Random Killings, Rightist Fears

It was almost impossible to pick up a Spanish newspaper or switch on television last week without seeing grim photographs of dead policemen or pictures of coffins ready for burial. The images bore dramatic witness to the increasingly bitter and violent confrontation between the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and its radical opponents. By week's end, eleven more Spaniards were dead. Thirty police officers and members of the Guardia Civil and 29 civilians have been killed since January 1974.

Dynamite Charge. Cause of the new wave of violence: the execution last month of five terrorists convicted at summary military trials of murdering policemen (TIME, Oct. 6). Basque separatists and radical leftists of the Patriotic Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Front (FRAP) tried to avenge the executions with new killings. Early last week, four Guardia Civil officers in the Basque country were lured to a remote area by a report that the outlawed red, white and green flag of the separatists was flying over a Roman Catholic monastery. A dynamite charge, set in the rocks at roadside, blew their Land Rover 60 ft. into the air; three officers were killed and the fourth was seriously wounded.

At midweek, a small white car sped past police headquarters in the Barcelona suburb of La Verneda just after midnight and sprayed the modern building with machine-gun fire. No one was injured. A few moments later, another white car approached the station. Trigger-happy police, believing the second car to be part of the assault, blazed away with their weapons, killing the auto's passengers--a couple and their son returning home from a wake. For reasons still unknown, the police inside the headquarters then fired at a gray police Jeep that had been following the second car; two officers were killed. "The police are nervous," was one government officer's explanation. The next day, a Spanish military attache in France was critically wounded after being shot three times in his chest and stomach when he answered the door of his Paris suburban apartment. A French leftist group named after Juan Paredes Manot--one of the five executed terrorists--claimed credit for the shooting.

Spanish Premier Carlos Arias Navarro huddled with his Cabinet three times last week. After Friday's session, the government announced a shake-up of the army command, naming a tough new head of the Guardia Civil and new commanders for four military regions, including Madrid. The next day, the government released eleven Basques being held for terrorist acts. Four Basques remain in jail, awaiting sentences for cop-killing; under a law enacted last August, a mandatory death sentence faces anyone convicted of killing a policeman.

Madrid's freeing of the eleven prisoners may be an attempt to placate Western Europe, which was enraged at the executions earlier this month. Yet last week there was growing evidence that Europe's anti-Spanish passions were cooling and that reaction by foreign officials to any new executions by

Madrid might be muted. The ambassadors of Switzerland, Britain and West Germany, who had originally been withdrawn, were all back on the job in Madrid. The French leftist daily Quotidien de Paris reflected the serious second thoughts about Europe's earlier outburst. In a front-page article, it noted: "The reprobation against Franco's excesses gives a good conscience to other nations at a time when political torture [exists] in 70 countries. Tass denounced 'Franco repressions,' but how do the Russians deal with their political opposition?"

Rightists' Demands. If the random killings continue, the survival of Arias' government will come into question. "As you can see," admitted an aide to the Premier last week, "matters are not under control." Indeed, at a pro-Franco rally in Valencia, only one speaker mentioned the Premier. Unless Arias can contain the terror, Spanish rightists will demand a tougher anti-reform government--perhaps even a military regime.

Although the army's senior officers remain loyal to Franco and are fiercely antiCommunist, leftist ideas--perhaps as a result of the Portuguese experience --have apparently taken root among some younger officers. Last week three middle-ranking officers in Barcelona were arrested; they are suspected of having links with the Basque terrorists and with a Madrid underground cell of nine leftist dissidents who were charged with sedition and jailed three months ago. That kind of radicalization, if it spreads, does not promise an orderly political succession in the post-Franco era. Said a high government official last week: "I used to think the chances of an orderly transfer of power were 90%. After these past weeks, I now say 70% and the numbers are declining."

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