Word: madrid
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 Andrés González 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...
...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...
Prosecuting the coup leaders will probably change little. Currently, 29 officers are being held on charges of "armed rebellion"; conviction carries a 30-to 40-year sentence. According to leading lawyers in Madrid, however, most will be tried for the lesser crime of disobedience, mainly because they have threatened to drag King Juan Carlos into the proceedings by claiming that he had implied his approval of their attempted coup. The one exception is Tejero, whose actions in the Cortes were recorded by television cameras. Yet he too has managed to pull a triumph of sorts from his debacle...
...repression over the coming months, and they expect the generals to respond in character, probably by demanding some form of martial law. The resulting strains may be too much for the civilian government. "Everyone said we would have a difficult time when Franco died," says a senior official in Madrid, "but we have had a relatively comfortable time so far. Perhaps the real transition to democracy begins now." -By John Nielsen...