Murder of the Alter Ego

A man of precise habits, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco had followed an almost unvarying schedule long before his inauguration last June as Spain's President and Prime Minister. Every morning about 9, his Dodge Dart would park in front of Madrid's San Francisco de Borja Church, only 300 yds. from his home, and Carrero Blanco, 70, would enter the church for Mass. Approximately 45 minutes later, he would leave for his office in the Paseo de la Castellana. In the seething Spain of 1973 such predictability is not always a virtue. Carrero Blanco last week fell victim to a bomb carefully timed to his departure from Mass. He was the first head of government in Western Europe to be killed since 1934, when Austria's Engelbert Dollfuss was shot in Vienna.

Carrero Blanco's assassins constructed an elaborate scheme. Posing as sculptors, two men rented a basement room near San Francisco de Borja eight weeks ago and tunneled to a place where the President's car passed every morning. When Carrero Blanco drove by the spot after Mass, the assassins detonated a massive explosive charge, possibly an antitank mine. The explosion was powerful enough not only to kill Carrero Blanco, his chauffeur and bodyguard but to blast a 35-ft. hole in the street and blow parts of the car over the top of the five-story church and onto a balcony on the other side. It also sent reverberations the length and breadth of Spain.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco, 81, immediately called the Cabinet into emergency session to consider counter-measures and appoint an interim President, Torcuato Fernandez-Miranda, the head of Spain's only legal party, the National Movement. Although the country remained calm, some arrests were reported, and police patrolled neighborhoods they suspected of harboring dissidents.

Carrero Blanco's assassination came as a severe shock to Franco, who for years had counted on him as his right-hand man. The Generalissimo had expected the dour admiral to keep Spain on a rightward course when he himself died and to make certain that his successor as chief of state, Prince Juan Carlos, did not fall prey to liberal ideas. But Carrero Blanco's rigid orthodoxy had made the possibility of violence as predictable as his timetable.

Ten Leftists. After 34 years of rule by El Caudillo (the leader), Spain is rife with discontent and disaffection. In the past year Franco's regime has been assaulted by dissident priests, workers, students and members of the Basque minority. Only minutes after the assassination, in fact, a trial was scheduled to begin in Madrid of ten leftists who were accused of fomenting strikes.

Perhaps the most feared of all the dissenting groups is the ETA (Basque Nation and Freedom), a dedicated clan of about 600 Basque extremists. Since their military leader, Eustaqui Mendizabel, was killed in a Shootout with police last April, the Basques had been silent. Earlier this month, however, they burst into action again, invading an exclusive yacht club near Bilbao. While gunmen forced 100 diners to lie on the floor, other Basques set fire to the building, a symbol of a moneyed, privileged class favored by the Franco regime. Other more minor incidents, like the blowing up of cars, occurred in the following days, and there were reports--probably unfounded--that the Basques were receiving advice and training from the Irish Republican Army. Political observers believed that the ETA was responsible for Carrero Blanco's death; no other group, they said, had the ability to execute such an intricate plot.

But there are other enemies of the Franco regime. Working-class areas throughout Spain have become increasingly restive in recent months, and an inflation rate of as much as 15% a year has made the economic resurgence of the '60s and early '70s less impressive for many Spaniards. Early in November, a group of coal miners in the province of Asturias in northwest Spain went on strike to demand better working conditions and shorter hours. Before long, 7,750 Asturias miners were refusing to go down in the mines.

Even the Roman Catholic Church, long a bulwark of the government, has begun to show discontent. Only this month six priests who had been arrested for various political offenses finally agreed to end a 16-day hunger strike in the Zamora Prison after their bishops had intervened with Franco. Many younger priests and bishops are now more in sympathy with the workers than with the government. The censored press, which has generally downplayed the unrest, felt called upon to note the fact that the Guardia Civil had discovered eight dynamite cartridges and "a mass of subversive literature" at a convent in Vallaro.

By comparison with the other groups confronting the increasingly harried Franco, the academic community seemed relatively tame. Police, however, clashed with students on at least seven occasions during the past year at Madrid University, and the authorities carried on a running battle with some professors. "I got into trouble merely for trying to teach some comparative law, that is, to compare the philosophical foundations of the Spanish system with those of other countries," said an eminent socialist lawyer who was fired from Madrid University. "The fact that I concluded in favor of the Spanish system apparently did not convince the authorities."

Total Loyalty. To all of the protest, Carrero Blanco had only one answer: to either ignore it altogether or break it with force. "Politics for me consists of total loyalty to El Caudillo," he proudly proclaimed. "My loyalty to his person and to his work is total, without a shadow of any personal conditions or a trace of mental reservation." When he took over the reins of day-to-day government six months ago--Franco himself retains ultimate authority--Carrero Blanco quickly replaced those officials he thought were liberal, or even slightly forward looking, with ironclad conservatives. "Carrero Blanco never had an original idea in his life," said one Spanish politician last week, "unless one defines as original the decision to be the unquestioning strong right arm of General Franco."

Carrero Blanco's path was clearly on a collision course with the new reality of an industrialized, modernized Spain.

Even as police searched for his assassins and the country braced itself for a counterattack from militant rightists, it was clear that the aging Franco had only two choices--to liberalize his regime or face the threat of having his country racked by more violence.

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