Word: rez
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...such jingles, nearly four-fifths of Spain's 23 million voters−including King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia −turned out last week for the country's first free vote since 1936. By a resounding 94.2%, the political reform bill drafted by Premier Adolfo Suárez's five-month-old government was approved, setting the stage for the election next spring of a bicameral legislature...
...rez, the referendum was another triumphant step on his tightrope walk toward democracy. Spain's leftists, who had urged abstention, coaxed 22.5% of the voters into staying away from the polls. Diehard Franquistas, who viewed the reform as "the antechamber of Communism," were thoroughly repudiated; only 2.6% of the voters cast opposing ballots. "The people," said Christian Democratic Leader Joaquin Ruíz-Giménez, "are not for a return to formulas that have died forever...
...rez's victory was doubly impressive, since the referendum came four days after the kidnaping of Antonìo Maria Orìol y Urquijo, 63, an influential Basque financier who, as chief of the Council of State, is Spain's fourth-ranking official. Oriol was taken from his downtown Madrid office by gunmen from a leftist organization known as G.R.A.P.O. (First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group), who at first demanded the release of 15, then all political prisoners from Spanish jails...
Fearful of a rightist backlash and possible violence on referendum day. Suárez canceled a last-minute campaign trip to the restive northern region of Catalonia to supervise the search for Oriel's kidnapers. In a dramatic TV address minutes before the Friday "execution" deadline set by the terrorists. Suárez's Interior Minister Rodolfo Martin Villa said that the government could not accept "blackmail and coercion" and had tried every channel of "worthy and humanitarian" solution to the kidnaping. If Oriol is killed. Villa vowed, his kidnapers will be hunted down...
Austerity Measures. Suárez's clever stage-managing of the reform bill was fresh evidence that his government is navigating with some confidence down the political middle. Shortly before the Cortes vote, the left made itself felt when Spain's illegal but officially tolerated trade-union blocs staged what they described as a one-day general strike to protest government austerity measures. But the most remarkable thing about the only partially successful strike was its restraint-clear evidence that even labor's leftists hoped that the reform bill would pass...