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Fortunately, I have never had any personal misadventures with such regimes because I have been careful never to give cause for anyone to take action against me. Let me emphasise, once again, my apolitical stance. This does not mean that I have no interest in politics, which are inevitably all around us; indeed, politics are so much part of our everyday life that they even turn up in our soup, as we say in Spain. When I say I am apolitical I mean, if I may make myself absolutely clear, that I have never belonged to any political party, nor have I ever given a penny to further the cause of any of them. I have never held a party membership card, nor do I feel strongly about any specific faction or group.
    If one looks at two or three recent dictatorships, one sees that they have certain facets in common. Franco’s dictatorship , for example, was a direct result of blindness, disunity and disagreement among all the political parties before his rise to power. These parties were all too ready to talk about their own freedom while oppressing that of their neighbours. They were willing to defend their doctrinaire and absolutist ideas by fire and the sword, but they were not open to rational argument, nor did they show any tolerance for the opposition. When theRight was in power it took advantage; when the Left dominated it would trample autocratically over its opponents. As a result, a third force emerged which overcame both the Left and the Right with its motto ‘Order, peace and respect’. Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal occurred for the same reasons, as did Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s coup d’état in Venezuela, where endless battles between the Adecos and Copeyanos, the nation’s two most prominent political parties, brought about such a confused state of affairs that Jiménez had to intervene to restore order.
    Those who impose a totalitarian regime argue in the same breath about their love for their country, their faith in its destiny and their hope for ‘peace, progress and bread’. But they hate an adversary who gets in their way, who detracts from their own glory. Authoritarian by nature, they detest opposition and will not accept censure or criticism. They are all for efficiency and obedience: crime has to be punished unceremoniously and at once. Unfortunately, this is a relief to many people, who then support the dictator, for the great majority crave law and order, which can be harder to achieve in a democracy – where punishment is tempered with justice – than under a dictatorship.
    The Count of Maistre once said, ‘Every nation has the government that it deserves,’ which is a profound truth. But if only the politicians who governed us would concentrate more on their democratic role, not just with honeyed words but with specific deeds, then we would not have to deplore the way they curtail our freedom. Philosophers and writers such as Seneca, Goethe and Cervantes, to name but a few, clearly define the guilt incurred by any free man who unwittingly crushes freedom . Once a man has lost his freedom through incompetence, dogmatism, sectarianism or lack of appreciation, he will mourn that loss like Abderramán, the last Moorish king on Spanish soil, ‘who cried like a child over what he did not know how to defend as a man’.
    There are various ways of fighting absolute rulers: man to man, by clandestine methods, in dumb silence and finallythrough retreat. But dying in battle does not bring down tyrannies . The efforts of those who give their lives to regain lost freedom is never enough. Violence breeds further violence. Those who have sacrificed their lives are followed by others who are tortured and persecuted.
    Despite all this fighting and dying, it is my firm belief that no liberating changes occur until and unless men use their brains, teach, argue and produce practical solutions for regaining the freedom that has been lost. Pio Baroja once said: ‘The sublime moment, the heroic act is more of an