Codeba: 50 years since the meeting that marked Balearic politics

PalmIt had only been three months since the dictator's death when fifteen people, from the most prominent sectors of Balearic society, the economy, and the liberal professions, met, with the support of three others, to establish Balearic Democratic Concurrence (Codeba)It was exactly half a century ago, on March 9, 1976, and it began as an association that would become, just a few months later, the nucleus in the Balearic Islands of the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), the coalition that would win the first democratic elections in 41 years in June 1977.

Codeba emerged from preliminary meetings, if not clandestine, at least discreet, where attendees had to be careful not to exceed the maximum number of authorized participants: twenty, lest the gathering turn into a subversive event. "We met in secret," recalled Antoni Roig, founder of the University of the Balearic Islands, or, rather, "how well these things can be hidden," in the office of the notary Raimundo Clar. One of these meetings, a dinner, took place on the very day Franco died: Clar found out when he returned home.

Another of Codeba's founders, Bartomeu Sitjar, had already joined the Liberal Party created by Joaquín Garrigues Walker when Franco was still alive. At the meetings his followers held in Madrid, they would leave an imaginary agenda on the table, just in case the police showed up. On trips, he carried pajamas with him, "in case I had to sleep in Carabanchel."

When Codeba was formed, the Transition had begun, timidly and hesitantly, with the continuity government headed by Carlos Arias Navarro. In the Balearic Islands, the hardliners, the inflexible sector of Francoism, held sway under the shadow of the all-powerful Civil Governor Carlos de Meer. Of course, even in Mallorca, the clandestine opposition was active. But the machinery of the regime remained firm and resolute.

On March 9, 1976, the fifteen founders of Concurrencia Democrática Balear (Balearic Democratic Concurrence) met. They were all highly distinguished professionals, including, in addition to those already mentioned, the economist Miquel Alenyà; the notary Rafael Gil Mendoza; the engineers Carlos Forteza, Miquel Àngel Llauger (father), and Antonio Papell, the latter later much better known as a journalist; the doctor José María Sevilla; and the two men Enric Ramón Fajarnés and Josep Zaforteza.

Rafael Alcover, Rafael Timoner (from Menorca), and Abel Matutes (from Ibiza) joined the cause, though they were not physically present. Today they would have participated via videoconference, but that technology was unknown at the time. In total: seventeen men and only one woman, Francisca Gual, a secondary school teacher. Back then, such an imbalance was common, even on the left.

A lance for autonomy

They weren't a group of dangerous leftists. Rafael Timoner had been, until 1974, mayor of Maó, a member of the Provincial Council, and a representative in the Cortes, obviously Francoist. Enric Ramon and Abel Matutes had been mayors of Vila. Carlos Forteza was a councilor at that time in the Francoist City Council, and Miquel Àngel Llauger had held the same position.

So, what was Codeba? Its name couldn't have been accidental, with notaries and the poor, people well-versed in language, at its founding core. Concurrencia (Convergence) was suspiciously reminiscent of Convergència, the party that Jordi Pujol had founded, illegally, of course, in 1974; and at the same time, it conveyed the idea of ​​convergence, of a common home. Democratic, however much Francoism pretended to be an 'organic democracy,' whatever that meant, was an unequivocal adjective, even at that time. And Balearic, because it wasn't just a group of Mallorcans, but also of two Ibizans and one Menorcan.

Now, in its initial stage, Codeba didn't present itself as a political party. It never could be, since they weren't allowed then; only associations, a supposedly pluralistic mechanism, but within the regime. Legally, it was therefore constituted as an association, under the umbrella of a 1964 law. The founding charter established an initial budget for the first year of one million pesetas, about six thousand euros, a fortune at the time.

Of course, that was a kind of camouflage. They certainly wanted to create a political party: "That was the idea," Miquel Àngel Llauger acknowledged years later. What was their ideology? The nuances vary, depending on who defines it. "Moderate center," according to Sitjar. "Center-right," according to Gil Mendoza. "Of a liberal type," in the words of Antoni Roig. "Christian democratic," notes Antoni Nadal. If we add social democracy, we find the full spectrum of what would later become the UCD.

Codeba issued its first public statement the following April. In an environment of "enormous social, economic, and political confusion," they said—and it was certainly true, because the serious crisis of '73 continued and the Arias reform didn't seem to be going anywhere—they offered themselves as an alternative to provide "practical and concrete solutions to resolve the serious problems we face as citizens of the Islands."

They didn't present themselves as a party, but as an entity that aimed to "bring together all those people," whether or not affiliated with political groups, who "aspire to achieve and consolidate a genuine democracy," "shunning extremism" and "within an undoubtedly necessary autonomy." Codeba was making its first public appearance and was already talking about self-government. That same year, 1976, it supported a first draft of statutes that had been written by the College of Miseros.

Pro-amnesty advertisements in newspapers

'Freedom, amnesty, and a statute of autonomy' would be the rallying cry of the democratic movement at that time, especially in Catalonia. And indeed, Codeba championed not only autonomy and democracy, but also the release of the dictatorship's political prisoners. He launched a campaign in favor of amnesty, using advertisements published in newspapers. These weren't cheap: 2,600 pesetas, a little over fifteen euros today, although one must consider how much the cost of living has risen in the last half-century.

A democratic rupture, that is, establishing a clean break with the dictatorship, was the expression that had become popular as the objective of the democratic opposition. Codeba preferred to speak of the opening of a constituent period. "Listen, but that's a rupture," objected the journalist Planas Sanmartí: "With a seltzer bottle, but a rupture nonetheless." Yes, but perhaps it sounded more technical, not so radical.

Something surprising, coming as it did from the ever-forgotten periphery, is that Codeba served as an example of similar initiatives for the rest of the country. During a visit to Palma by Miguel Herrero de Miñón, who would soon become one of the 'fathers' of the 1978 Constitution, Sitjar and Clar explained to him how they worked and suggested using the model in other regions as a tool for building democracy. Herrero passed the idea on to Pío Cabanillas, a prominent reformer from the regime: this would be the origin of the future People's Party; not the current one, but what would become the core of the UCD (Union of the Democratic Centre).

The new stage of the Transition, with Adolfo Suárez at the helm from July 1976, brought future elections to the horizon. So, he had to get his act together. Raimundo Clar convened the forces situated in the center or on the moderate right, with a view to forming a coalition.

That October, Franco's former minister Manuel Fraga created Alianza Popular, the origin of the current People's Party, which Matutes, one of the founders of Codeba, joined. The centrist Concurrencia then opted for the People's Party of the time—you'll have to excuse this jumble of acronyms—the one created by the regime's reformists Areilza and Cabanillas, which they joined in November.

Codeba's life was short, little more than six months. But, as Bartomeu Sitjar said, it "opened the door" to what would later become the center or center-right parties that have played a leading role in public life over the last half-century. "It played a very important role in the Transition," Antoni Roig asserted. "I believe," Miquel Àngel Llauger pointed out, "that we contributed in some way to the Transition in these Islands and fulfilled a mission."

Information prepared from texts by Miguel Payeras, Miguel Duran, Antoni Nadal Soler, Llorenç Carrió Crespí, Antoni Marimon Riutort and Tomeu Sitjar with the collaboration of Javier Mato, the collective volume Living memory and the newspapers Latest News, Daily of Mallorca, Balearics, Balearic Islands Day, The Vanguard and The Country.