A Resounding S

Speak, people, speak. This is the moment. Don V listen to those who say stay silent. Don't let anyone decide for you.

Urged on by an electronic barrage of such jingles, nearly four-fifths of Spain's 23 million voters -including King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia -turned out last week for the country's first free vote since 1936. By a resounding 94.2%, the political reform bill drafted by Premier Adolfo Suarez's five-month-old government was approved, setting the stage for the election next spring of a bicameral legislature.

For Suarez, the referendum was another triumphant step on his tightrope walk toward democracy. Spain's leftists, who had urged abstention, coaxed 22.5% of the voters into staying away from the polls. Diehard Franquistas, who viewed the reform as "the antechamber of Communism," were thoroughly repudiated; only 2.6% of the voters cast opposing ballots. "The people," said Christian Democratic Leader Joaquin Ruiz-Gimenez, "are not for a return to formulas that have died forever."

Suarez's victory was doubly impressive, since the referendum came four days after the kidnaping of Anton`io Maria Or`iol y Urquijo, 63, an influential Basque financier who, as chief of the Council of State, is Spain's fourth-ranking official. Oriol was taken from his downtown Madrid office by gunmen from a leftist organization known as G.R.A.P.O. (First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group), who at first demanded the release of 15, then all political prisoners from Spanish jails.

Fearful of a rightist backlash and possible violence on referendum day. Suarez canceled a last-minute campaign trip to the restive northern region of Catalonia to supervise the search for Oriel's kidnapers. In a dramatic TV address minutes before the Friday "execution" deadline set by the terrorists. Suarez's Interior Minister Rodolfo Martin Villa said that the government could not accept "blackmail and coercion" and had tried every channel of "worthy and humanitarian" solution to the kidnaping. If Oriol is killed. Villa vowed, his kidnapers will be hunted down.

Key Areas. For the moment, Oriol's abduction eclipsed the law that the voters approved last week. Under it the legislature will consist of a 350-member lower house, elected by proportional representation, and an upper house of 248 seats, 207 elected by majority from Spain's provinces, the balance appointed by King Juan Carlos. Critics charge that the bill is vague in some key areas and could give old guard conservatives decisive advantages in the coming elections. It also grants substantial, perhaps necessary, power to Juan Carlos, and leaves the rightist-dominated Council of the Realm untouched.

The extent of autonomy to be granted Spain's disaffected regions -the Basque country and Catalonia -is unresolved. So is the thorny question of when and if Spain's roughly 50,000-strong Communist Party will be legalized. In his boldest challenge so far to the government's continuing ban. Communist Chief Santiago Carrillo surfaced in a downtown Madrid apartment for a clandestine press conference five days before last week's referendum. Announcing that his party would mount a full slate of candidates in next year's election,. Carrillo warned that if the Communists are forced underground, the government would be responsible for the "consequences."

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