Franco man back

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Franco's sometime censorshin chief Manuel Fraga. later responsible as Interior Minister for the murder of scores of Spanish workers, is returning to the centre of the Snanish political stage.

Last week Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, the man King Juan Carlos selected as Prime Minister after Adolfo Suarez' recent resignation, went to Fraga to plead for support.

Fraga now leads the extreme right wing (and grotesquely misnamed) Democratic AllianceCalvo Sotelo needs to give him a which may have the votes that LIaL parliamentary majority, His own Centre Democratic Union (UCD) which approved his candidacy for the Premiership but elected defence minister Agustin Rodriguez Sahagun as party leader at its stormy congress last week, is six short of a parliamentary majority on its own.

And Calvo Sotelo is by no means certain of all of the votes of his own party.

One wing, the so-called "Social Democrats" say they will support the new government only on condition that it continues with plans for a legalisation of divorce.

But if he agrees to this too readily Calvo Sotelo may lose the backing of the large far-right dissident wing of the UCD which was mostly responsible for Suarez' downfall.

That is why Calvo Sotelo is investigating the possibility of getting Fraga's support for a new government even further to the right than the last one.

That is the only solution to the present political crisis which would hold at bay, even if temporarily, demands from many army officers for a return to military dictatorship.

Pretext

Their campaign to return to nITA Franoniom ness ao a nratart the campaign of violence, largely directed against the security services, waged over recent years by the Basque nationalist organisation, ETA.

Last week ETA itself gave a considerable boost to the right wing by killing the kidnapped Jose Maria Ryan, chief engineer of the Lemoniz nuclear power plant under construction on the Basque coast.

The killing of a civilian, rather than a member of the Francoist police and army, was received even by many who normally support ETA with great hostility.

A general strike against the Killing, called by the Socialist, Commmunist and Basque Nationalist unions was massive*Immediatę occupation ly followed by workers in Euskadi (the Basque country) and there were many protest demonstrations.

It is unlikely that the killing has lost ETA much permanent But there is no doubt that in the short run the killing of Ryan was a gigantic political blunder. especially when opposition to the Lemoniz nuclear plant is already vast.

Some of the memory of ETA's cruel blunder appears to have been rapidly expunged by another dramatic event in the war between ETA and the Spanish state.

Last Friday an ETA prisoner died in the custody of the Spanish police.

There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that he was tortured to death.

In an attempt to quell public outrage against this act, Calvo Sotelo's fledgling government has been forced already to concede a public enquiry into the militant's death.

But such steps were insufficient to prevent a weekend of violent mass demonstrations by angry Basque militants which confirmed that ETA's underlying support is unshaken.

It is the first major crisis of the new government. And it could yet turn out to be the last.