EL SUENO SE HA VUELTO PESADILLA

By ROD USHER, IN XUNO

The people of Galicia are so guarded, other Spaniards joke, that if you catch one of them on a staircase, you'll never discover whether he or she had been going up or down. But Ramon Sampedro, of the Galician fishing village of Xuno, 620 km northwest of Madrid, could not be more open about his intentions: he wants to die--so much so that he has asked the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg to declare it his entitlement.

Apart from the ability to shake his head and an occasional involuntary flailing of his arms, the 52-year-old Sampedro is a prisoner within a paralyzed body. Propped up in bed in the farmhouse where he lives with his brother, sister-in-law and his aged father, he can see from his window the coast at Xuno and the restless Atlantic beyond. It was at this beach 26 years ago that Sampedro, a mechanic, dived into a rock pool and struck his head on the bottom.

Although clearly loved by his family, he has finally had enough of such a narrowed life, saying he and those who care for him have become physical and psychological slaves to his quadriplegia. He has used his mechanic's skills to devise a mouth-operated phone dialer and a table on which he can mouth- write letters, but the smallest of pleasures beyond those require outside help. For the occasional cigarette he enjoys, lighting, ash flicking and stubbing out must be done by someone else.

He wants to set a precedent for fellow quadriplegics who may feel as he does--to win a ruling or legislation under which a doctor would not be prosecuted for ending his life by injecting him with ``an appropriate chemical substance.'' So far, two Spanish courts and the Constitutional Tribunal have found either technical reasons or a ``legal vacuum'' to avoid a decision.

``There is a test I apply to people who say I must go on living,'' says Sampedro. ``I ask, `Swap places with me. Would you want to?' They admit they wouldn't.'' With a beautiful smile and a sense of humor tuned by long hours of reading--his shelves hold translations of Swift, Wilde, Flaubert--Sampedro says if he cannot have his life ended in predominantly Roman Catholic Spain, one option is to be taken to the Netherlands.

His doctor sympathizes. ``I don't believe life is an absolute thing. And I think life is private property,'' says Dr. Carlos Peon Fernandez. But Peon will not break the law for his patient and does not believe, whatever Strasbourg might say, that legislation permitting him to do so will be passed.

It may be some months before Sampedro and Jorge Arroyo, his pro bono lawyer, learn whether Strasbourg will hear their plea, the first such to be put to the commission. Says Sampedro: ``Death is a taboo in our society. But for a psychologically mature person, voluntary death, when it is to bring to an end an incurable or intolerable suffering, is rational.'' A poem he has written called ``Why Die?'' answers itself in the first line: ``Porque el sueno se ha vuelto pesadilla'' (Because the dream has become a nightmare).