Word: blanco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...precise habits, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco had followed an almost unvarying schedule long before his inauguration last June as Spain's President and Prime Minister. Every morning about 9, his Dodge Dart would park in front of Madrid's San Francisco de Borja Church, only 300 yds. from his home, and Carrero Blanco, 70, would enter the church for Mass. Approximately 45 minutes later, he would leave for his office in the Paseo de la Castellana. In the seething Spain of 1973 such predictability is not always a virtue. Carrero Blanco last week fell victim to a bomb...
...Carrero Blanco's assassins constructed an elaborate scheme. Posing as sculptors, two men rented a basement room near San Francisco de Borja eight weeks ago and tunneled to a place where the President's car passed every morning. When Carrero Blanco drove by the spot after Mass, the assassins detonated a massive explosive charge, possibly an antitank mine. The explosion was powerful enough not only to kill Carrero Blanco, his chauffeur and bodyguard but to blast a 35-ft. hole in the street and blow parts of the car over the top of the five-story church...
...Carrero Blanco's assassination came as a severe shock to Franco, who for years had counted on him as his right-hand man. The Generalissimo had expected the dour admiral to keep Spain on a rightward course when he himself died and to make certain that his successor as chief of state, Prince Juan Carlos, did not fall prey to liberal ideas. But Carrero Blanco's rigid orthodoxy had made the possibility of violence as predictable as his timetable...
...after the government shifts were announced, the Madrid stock market jumped-a sure sign that Spain's rich and emergent middle class approved Carrero Blanco's emphatic reinforcement of authoritarianism. Other Spaniards-not necessarily all leftists -felt that the regime was on a collision course with reality in trying to ignore the country's yearning for more intellectual and political freedom...
...Prince Juan Carlos, 35, waiting patiently in the wings to become King once Franco dies or retires, the new governmental setup offers a small additional degree of political authority. For the first time, he has the ceremonial right to approve new Cabinet members: Carrero Blanco's first act, after taking his oath of office, was to call on Juan Carlos at Zarzuela Palace and submit the list of new ministers. Predictably, there were no princely objections. The prince may now attend Cabinet meetings, another new prerogative. (In the past, he was briefed on discussions.) Most Spaniards who want change...