Change in head of Guardia Civil: Change in head of Army. The socialist PSOE party is making a clean sweep of the power base of Spain. Thirty years after Franco's overthrow it is a necessary step in dividing the power of Executive, Church and Judiciary - the absolute requisite of a true democracy.

The Guardia Civil has only just started to want to behave like a modern police force instead of the state's executioner.

The Guardia should become a civilian force immediately, it is too dangerous for a democracy to have an armed police force controlled at first hand by the army and not the electorate.

Article 8 of the Spanish constitution has now been cited in at least two coup attempts that of 1981 and if the reports were true the events in early 2006.

Article 8 empowers the armed forces to restore order “the armed forces, including the army, the navy and the air force, have the duty to guarantee the sovereignty and independence of Spain, and to defend its integrity and constitutional order.... “

Parliamentary democracy was restored following the death of General Franco in 1975, who had ruled as dictator since the end of the civil war in 1939. The 1978 constitution established Spain as a parliamentary monarchy, with the Prime Minister responsible to the bicameral Cortes Generales (Cortes) elected every 4 years.

On 23 February 1981, in an event known as the "23-F" occurred, rebel elements among the security forces seized the Cortes and tried to impose a military-backed government. However, the great majority of the military forces remained loyal to King Juan Carlos, who used his personal authority to put down the bloodless coup attempt.

On January 7 2006, Lieutenant-General Jose Mena Aguado, the commander of Spain’s 50,000 ground troops threatened military intervention should the Socialist Party (PSOE) government pass a statute giving the Catalan an autonomous executive Assembly responsible for taxes. Mena denounced the Catalan Statute as a threat to Spain’s territorial integrity an a speech. Further to this were considerable postings on Internet sites by officers in the army offering support.

His words , and the actions of his fellow officers could only be interpreted as a threat of military action against Catalonia or worse a coup against the PSOE government.

Mena's speech followed a rightist campaign stretching back almost two years to oust the PSOE from power.

The Popular Party (PP), the Catholic Church and the military top brass rejected the result of the March 2004 general election, when a mass movement brought down the Popular Party government of former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar because of the PP governments insistence that the Madrid bombings were the work of ETA – it was subsequently found to be the work of Muslim extremists. The PSOE was the beneficiary of popular opposition to Aznar’s support for the Iraq war

Aznar described the election result as an act of “antidemocratic coercion.”

Whatever Aznar's views, the people voted, Jose Zapatero became first minister.

Since January 2006 there have been further rumblings within the army with posts arriving on the Internet supporting a coup. Discipline would seem from these posts to be heading into free-fall and in the last few weeks the socialist government has at last taken steps to contain the problem. The Socialist government has attempted to remove the instructional elements of the church from the school curriculum in an attempt to remove their power base. First the head of the Guardia Civil was replaced and then the chief of the armed services.

The army in Spain has a huge power base left over from the Franco era, the Church in Spain still has much power to influence decisions that should be left to parliament.

The state of Spain must have its religious basis removed and the army placed firmly under control of the executive(government).