463620042000244615
ISSN1469-9818
Autores Tópico(s)Nuclear Issues and Defense
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes As in the Palomares episode of 1966, in 1968 a B‐52 crashed in Greenland carrying 4 H‐bombs. The Greenland US military base of Thule served, as Palomares, as a secret nuclear warehouse after Fidel Castro's Cuba became off‐limits for the United States. El País Digital, 4/21/2003, http://www.udel.edu/leizpig/060299/ela211099.html. A film based on the Palomares episode was therefore not made in 1967. It was not until 1996, after some of the Palomares documents were declassified, that Hollywood acknowledged the episode in John Woo's film Broken Arrow starring John Travolta. The movie, however, only makes a minor reference to the Palomares accident, and there is no mention of nuclear damage. As documented in different studies, however, the explosion provoked considerable levels of air contamination of uranium and plutonium. While the Mediterranean sea did not seem affected at the time of the swim, according to Catalina Gascó Leonarte “la contaminación se dispersó por efecto del fuerte viento reinante en dirección suroeste‐noreste contaminando una extensa zona al depositarse sobre el suelo, plantas y edificaciones” (qtd. in Martínez Lorca, 17). Paul Preston's retelling of what was later presented by the Franco regime as “el contubernio de Munich” goes as follows: “To maintain the momentum of economic reform initiated by the technocrats, [Fernando] Castiella and the economic ministers suggested [to Franco] that Spain petition to join the European Economic Community […] The Community's refusal to open political negotiations merely convinced him [Franco] that Spain was still surrounded by hostile forces determined to bring him down” (700–701). The liberalization implicit in the new cabinet, as Paul Preston reminds us, “was accompanied by harsher police measures against the left‐wing opposition Arrests, torture and trials of leftist militants were still commonplace. A new strike wave in Asturias and Catalonia during August and September was countered by ferocious police measures” (705). Fraga and his team were the media‐savvy wizards behind the “Veinticinco Años de Paz” confirmation referendum, as Julio Gil explains: “El eje de las conmemoraciones de 1964 fue una espectacular campaña de propaganda que, con el lema ‘XXV Años de Paz,’ orquestó el equipo del ministro de Información y Turismo, Fraga Iribarne, uno de los más activos y eficaces representantes del nuevo franquismo […] [La campaña] culminaría en noviembre con el estreno de la película Franco, ese hombre “ (63). Among the many propaganda‐oriented products of the period sponsored by the Ministerio de Información y Turismo one of the most instructive is the documentary Franco, ese hombre. Los tecnócratas is the term given to Franco's 1962 cabinet. Although, as Stanley Payne explains, the tecnócratas did not form a homogeneous team, it was composed of many Opus Dei members: “Entre los cambios del nuevo gobierno del 10 de julio de 1962 estuvo el nombramiento por primera vez de un vicepresidente del gobierno y lugarteniente del mismo Franco, en la persona del veterano general Muñoz Grandes. Continuaron la mayoría de los ministros clave, con Gregorio López Bravo, otro miembro del Opus Dei, como nuevo ministro de Industria. El nuevo ministro de Información y Turismo fue Manuel Fraga Iribarne, con cuarenta años de edad […] El nuevo gabinete, con cambios menores, duraría siete años” (Franco, El perfil de la historia 198). Javier Tusell explains that “el gobierno de 1962 iba a presidir la etapa de “desarrollismo neto,” tanto socioeconómico como político, que alcanzaría su culminación en torno a 1966” con la llamada Ley Orgánica del Estado (La vida cotidiana 34). Let's remember however, that the episode is popularly known as “el baño de Fraga” and not as “el baño de Fraga y Duke.” Carl Schmitt, La dictadura. I argue elsewhere that with biopolitical modes of production already in place in Spain during the sixties, and although the conditions were vastly different, the figure of the Spanish immigrant into France, Germany and Switzerland foreshadows the figure of the contemporary immigrant. For more information see my article “The Passing of the Xarnego‐Subject.” Alberto Moreiras, “A Post‐Theology.” The distancing of the Spanish intellectual left from popular culture in the sixties is discussed in my articles “‘La Escuela de Barcelona’: cine, literatura y la intelectualidad espectacular,” and “El menú del Via Veneto: Barcelona alrededor de 1971.” It can be argued that the political grammatization of the Spanish empire marks the moment in the modern era in which the political and biological life merge in the figure of the imperial subject. The incorporation of the Inquisition in the imperial project as a state apparatus will make possible after 1492 the administration of naked life that Agamben, following Schmitt, identifies as a characteristic of secular modernity. Stanley Payne has insisted that while Franco's regime was “often termed abroad as ‘the last remaining fascist regime in Europe’” it was not a fascist. According to Payne, the Francoist “era of fascism” ends soon after the defeat of the Third Reich: “After the Allies Potsdam Conference of July 1945 […] Franco and his regime would have now to undergo a sort of political metamorphosis to survive in the post Fascist era, and that would be true for the FET‐Movement as well” (Fascism in Spain 398). As reported by Brigadier General James Hittle, in 1966 Hittle James, D “Spain Takes Up Major Defense Role for Nato.” The San Diego Union Monday December 19, 1966. Also published in other newspapers served by the Copley News Service [Google Scholar] Spain was definitely perceived by the United States as an important strategic ally: “There is an answer to Europe's need for defense in depth. That answer is Spain. With a land mass only slightly less than that of France, protected by the Pyrenees on the north and the seas on the other flanks, and inhabited by a brave people who were the first in the free world to beat back communist aggression, Spain has what the defense of free Europe needs” (The San Diego Union December 1966).
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