Executions and a Rush of Protest

"Franco assassin! Franco assassin!" chanted throngs of demonstrators, marching through the streets of Paris in the French capital's most violent rioting since 1968. In Rome, thousands of protesters swarmed through the downtown area shouting, "Free Spain! Free Spain!" In Brussels, angry mobs fire-bombed the Spanish embassy. In Britain, Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labor Party announced a resolution of "total condemnation." In Amsterdam, the Dutch government declared a day of "national demonstration," and government ministers joined protest marches. From one end of Europe to the other, anti-Spanish demonstrations flared.

Futile Indignation. It was the biggest and broadest outpouring of indignation that had swept through Western Europe's democracies in many years. In the end, it was futile. The cause of the furor was the determination of General Francisco Franco's regime to carry out the death sentence that had been ordered in the cases of five terrorists, each of whom had been convicted of killing a policeman. Two of the condemned men, Angel Otaegui Echevarria, 33, and Juan Paredes Manot, 21, were members of a Basque separatist organization; the other three, Ramon Garcia Sanz, 27, Jose Humberto Baena Alonso, 23, and Jose Luis Sanchez-Bravo Solla, 21, were members of a small, recently formed Marxist urban-guerrilla outfit called the Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Patriotic Front (FRAP), a violent offshoot of Spain's tame Communist Party. Last Saturday, all five were executed by firing squad.

As most of Europe saw it, the death sentences suggested a return to the days when the Franco regime virtually ruled by gun and garrote. Until last Friday, when el Caudillo commuted the death sentence of six other terrorists, one of them a pregnant woman, there had been eleven convicts awaiting execution--the most since 1940. All eleven were sentenced under a new anti-terrorist law enacted in July that makes the death penalty automatic for anyone convicted of killing a policeman.

As their trials proceeded in Spain's military courts, the case of the terrorists began to attract international attention. Plastique explosives blasted Iberia offices in Rome and Paris. A bomb threat at the Louvre, the first in the museum's history, sent police hunting through hundreds of Egyptian sarcophagi and Oriental vases. Early last week a delegation of French artists and intellectuals--among them Actor Yves Montand and Leftist Author Regis Debray--flew to Madrid to protest the sentences. They were quickly expelled. Official notes of protest were issued by the European Economic Community and United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. Even Pope Paul VI issued a personal plea for clemency.

To a great extent, the protests seemed to stem not from deep convictions about the terrorists' guilt or innocence but from an emotional, almost automatic hostility to the Spanish dictatorship. But it is one thing to urge liberalization of the Franco regime; it is something else again to expect that regime to tolerate terrorists. Spanish officials were dismayed at the outcry. They note that while Spain has had eight executions since 1960, France has had ten (admittedly nonpolitical) since 1964. The Madrid government is torn between its desire to win European respectability and its response to public opinion at home, which runs strongly against political terrorism. Says a highly placed aide in the Spanish Cabinet: "It is a dilemma of conscience. The man in the street, your cook, your taxi driver, is very happy to see order restored. Killing police in the streets is intolerable. These people [the terrorists] are guilty, but we are failing to prove it to the outside."

In carrying out the executions, Franco apparently placed the morale of the Guardia Civil, his 65,000-man security-police force, above considerations of foreign reaction. Since January, twelve security policemen have been killed in shootouts with terrorists.

Empty Promise. The renewed cycle of terrorism and repression has dashed whatever remained of the hopes generated by Prime Minister Carlo Arias Navarro's 1974 promise to begin inching Spain toward political liberalization. Although Arias is credited with serious intentions of introducing reforms that would have permitted the growth of embryonic political parties, he was apparently overruled by Franco hardliners, alarmed by the leftward turn of events in Portugal. The promised "freedom of political association" never materialized. Almost inevitably, muted anti-Franco opposition turned to violence. Separatist movements in the four northern Basque provinces and in Catalonia gained momentum, and this summer FRAP emerged, gunning down policemen in Madrid and Barcelona.

Awaiting Trial. Franco responded to the terrorism by increasing security forces and setting up strict border watches to prevent infiltration of political dissidents from France and Portugal. In recent weeks there have been elaborate roundups of suspected terrorists in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao, with as many as 82 arrests in a single day. An estimated 200 now await trial by military tribunals.

Despite the severity of the repression, the Franco regime does not see the current increase in political opposition as a serious threat to its stability, at least not while the Generalissimo is alive. More worrisome in the short run are economic problems, which include a 16% annual inflation rate and a 9% drop in industrial production in the first four months of this year. The two issues, however, are ultimately linked, and the executions may cost Spain more than moral opprobrium. While Franco's regime was being denounced in Western Europe last week, Spanish diplomats in Washington were negotiating a new five-year treaty of "friendship and cooperation" with the U.S. In return for continued American use of four military bases in Spain, Madrid was asking for nearly $2 billion in U.S. military equipment. By week's end, however, the otherwise friendless regime was reportedly willing to settle for $750 million and a handshake.

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