World Notes Spain

At 10:40 a.m. last Friday, Manuel Antonio Sanchez Perez was leaving a Madrid bank when three men jumped him. Sanchez, Cuba's deputy planning minister, who had been granted provisional asylum in Spain, fought furiously. "They're going to kill me!" he screamed as his pistolwaving assailants wrestled him into a waiting car driven by a woman accomplice. Some 30 to 50 bystanders quickly surrounded the auto. A cab pulled over and blocked the vehicle's escape while the crowd dragged Sanchez to safety, holding the would-be abductors until police arrived. All turned out to be Cuban embassy personnel, including the vice consul.

The event suggested that there might be truth to a rumor making the rounds of Madrid's Cuban-exile community that Sanchez was also a spy who may have been ready to spill secrets to the West. After expressing its "repulsion" at the botched kidnaping, the Socialist government of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez expelled the four Cubans. Sanchez, meanwhile, was hustled off to an undisclosed location and placed under armed guard.