New Terrorism

Fanning political unrest

Two men on a motorcycle toss a bomb at an army staff car and speed away through the streets of Madrid: three people are killed in the blast, and a fourth, Lieut. General Joaquin Valenzuela, head of King Juan Carlos' personal guard, is badly wounded. Another high-ranking officer, General Andres Gonzalez de Suso, is gunned down at pointblank range outside his apartment in the capital, and a policeman dies in the ensuing chase. Almost simultaneously, two Civil Guards are murdered by terrorists in a Barcelona bar. The final toll: seven dead and 14 injured, most of them innocent bystanders.

Thus did political violence return to Spain last week at a critical moment for the country's beleaguered young democracy. Ever since an abortive military coup last February, the army and the government have coexisted in an uneasy truce. Last week's attacks clearly seemed to be aimed at undermining that shaky stability. The targets were exclusively military-men and police officers, and their funerals attracted hundreds of right-wing demonstrators who angrily denounced the government and called for the army to seize power.

The government said that the bombing of Valenzuela's staff car was carried out by members of ETA, the Basque separatist organization responsible for most of the political terrorism in Spain. ETA confirmed it had carried out the attack. The other two incidents were suspected to mark the re-emergence of the October 1 Antifascist Resistance Group (GRAPO), a mysterious organization described by the authorities as ultraleftist, that has surfaced sporadically in recent years. In the gun battle that followed Gonzalez de Suso's assassination, police wounded and captured Emilio Gomez Gomez, 28, allegedly a member of GRAPO. One of the two assailants in the Barcelona killings reportedly was among five GRAPO militants who staged a spectacular escape from a maximum-security prison in Zamora 17 months ago.

But the allegations raised a number of questions about GRAPO and the real perpetrators of last week's attacks -- given the country's complex and conspiratorial politics. For one thing, Gonzalez de Suso is a political liberal and hence an un likely target for a leftist group. GRAPO, skeptics noted, has materialized at other critical moments in Spain's political life, each time to carry out operations that might easily, in truth, have been the work of right-wing hit squads. At the very least, the Madrid daily Diario 16 headlined, GRAPO was a leftist name with fascist objectives.

Madrid abounded in conspiracy theories even before the latest killings, thanks to some disclosures of testimony in the investigation of Lieut. Colonel Antonio Tejero Molina, one of the leaders of the failed military putsch. In the "Tejero papers," the imprisoned officer tried to implicate Juan Carlos himself in the plot, as well as a number of high-ranking army officers, even though the King repudiated the plotters and almost singlehandedly prevented a takeover. Juan Carlos has denied the charge, but most political analysts agree that the leaked testimony will put additional pressure on Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo to avoid a full-dress court martial of Tejero. Such an exercise would almost certainly embarrass the throne, infuriate the army and possibly precipitate another coup.

Calvo-Sotelo discounted the prospects of a second attempt to seize power. But right-wing demonstrators were marching through Madrid loudly chanting the name of their latest hero: "Te-je-ro! Te-je-ro!"

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