76
Bethencourt in Madrid continued to draw his Chancellor’s salary and refused
to relinquish his post or put in an appearance at La Laguna. It was not until
January 1980 that the minister finally formalized my position as Acting
Chancellor, after I had been occupying the post for the two previous years and
receiving post from the ministry addressing me as ‘The Most Excellent Don
Francisco Sánchez, Magnificent Chancellor of the University of La Laguna’ (I
was quite clearly being castigated for disobedience, as will later become
apparent).
They were interesting times. Remember that we were in the middle of the
Cold War. Because of my position, I was privy to certain restricted information. I found out, for example, that the Canarian independence movement
consisted of two branches. The leftist branch was being funded by ‘Moscow
gold’ channelled through Algeria, and the right-wing element, by ‘United
States gold’ funnelled through Venezuela. The long-standing relation between
Venezuela and the Canary Islands is well known. With regard to Algeria, bear
in mind that, towards the end of 1975, Morocco invaded Spanish Sahara, and
the Saharan people were shamefully abandoned by Spain. And it was to
Algeria that both the Saharan refugees and the Canarian supporters of independence fled.
When the political climate changed, the money dried up and the dynamism of the activists diminished until the clamour for independence was
barely heard. A level-headed appraisal shows that the Canarians want to be
Europeans, not Africans. The islanders have made it clear that they want to be
Europeans, and that to be European they must be Spanish.
At the time there existed a short-lived Ministry of Universities and Research,
headed by Luis González Seara, a ‘democrat of repute’ and one of the founders
of the magazine Cambio 16. Shortly after I had assumed the duties of Acting
Chancellor, the Minister summoned me to his office in 1978 to congratulate
me for my pacification of the University of La Laguna and for its subsequent
smooth running. Next, he announced that he would be appointing me as
Chancellor. When I informed him that I did not wish to become Chancellor,
and that my only wish was that my successor should be democratically elected
so that I could return to the full-time task of directing the Instituto de
Astrofísica de Canarias, the tone of the meeting abruptly changed. He
‘ordered’ me to take up the duties of Chancellor without delay; I was handling
the situation well, he insisted, and now was not the time to open up the can
of worms of democratically electing the chancellor. ‘What a precedent that
would set!’
But I stood my ground, and he switched from flattering me to berating me;
he ended by threatening that, if I refused to do what he demanded, I could
F. Sánchez
Bethencourt in Madrid continued to draw his Chancellor’s salary and refused
to relinquish his post or put in an appearance at La Laguna. It was not until
January 1980 that the minister finally formalized my position as Acting
Chancellor, after I had been occupying the post for the two previous years and
receiving post from the ministry addressing me as ‘The Most Excellent Don
Francisco Sánchez, Magnificent Chancellor of the University of La Laguna’ (I
was quite clearly being castigated for disobedience, as will later become
apparent).
They were interesting times. Remember that we were in the middle of the
Cold War. Because of my position, I was privy to certain restricted information. I found out, for example, that the Canarian independence movement
consisted of two branches. The leftist branch was being funded by ‘Moscow
gold’ channelled through Algeria, and the right-wing element, by ‘United
States gold’ funnelled through Venezuela. The long-standing relation between
Venezuela and the Canary Islands is well known. With regard to Algeria, bear
in mind that, towards the end of 1975, Morocco invaded Spanish Sahara, and
the Saharan people were shamefully abandoned by Spain. And it was to
Algeria that both the Saharan refugees and the Canarian supporters of independence fled.
When the political climate changed, the money dried up and the dynamism of the activists diminished until the clamour for independence was
barely heard. A level-headed appraisal shows that the Canarians want to be
Europeans, not Africans. The islanders have made it clear that they want to be
Europeans, and that to be European they must be Spanish.
At the time there existed a short-lived Ministry of Universities and Research,
headed by Luis González Seara, a ‘democrat of repute’ and one of the founders
of the magazine Cambio 16. Shortly after I had assumed the duties of Acting
Chancellor, the Minister summoned me to his office in 1978 to congratulate
me for my pacification of the University of La Laguna and for its subsequent
smooth running. Next, he announced that he would be appointing me as
Chancellor. When I informed him that I did not wish to become Chancellor,
and that my only wish was that my successor should be democratically elected
so that I could return to the full-time task of directing the Instituto de
Astrofísica de Canarias, the tone of the meeting abruptly changed. He
‘ordered’ me to take up the duties of Chancellor without delay; I was handling
the situation well, he insisted, and now was not the time to open up the can
of worms of democratically electing the chancellor. ‘What a precedent that
would set!’
But I stood my ground, and he switched from flattering me to berating me;
he ended by threatening that, if I refused to do what he demanded, I could
F. Sánchez