The Rebel Officers

Strikes, demonstrations and violence continued to trouble Spain last week. In Basauri, a suburb of Bilbao in rebellious Basque country (TIME, March 15), a demonstrator was gunned down by the Guardia Civil; a furious crowd forced the guardsmen to retreat to their headquarters. In Tarragona, a worker fell from a roof to his death during a clash with police. Shipyard workers even struck in Franco's birthplace. But a quieter event of considerable political significance occurred last week in Madrid, where nine military officers were found guilty of sedition.

The sentences for the nine--eight army officers and one air force captain--ranged from 2 1/2 years to eight years in prison. The sentences were less than the prosecution had asked, a decision that seemed designed to prevent open hostility within the armed forces. The real target of the trial--though seven defendants denied membership in it--was a clandestine organization of politically progressive junior officers known as the Democratic Military Union (U.M.D.). Government fears about the group were apparent in the prosecutor's claim that the officers were plotting a Portuguese-style military rebellion.

The U.M.D. claims 600 hard-core officer members and perhaps as many as 1,500 sympathizers, including some colonels and generals. Its members deny any substantial resemblance to the leftist movement in the Portuguese military. Insists one captain: "There are almost no Marxists among us."

The organization is an outgrowth of a deepening unease and a new political awareness among the country's 22,000 officers. The military men are split on what their role should be in the nation's life. Most generals are veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Staunch Franquistas, they want to maintain the boot-clicking discipline of the old regime and may well demand severely repressive measures if social disorder continues. Many of the junior officers have basically been apolitical--docile career men satisfied to lend nominal support to the status quo. But some are beginning to question that function. One reason: low salaries have forced many to moonlight in second jobs, and they sympathize with underpaid civilians.

Total Amnesty. In the summer of 1974 a group of young captains in Barcelona inaugurated the U.M.D. by publishing a manifesto against the military's role in Spanish society. The document attacked "the complete divorce between the real Spain and the totalitarian system of government" that had made the armed forces "the guardian of the interests of the regime." It proposed instead that the armed forces put themselves "exclusively at the service of the people." Specific goals included "the full re-establishment of human rights and democratic freedoms, and total amnesty for citizens who have been punished for defending their rights; socioeconomic reforms . . . including the [workers'] right to strike and form their own unions, [and] a democratically elected constituent assembly." As for the future of King Juan Carlos, the U.M.D. currently advocates only his "democratic legitimization"--i.e., by a referendum.

If public unrest in Spain should escalate to the point that the generals commit their forces to restoring order, the U.M.D. would almost certainly resist. Such an unsavory role may well radicalize many other officers--and push the U.M.D. into just the kind of power and prominence the government fears.

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