Post-Franco Spain's first PM Suarez 'near death'
Madrid (AFP) - The former prime minister who led post-Franco Spain to democracy, 81-year-old Adolfo Suarez, is gravely ill in a Madrid hospital and may not survive the weekend, his son said Friday.
Suarez, Spain's first prime minister after the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975, has suffered from Alzheimer's for the past decade.
"The disease has progressed a lot and everything indicates that the end is imminent," his tearful son, Adolfo Suarez Illana, told a hurriedly organised news conference at the Cemtro hospital where his father was admitted with respiratory trouble on Monday.
"The time frame we are looking at is 48 hours but we are in God's hands. We are just going to help him medically so he has no suffering and let him leave in peace," he said.
The former leader's son said he had spoken to King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
"If only he could overcome this. We are going to wait for events to unfold," Rajoy told a news conference after a European Union gathering in Brussels.
"The immense majority of the Spanish people are with the family," he said.
The effects of Alzheimer's meant that the ex-prime minister did not have a cognitive relationship with his family in his later years but he did have an "emotional relationship", the son said.
"These past two days have been happy," he added. "He has given us more smiles perhaps than in the past five years."
Last rites had already been administered to the dying Suarez, the son added.
"It is imminent and it could be much faster than we think," he said before leaving the news conference in tears.
Suarez is one of the last surviving players in Spain's historic "transition" -- the delicate dismantling of dictatorship followed by democratic reforms that he and King Juan Carlos helped achieve after Franco died.
"His role in the transition was second only to that of the king," said the historian Javier Tusell.
- 'Changed course of history' -
Despite being born the son of a Republican, Suarez became a member of Franco's regime, serving as head of the state broadcaster and a senior leader in the National Movement, a Francoist party with fascist roots.
The king, Franco's successor as head of state, named Suarez prime minister in a new government in 1976 at the age of 44, and he was confirmed as leader in an election the following year.
"The king's relationship with my father has always been exceptional," the ailing politician's son said.
"Thanks to the king, he was head of government. Thanks to the king, he was able to do what he liked at a unique moment in the history of Spain," he added.
"Together, they changed the course of history."
Liked for his charisma and talent for conciliation, Suarez oversaw the legalisation of political parties and helped them forge a consensus as they hammered out a constitution, approved in a referendum in 1978.
In time he was overwhelmed however by various perils: splits within his party, Spain's economic hardship, a dissenting military and regions, and armed attacks by the Basque separatist group ETA.
In 1981, two years after being elected for the second time, he resigned unexpectedly. Days later, soldiers took members of parliament hostage in an attempted coup that was defused with the help of Juan Carlos.
