MADRID, (Reuters) – Former Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez, who died yesterday, steered Spain through one of the most turbulent periods in its political history and built bridges between the “two Spains” after fascist dictator General Francisco Franco died in 1975.
Suarez, who was 81, was hospitalised on March 17 with a respiratory infection. He had had Alzheimer’s disease for many years. His death was reported by state television.
Many Spaniards remember Suarez’s unruffled behaviour during one of the most tense moments in the country’s modern history, an attempted coup on Feb. 23 1981.
Six years earlier, after Franco’s death, King Juan Carlos called on Suarez, a young Francoist minister, to try to unite the two factions who were still in a sense fighting the 1936-1939 civil war, and indeed were further apart than ever after nearly 40 years of fascism exiled thousands of left-wingers.
